Independence—as an idea, a state of being, lived reality—means nothing to the majority in India. The majority that votes, the majority that sustains the structure of political democracy, yet the majority that does not ask for or get anything in return. In a Tamil Nadu village, a Dalit woman walks with her footwear in hand and casts her vote in the panchayat election, imposing faith in a system that will not even guarantee her the right to let the chappals remain on her feet. In rural North India, women who mildly resist inhuman treatment are routinely paraded naked and branded witches. Pedki Devi of Dhanbad in Bihar was accused of using black magic, branded a witch, stripped and tortured. Her crime: as a widow she would not let her husband’s relatives gobble up the little piece of land she had tilled.
It is one thing for a humongous, unwieldy entity like a nation to be ‘independent’ and quite another for an individual to experience independence. In much of India, society in various manifestations—the family, community, caste, the village, biradiri—lays siege to the individual self. Life-defining decisions are mostly beyond the scope of the individual. These larger entities overpower the individual even in everyday acts—whether you walk on a certain street, and if you do, what is the appropriate dress to wear; if it is okay for a woman to cut her hair; if it is okay to bathe in a certain village pond; if it is okay to address somebody in first person; if it is okay to eat certain foods. Larger decisions are even more difficult to make—choosing one’s partner, giving up a profession ordained by tradition, marriage, not marrying at all, being gay.
Sometimes, society even tries to alter the choices nature makes, nipping them in the bud—for instance, the efforts to not allow the girl child from being born. While the world debates the pros and cons of stem cell research, in India 11.2 million illegal abortions are performed each year. In 1981, the ratio among children up to the age of 6 was 962 girls per 1,000 boys; 20 years later it is 927 girls per 1,000 boys. Technological modernity in India subserves society’s ruthless, ‘traditional’ demands. While the abortion debate in the West is about individual choice and freedom, in India amniocentesis leads to socially sanctioned genocide.
In most of India, for most citizens, real choices hardly exist. The independence struggle against the British was about fashioning a nation and seeking the right for some Indians to control the destiny of that nation. That struggle was about political independence, which was achieved relatively with less difficulty. However, the other, more important project—the liberation of society from antiquated values, on which hinges the emergence and the subsequent emancipation of the individual—has not even taken off yet. We have been indoctrinated into blaming the state for all the ills of society. However, our state has been one of the most politically correct: banning untouchability, banning sex selection, banning dry latrines that engender manual scavenging, enacting several laws that protect an individual’s various rights, we will soon have even elementary education as a fundamental right.
If we today have more than 200 million chronically hungry Indians and yet surplus foodgrains rotting in godowns, 53 per cent children dropping out of school and yet a Rs 1,000-crore Edusat in space, it is because of our society’s inherent inability to allow change. The beast of society stands in the way of the implementation of any of the state’s initiatives. And society is most cruel in its rural form where 72.2 percent of our population lives. Ambedkar had told the Constituent Assembly: "I hold that these village republics have been the ruination of India. What is the village but a sink of localism, a den of ignorance, narrow-mindedness and communalism?" India has the largest number of police stations in any nation in the world. (For instance, Tamil Nadu has 1,413 police stations whereas only 276 hospitals). Yet society’s crimes are condoned since the police protects society’s interests rather than the state’s.
As long as the political legacy of independence does not devolve socially, freedom shall have little meaning. What we have in India today is not civil but uncivil society that forecloses the possibility of choice, freedom and independence. In this uncivil society, an indiscretion—like an Ezhava falling in love with a Nair—could turn into a social challenge. In this uncivil society, to be human is to lead an insurrection. To experience independence can be epiphanic.
