The salt of democracy

After days of hunger strike by climate activist and reformer Sonam Wangchuk and his young associates at Jantar Mantar, with no respite from an indifferent government and the unbearable summer heat, things began to roll since the morning of July 18. The Delhi Police whisked away Mr. Wangchuk from the dais under the cover of white sheets and took him to the Safdarjung hospital for medical care. Forcing Mr. Wangchuk to abandon his strike, the government surreptitiously acted through the state to restore order, without any commitment towards political morality. The fundamental responsibility of a government in a democracy is to be answerable to the people.

On July 19, Wangchuk’s wife, Gitanjali Angmo, shared her husband’s handwritten note from medical detention that he was willing to call off his fast if the government took accountability for the NEET-UG paper leaks or if leaders of various political parties gave the assurance of taking up the issue in Parliament. He had toned down the original demand seeking the resignation of the Union Education Minister as a concrete sign of the government’s commitment towards rebuilding people’s confidence in the education system. He was prepared to concede the ground of his protest based on the Opposition’s assurance, even if the government was not willing to listen. It was certainly not a good political move on his part, and he seemed to have acted under confusion and despair.

But it must be acknowledged that this movement has gained in two fundamental aspects with Mr. Wangchuk’s participation. First, as my old JNU friend, Richa Singh, said, the significance of Mr. Wangchuk’s hunger strike is reminiscent of Gandhiji’s Salt March of 1930. Just as the Salt March was about people’s elemental right to taste, to reclaim their dignity against the government control of salt, the Jantar Mantar hunger strike was about reclaiming the salt of democracy. It made young people experience loyalty to democracy (and not a government). Its Indian roots lie in Satyagraha.

Spirit of civil disobedience

There was a unanimous sense of having tasted the spirit of civil disobedience in the voices of the new generation that attended their first political protest in Delhi on July 20. Mr. Wangchuk made immense contribution by his presence to ignite this spirit. Those who have grown cynical about Gandhiji’s method, arguing against the political effectiveness of fasting against unresponsive power, missed a crucial fact: for a lot of younger people, the act of fasting for a people’s cause was new. They might have read it in their history books, but to see it enacted by a man of principles on stage must have meant a lot. Those who swear to learn from the young must be able to leave their cynicism behind and anticipate the historically powerful roots and symbols of political imagination that return to awaken new generations.

Second, Mr. Wangchuk can’t be easily associated with any political ideology, or any ideological group that the government and the anti-people media can easily discredit. He represents the political conscience of a marginal community who joined the CJP’s movement out of a common sentiment. By his presence, he turned his marginal identity into a nationally motivating one. Even Abhijeet Dipke for that matter, a digital communications strategist from Boston University, comes from a marginal identity, being Dalit. Their respective marginalities created a common grammar of politics that reached out to a large cross-section of people, including the youth. For once, the rhetoric of India’s diversity was translated into a common force at the protesting site. Diversity alone contributes to real unity.

The July 20 protest saw an unprecedented participation of people from various parts of India that went, according to many eyewitnesses including journalists, beyond the crowds witnessed during the anti-CAA protests. There were reports of lathi charge and tear gas shells unleashed against protesters by the Delhi Police. Young participants saw this as an immoral act of fear and desperation by the state. They are not simply willing to acknowledge police action as Gramscian knowledge of the repressive apparatus of the state. They are asking questions regarding its legitimacy in a democratic state where citizens have the right to take to the streets for their demands to be heard politically. Vaclav Havel’s definition of dissent as “living within the truth”, from his 1978 dissident essay, The Power of the Powerless, is back again in vogue. The Indian youth had their first taste of dissent on July 20. Their experiences of the truth of dissent, both the harsh and the exhilarating ones, have flooded social media.

Mr. Wangchuk has, meanwhile, decided to prolong his indefinite hunger strike in light of police brutality against the protesters. The CJP protesters have gone back to their protest site at Jantar Mantar after placing their demands to Union Minister of Health and Family Welfare J.P. Nadda. The movement, despite the injuries to protesters, will continue. Mr. Wangchuk is no longer the embodied source of this movement that has now spilled over into a larger assembly of people with diverse voices. The movement will remain indebted to his defining and inspiring political act, but not remain shackled by his existential constraints, and shifting judgments. This way, the movement will gather more life.

The CJP movement’s defining moment can’t be just the token resignation of a government office-bearer that may count as a moral accomplishment, but is most likely not to bring any structural changes in the disturbing order of things. It lies in the reawakening of public spirit, to the refusal to submit to the resignation of spirit. July 20 is testimony to that promise.

Manash Firaq Bhattacharjee is the author of Gandhi: The End of Nonviolence. The views expressed are personal.