Solidarity is the only answer to social polarisation

We are coming to the end of a complex seven-phase election, and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)’s record of governance in the last 10 years is up for evaluation.

The one theme that wracks the conscience of the body politic, is the intensification of social polarisation in India since 2014. This has wrecked the delicate social balance forged between Hindus and Muslims post-1947. August 1947 had brought with it Independence, as well as the Partition of Northern and Eastern India. Independence came to us with blood-soaked feet. Mahatma Gandhi, who had spent his life advocating swaraj, wrote despondently on July 25, 1947: ‘Have we got swaraj? Did swaraj mean only that the British rule should end? To my mind it was not so. For me Sabarmati is far off, Noakhali is near.’

Gandhi was not in Delhi on August 15, 1947. He was in Noakhali, in West Bengal, trying to restore humanity to a people who had lost all sense of what it is to be human. This was the time that the Constituent Assembly, which had met in December 1946, was drafting the Constitution. Partition raised new challenges.

Indians who had been divided along the lines of politicised religion had to acknowledge others as fellow citizens in a democratic political community. The makers of the Constitution tried to introduce a measure of sense in a society that had been shattered by senselessness. To provide an alternative norm as the pivot of a political community, they institutionalised the normative precepts of political theory — freedom, equality, justice, and fraternity in the Preamble to the Constitution. The conceptual twin of fraternity is solidarity.

This was remarkable, given that the period before and during Partition can best be compared to the State of Nature conceptualised by the English philosopher Thomas Hobbes in his 1651 Leviathan. Unlike Hobbes, the makers of India’s Constitution did not provide a solution in the form of a powerful State. The establishment of a democratic State was not enough to foster civility and solidarity. Society had to cluster around norms that were as far removed from religious mobilisation as possible. They wrote solidarity into the new normative framework of politics. Religious mobilisation had divided people, solidarity had to bring them together. This was the lesson of history.

Unfortunately, lessons of history are not easily learnt by the ruling classes. For if there is one political spectacle the autocrat cannot stand, it is that of people coming together on issues that concern not only themselves, but also their fellow citizens. But solidarity can move mountains. We witnessed this in the anti-CAA movement initiated by our university students in December 2019.

The sentiment that bound the young and not-so-young protestors was simply this: ‘We care about our fellow citizens’. Processions, public readings of the Preamble to the Constitution, and revolutionary songs bound them together in shared spaces of concern. The occupation of public spaces, sit-downs on public roads, coinage of innovative slogans, peaceful demonstrations, and singing of the national anthem established this virtue. We were reminded of William Wordsworth who had written on the French Revolution thus: “Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive/But to be young was very heaven!”

Spontaneous movements sans leaders or organisations have made history from the 1989 Velvet Revolutions in Eastern Europe to Shaheen Bagh in India in 2019-2020, even though the latter was repressed. Autocrats seeking to pre-empt this eventuality resort to demonising minorities, and instilling fear in the hearts of the majority, which constitutes 80 per cent of the population.

Polarisation takes new forms. Consider how the words of one of our most learned Prime Ministers Manmohan Singh have been twisted during these ongoing elections. The comment attributed to him — that Muslims have the first claim on resources — is misquoted, misinterpreted, and misunderstood. It has been taken out of context. The background of the concern Singh expressed is the Muslim community, along with his concern for other disadvantaged communities — the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes — was the report of the committee set up in March 2005 under the chairmanship of Justice Rajinder Sachar. Its mandate was to look into the social, economic, and educational status of the Muslim community. The report was tabled in Parliament on November 30, 2006. The findings of the report are cause for anxiety. The status of the community, it was reported, was only marginally better than that of the Scheduled Castes and Schedule Tribes in education and employment. The committee recommended the establishment of an Equal Opportunities Commission to ensure justice for minorities.

The fundamental objective of democracy is to secure justice. If groups are doubly disadvantaged — socially as well as economically — special measures must be adopted to ameliorate ill-being such as affirmative action. We, as members of a democratic political community, are obliged to ensure that our fellow citizens are given their due, both recognition and redistribution, through redistributive justice.

Muslims have a right to a share of India’s resources not because they are Muslims, but because of the double disadvantage that stalks their heels. The need for redistribution of resources through progressive taxation and the provision of social income should be plain to anyone who has a modicum of feeling for fellow citizens by reasons of a civic virtue called solidarity. This connects us to others. It is the only answer to social polarisation.

(Neera Chandhoke is former professor of political science, Delhi University. X: @ChandhokeNeera.)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.