Why I'm disappointed with Pranab Mukherjee's Republic Day speech
On the eve of India’s 68th Republic Day, President Pranab Mukherjee made a speech that checked out all the right boxes, if you go by what the government at the Centre would like you to believe. From excessive mentions of the armed forces with all the salutary nationalistic deference, to brushing the demonetisation woes under the carpet, President Mukherjee’s speech was a dampener, to say the least.
Only a cursory mention of the “argumentative Indian” as the true upholder of the idea of India, and the branding of demonetisation as an exercise to “immobilise black money”, means that President hardly has anything else to say other than what the regime would like us to talk about. This is a far cry from President Mukherjee’s previous R-day eve speeches, when he explicitly condemned the growing intolerance in the country.
Mukherjee’s tribute to the brave soldiers glossed over the great unrest that is brewing in the military rank and file. No word of assurance reached the ordinary soldier who’s being burdened by an overzealous government and ruling political party that’s out to milk every military achievement as its own.
But what’s truly worrying is President Mukherjee’s ominous warnings that Indians born after independence cannot take their freedoms for granted. What did he mean by that? How can constitutionally guaranteed fundamental rights be subservient to any allegiance whatsoever, whether to the flag or narrow nationalistic causes?
How can batting for the Constitution in one sentence precede making rights and freedoms conditional in the very next? This from the nominal head of the state is deeply worrying and portentous, to say the least.
While President Mukherjee enumerated the achievements of the Republic of India, such as increase in per capita income, decline in poverty ratio, increased life expectancy and literacy rate, space technology, technical and scientific powerhouse, being part of the nuclear arms club, he should have reminded Indians that each of these welcome achievements came with thoughtful policies of previous regimes that showed incremental and lasting results. He should have said that kneejerk policies that promise overnight and coerced transformation are sure-shot recipes for disaster.
But he did not.
Instead, he batted for technology in a vague manner, without contextualising it enough, without elaborating how minus the attendant distributive impulse, technology can become oppressive and a tool for control that is unbecoming of the world’s biggest democracy. That was a big miss.
Moreover, President Mukherjee’s line that “born in independent India, three generations of citizens do not carry the baggage of colonial past” is misleading, at best. Not overtly, but this nativist idea of history as being miraculous free of its embarrassing and economically ravaging past is also a symptom of the current resurgence in heedless religious fundamentalism.
The aspirations of India’s youth cannot exist in a free-floating idea of a nation, minus its origins in a deeply violent moment of rupture. Freeing India of its colonial past tethers us to the other infection, that of a civilisational notion of Hindu India, and that too is equally problematic. The President has done a disservice to the nation by reducing the value of independence to a temporal goalpost.
But the biggest dampener came from an unexpected quarter. President Mukherjee quoted Mahatma Gandhi saying: "The highest form of freedom carries with it the greatest measure of discipline and humility. Freedom that comes from discipline and humility cannot be denied; unbridled license is a sign of vulgarity injurious alike to self and others."
This is the proverbial nail on the coffin of an already shrinking civil society and the rights of individual citizens. No, these rights are not contiguous on a set of preceding ideas or ideologies or utterances. Neither is the frustration faced by today’s youth solely pegged on diminished employment opportunities despite claims to the contrary, nor is the stress and anger in this volatile demography only a symptom of brashness.
No amount of “inculcating pro-social behaviour through gainful employment” can explain away or gloss over the disgusting rise in misogyny, Islamophobia, communal rabidity from political figures. A social indoctrination regime in the interest of “good behaviour” is similar to what the “parental guidance” of the RSS would like us to have and is actively trying to engineer, altering the fabric of the Indian public and sociocultural spheres. Dissent and questioning is as much a “pro-social behaviour” as being gainfully employed by an Indian start-up that has benefitted from PM Modi’s Digital India drive.
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| Mukherjee’s tribute to the brave soldiers glossed over the great unrest that is brewing in the military rank and file. [Photo: DailyO] |
President Mukherjee’s paeans to cashless economy ring hollow before reams and reams of reports on how the common man and woman has been acutely distressed by demonetisation. It is extremely disconcerting therefore to hear the head of state simply regurgitate the tired old tropes of Narendra Modi regime, albeit in a more eloquent coating.
Finally, belated overtures to tolerance and maturity in a “noisy democracy” mean precious little when compared to President Mukherjee’s unproblematic reference to Aadhaar, despite the central government blatantly defying a Supreme Court order in making Aadhaar mandatory for a host of state subsidies.
Similarly, a perfunctory reference to “changing our consumption pattern which has resulted in environmental and ecological degradation” does little to curb or issue a stern warning to this government’s relentless assault against India’s sensitive ecological belts, okaying extremely controversial projects in the name of fact-paced growth and development.
Instead, Mukherjee could have used the opportunity to leave a lasting impression on the collective Indian mind, given that his presidential tenure is nearing its end. Just like the lameduck former POTUS Barack Obama left his fellow Americans and indeed the whole world with a farewell speech that would go down in history as a political milestone, Mukherjee could have harked back to the constitutional values not in a cursory manner, but comprehensively, calling out the regime at every step of its errant reign.
It’s sad that President Pranab Mukherjee who avoided being a rubberstamp president all along, finally became one.