The Triumph Of Ephemera

Once there was a new garden. Young men and women clambered up its surrounding walls to gaze in. There would be brotherhood here and justice for all. There would be pride in the new political experiment that was India. Strong arms would protect the poor, tough shoulders would raise the young, there would be intellectual excitement because an oppressed people would at last define their own freedom.

Today, those who climbed those walls have turned away from their hopes. Their garden has become a bingo hall. Multi-coloured lights hang from synthetic trees. A terrifyingly smiling clown spews money from his mouth. A naked crowd dances for the highest bidder. For the men and women of the last century, New India makes a mockery of the dreams of independence.

"The basic purpose of Independence," says C. Subramaniam, 93, member of the Constituent Assembly and a member of Nehru's cabinet, "was to remove poverty, ignorance and superstition. That has not been fulfilled." Subramaniam is one of the last living members of the Constituent Assembly, yet his voice is hardly ever heard in public life. He was an active participant in the '42 movement, endured several spells in prison and was a confidant of Nehru. Former editor of The Times of India, Sham Lal, 88, says the craze for money will make dumbness a virtue. India might soon flounder in a tide of meaninglessness. The scholarly Sham Lal, known for his uprightness and fierce attachment to the written word resigned from the board of TOI when he felt that the paper was reneging on its standards. When he was the editor, beauty queens were strictly peripheral. Now, they dominate front pages. "The elite is philistine with no stakes in their land," he says. They are anxious simply to send their children to the US and to transform everything into money-making machines. Maulana Wahiduddin Khan, 80, says there's a curious absence of intellectual power in today's India. "There are novels, there are software programmes, but where's the muscular political and social thinking suited to our needs?" The Maulana has worked hard to emphasise the modernist aspects of Islam. His magazine Al Risala is devoted to the presentation of Islam in a scientific idiom. He has always opposed planned economy and been a supporter of private enterprise but feels the new free market reforms are ignoring infrastructure. In a climate of pop patriotism, the Maulana talks constantly of employment, of education, of roads, of water.

The men and women of the last century were brought up to be idealists. And today their conclusion is more or less unanimous: the new changes are more superficial than significant. Underlying the tattered gloss of the metropolises, poverty and superstition remain unconquered.

In their youth, they saw death on the streets. Mohit Sen, 71, heads the United Communist party of India, edits New Thinking Communist and lives a simple life. During the Bengal famine, he recalls seeing mothers sell their children to paedophiles for food. "I'm a soft optimist," says Sen. "I don't think we've plunged into a black hole. Instead, there are several positive changes. The empowerment of women, the efforts of sections of the press to raise serious issues, the tremendous expansion in job opportunities, rise in literacy and in life expectancy of the average Indian have altered the quality of life for millions. He says: "The process by which the 'masses' are becoming 'persons', is a sign of slow but inevitable change".

The men and women of the last century saw terror, and then hope. When Jamila Verghese—nee Barkatullah—rode into Delhi from Batala, standing all the way in a 1500 ton military truck, past the dust-covered refugees in Kingsway Camp, past the blood-thirsty villains with garlands of human breasts around their necks, she still clung stubbornly to her hopes for India. And she wasn't disappointed. In the fifties, a Dalit student, K.R. Narayanan walked all the way to school and rose to become a senior civil servant. The rich had accumulated much wealth but they still adhered to values of austerity. To show off one's wealth was considered vulgar, unholy. Dedicated missionaries established a network of schools that taught decency and discipline. "But today, the dotcom God is the main idol of our daily devotion. We've accepted a second rate and third rate education system. Air-conditioned schools have made children strangers in their own land." Verghese is a social activist who works with victims of drug addiction, and campaigns passionately against religious intolerance.

Theirs was a quest for engagement. How to feel engaged with those whose living conditions were painfully different from their own. Senior human rights lawyer V.M. Tarkunde, 92, was firmly set on course to becoming a successful lawyer but lived among villagers for 15 days every month and fought their cases for free. Only one irreversible change gives him hope. "There is a mass awakening among the people. They are much less superstitious, relatively speaking. They are much more conscious of their rights. They know that no government can help them. If they want their conditions to improve, they have to just help themselves." This mass awakening, this new refusal to be meek and accepting, Tarkunde says, is one of the positive changes in India of the new millennium. Tarkunde was one of the founders of the Peoples' Union for Civil Liberties and fought all his life for a better implementation of human rights. Today, he says, every time he sends an article to a newspaper, it is summarily rejected.

Sen says the disparities between rich and poor are more obscene than they ever were. The kisan, the backbone of India is being systematically ruined by the new economic policies. "If you destroy the farmer, you destroy India," Sen says. Maulana Wahiduddin Khan says he has never before witnessed such a lumpen disregard for the intellect, such rubbishing of all that is quiet and discerning. Sham Lal says acres of major states are becoming garbage dumps and India is desperately short of capital. "If you keep the purchasing power of the poor low, then how far can the middle class go?" asks Tarkunde. Verghese says the technological revolution in itself is not enough. "Technology is a tool to make living conditions better for the people. Technology can't be an end in itself." Tarkunde laments the lack of a social discourse between the middle class and the people. If you don't bring the poor into the ambit of change, the potential for economic and cultural growth will be utterly limited.

The men and women of the last century are disappointed that surface glitter and technicolour illusions pass for what is called New India. That peoples' senses are so dulled that nothing matters except steady supplies of ready cash. "The late Nikhil Chakravarty, editor of Mainstream, used to say," recalls Sen, "that we're like dictionaries. If young people come to us and ask us the spelling of certain words, we will spell it for them.Of course, if they don't want to know the spelling, then they will have no need of us."

Sen and Khan. Tarkunde and Verghese. Subramaniam and Sham Lal. Voices from another century. Voices that sang not just with Gandhi and Nehru, but with those who ran on dirt tracks or travelled on the metre gauge line. Wise old voices from an unfashionable time, buried today by the cacophony from game shows and soap operas.