Given up already?

You and me, our collective story, plays out on a long road-trip via history that has had its share of sharp-curves, downhills and bumpy sections. We also passed by historical mile-markers along the way. The journey before and after these mile-markers are distinctly different. There was the world before/after the nuclear bomb was dropped on Japan. There is a very different planet before/after industrialisation took over the world. There are illustrations of life before/after Nazi Germany. There is research on the impact on an entire culture, before/after the British Empire was established across the world.

One such mile-marker finds itself firmly grouted in Indian soil. In 2014 the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) came to power at the center by what is believed to be democratic means of free and fair elections. This new entrant into the hall-of-fame of mile-markers had one essential ingredient; fear. The road to be traversed beyond this mile-marker was dark, had a sidewalk of unknowns and was asphalted with fear.

But fear isn’t a new adversary. Back in the days of lesser Internet and more dialogue, when mediums were different but conflict was the same; back in the days when a mosque was brought down by men and women wielding weapons, we had met fear already. Fear came to those parties wearing a “hate costume”. We knew “how” to hate but did not understand “why”. We were taught to hate because we needed to be afraid of “the other”; afraid of losing our share of resources, including money, jobs, land, education, health, perks and privileges. Fear has been the fecund ground on which were planted the saplings of ignorance, inequity, injustice, crime and wars. So fear being used time and again both within and without India is not surprising. Why is 2014 so important then?

Prior to 2014, the fear and hate combo was served on a platter to one segment of the citizenry that consisted of a range of people from simpletons (who believe in goblins, ghosts and ghouls) to extremely intelligent and opportunistic individuals. All of them had one thing in common; they used fear to either find a new purpose or to rationalize their historical participation in the existing cycles of injustice and inequity. But there was a segment of the society that was unaffected by the above kind of fear. They were the writers, artists, activists, journalists and concerned citizens. Post 2014, fear took on the dual role of working against both the segments albeit with different modus operandi.

Franklin D. Roosevelt’s timeless quote from his inaugural speech holds up a mirror for all of us who belong to the second segment. Neither were we afraid of “the other” nor were we afraid of our resources being taken away. We were not the ones to fall for goblins, ghosts and ghouls and any such manifestations that needed to be burnt at the stake. What were we afraid of then? Roosevelt’s “fear itself” needed generous help from us to be fully formed and defined. We sculpted our own reason to fear by telling ourselves things such as “others will not stand by me when the time comes” or “he/she will leave me out in the cold”. We willingly swallowed a fear-pill and digested it with “juices of distrust” that dormantly lie in wait. And that was the beginning of our helplessness.

It should be granted that not all of us simply had an irrational fear of “fear itself”. The risk of getting physically hurt was very real/tangible for some. From the mild and harmless verbal disagreements to violent and fatal outcomes, many among us have felt the repercussions of standing up against a system that chose to use such a fear to its advantage. But it has to be said that most of us were not in danger of real physical violence or personal damage.

We simply continued to be afraid; very afraid. We kept our mouth shut and treaded carefully. We imposed a sort of self-censorship on ourselves or the entities/organizations we represented. We made opportunistic hops between parties/ideologies. We displayed apathy and disengagement as individuals, intellectuals, writers, artists and activists when we slowly started letting this non-existent fear amplify and multiply while letting real-and-existent entities such as liberty, freedom and rights erode. Thus, fear became our “sleep paralysis”, holding down our bodies firmly while we seem to be fully aware.

The rise of the fascist forces both in India as well as the world is a phase. The social and economic conditions for such a phenomenon is created due to the inherent flaws in the existing systems. When there are alternative contenders for that space, the system will fall in place to accept them. We only need to fearlessly take center stage with the alternatives, approaches and pathways that are just, humane, sustainable and in the interest of all of humanity and the planet. We need to lose our fear of “loss of wages”, “loss of time”, “loss of image”, “loss of friendship” etc and take immediate center-stage to write our own history. The demons of our collective fear are like the ones from urban legends around “sleep paralysis”; they are neither real, nor will they harm us. We are already aware, we only need to fully awaken to that reality.

The designers of the fear-pill themselves need to fear, as they are on very fragile ground. We have realized it late but realize we did. The antidote for “fear itself” is trust which is a pill we shall gladly swallow. A reaffirmed solidarity and a quick discarding of sectarianism is all we need to come together again, this time fearlessly. Trust is a close sibling of cooperation and cooperation is one of the pillars on which viable alternative, sustainable and just socioeconomic models rest. Thus, the very same “leaps of faith” we need to make to undo the damages caused by our inaction, will also be the foundations we lay for a better socioeconomic future. Coming together fearlessly would mean much more than activism, it would ask us of accountability, vision, action and a political alternative.

If we are not in the camp that is taking our country down a slippery slope or if we are sitting on the fence about this matter, it is time we trusted, cooperated and acted on our convictions. It is time we stood by our brothers and sisters who will in turn stand by us. We should trust that they cannot be bought. We should trust that they will take a bullet for us. We should know that our minor disagreements have no bearing on the collective, ideologically diverse land we plough together. When we conquer the frontier-of-trust, we will realise there is nothing left to be afraid of.

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