A Nation Divided Vertically Between People Seeking a Change and the Status Quo

The first set of people who want this government back is the corporate houses, two among them are well-known to everybody. They cannot have a government better than this, which is ready to hand over all natural and public resources to them so that they can maximise their profits. As we have already seen, it is the government which has killed and driven out Adivasis from their homes to make forests and mines available to the corporates. It has already started happening in Chhattisgarh where Adivasis are being driven out of villages.

Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty

The second set of people are unseen but part of the deep state who would like this government to come back. People in higher bureaucracy and in various investigative agencies that have worked as the agents of the Bharatiya Janata Party-led government to finish off the opposition and civil society. There is also a section of the judiciary which seems to have aligned itself with the present regime. The government has also been trying to create ideological sympathisers in the armed forces. The extraordinary step of a one-month extension to the army chief has raised this question afresh.

The Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) could not have expected a time like this. It has access to all state resources and near total control over educational and cultural institutions across India. Also, the kind of money it has now is unimaginable. Can RSS afford to lose that?

And the big media, which is an ideological extension of the BJP, is its PR platform, in turn, benefitting out of such links. Many of the media people have now started treating themselves as part of the establishment.

There is a significant number of people now in academia merely because of their proximity to the regime. They have a vested interest in the continuation of this regime, for its end would put them in oblivion.

A desire for change

There is, however, an equal or even larger number of people who want this government out. Youth are at the forefront of those opposed to the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government. Thousands of them, not members of any opposition party, have taken it up voluntarily on themselves to campaign against the government. They have attained youth in these last 10 years and many have spent the 10 best years of their life in the illusion that the country is on the road to recovery to witness the 'golden era of Bharat', which, as claimed by the establishment, was lost after the 'invaders' looted it. They saw bombastic words and fireworks but couldn’t see any signs of job or livelihood.

I am told by my students and other young friends that youth have been living under unprecedented depression. They cannot dream of living their life with dignity. Most of them preparing for competitive exams for various jobs have little hope of getting them. It might sound funny to some, but it is a serious problem for the young that they are treated as people with no marriage prospects. They cannot visit their villages without facing taunts. This number is swelling and sees a very bleak present and future for itself. Many of them were enamoured by the rhetoric of Modi and the image of Modi as the deliverer but that spell is broken now. They have worked hard in this election to convince their elders that for their sake this government needs to be shown the door.

Then there are students. They are intelligent enough to see through the talk of Indian knowledge traditions: that what they are getting in the name of education is trash. They can see the more resourceful ones moving to American campuses. They feel like guinea pigs and don’t want to be that. They have seen institutions like Jawaharlal Nehru University being demolished, and Delhi University being turned into a mediocre institution. If it continues their brothers and sisters have nowhere to go. They do want this government to go, a government promoting stupidity and mediocrity.

Then there are a vast number of educated Dalit youth who can see beyond the lip service paid to Bahasaheb Ambedkar by BJP leaders. They know that Hindutva is actually an ideology driven by the idea of Brahminical supremacy. They see this upper caste aggression returning after a retreat in the 1980s and 1990s. They fully understand the Bhima Koregaon conspiracy theory. They know that if the BJP is allowed more time in the state apparatus, they will lose the gains achieved in the last 70 years.

Then there are Muslims, obviously. They are also people of India. They have equal voting rights. But they have seen themselves being turned into non-people in these 10 years. They want to live as equals in their land with their heads high. They don’t want a government led by a party and leaders who constantly insult, demonise them and turn Hindus who have lived side by side with them against them. They want this government out which has declared them enemies. Rightly so.

Then there are people who want civility back in the public life of the nation. They are fed up with the obscenity drilled into the system by the BJP. They want to live like decent human beings and cannot tolerate others being humiliated.

This number is not small. They have a stake in decent politics and have worked tirelessly to recover space for it.

Everyone is waiting with deep anxiety. Will decency and civility win or will duplicity, crudity and cruelty?

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