Indian Instincts

more than a decade of being together, it was smugly concluded by uncles and aunts that the reason was religious differences (though it was not!). Much later, when I married a man I loved who happened to be several years my junior, I was advised by friends to keep the age difference a secret. ‘Don’t say and they won’t be able to tell,’ a girlfriend a few years my senior told me. When, at our own wedding, my husband and I freely expressed our joy at being with child, not many were pleased.

Economist Amartya Sen’s perspective of ‘substantial’ freedom, as he writes of it, is concerned with becoming ‘fuller social persons, exercising our own volitions and interacting with and influencing the world in which we live.’¹ But in reality, volition took me—as it does many other young girls in the country—on a tough path that has only threatened my social relationships.

In my opinion, it is not the legal framework of the Constitution, nor the religious scriptures and certainly not society that can prevent us harming one another. It is our education that teaches us to respect the right of another man to live and that prohibits us from harming or killing him. Unless we have this respect, no amount of rules curbing our various freedoms can save man from man. But if we, one, have this respect, and two, are able to exercise our rational faculty in our actions, even if society’s arbitrary rules ask us to harm another man, we will choose to disobey. Of course, the human mind is not infallible. We are not always capable of thinking rationally, and might make the wrong decision. But when rationality fails, respect for the other intervenes.

In essence, another man’s survival requires that those who are free must also be rational and educated enough to respect one another’s lives. These two preconditions are essential. This is why no matter how many legal or societal rules we create to control our freedom, if we as a nation do not nurture respect, rationality, and the ability to independently think and judge, as well as implement our volition, we will continue to kill or harm each other on the slightest pretext.

Rationality and freedom are therefore two sides of the same coin. We can only be rational when we think with a free mind, and when we are rational, freedom can win. One does not really exist without the other. So a rational mind does not work under compulsion. Once it perceives the situation, it cannot be subservient to anyone else’s orders or controls. Such a mind can therefore be perceived as dangerous to political harmony. If a person equipped with such a mind cannot be cajoled, manipulated or forced even at gunpoint, how can a political leader have their orders obeyed?

It is for this reason, as I have pointed out in detail earlier in this book, that freedom of expression in India has been curbed— in more or less ways—by many successive governments even after we gained political freedom.² After all, can there be any greater irony than the fact that in 1951 the very first amendment to the Constitution of India included the provisions to curtail freedom of speech and expression?³

If encouraging rational thinking amongst our people is detrimental to an Indian political leader’s tenure in power, what incentive does he have to encourage quality education in India?

I refer here to the kind of education that opens up the mind with questions rather than closes it with answers learnt by rote; the education that teaches us to respect each other as human beings, and not pull one another down even when scrambling for the same resources; the education that persuades us to stand with our head held high despite all our perceived flaws and not idolize a stereotype; the education that asks us to think for ourselves and speak our opinion, not pander to those of others.

For political leaders to remain in power, it is in their best interest that citizens abstain from such an education, whether formal or informal. Parents must be told not to nurture independent-minded children, for which society must work hand in hand with politicians and parents to ensure that the ability of our children to think rationally and independently is forever stunted. Schools must continue to encourage learning by rote, as that is a sure-shot way to produce clones who will be programmed to learn—without applying their mind—everything they are told. Such citizens would be easiest to provoke with political rhetoric.

I am by no means suggesting a great conspiracy on the part of political leaders to stunt the mental faculties of our citizens. My point here instead is that the sort of political leadership that has developed in India might have little real incentive to encourage an education that will promote rational and independent thinking. Expanding on this, my larger point is that citizens under such a leadership are not free. Our minds are slaves to the dictates of others. We will not question the rules laid down by politics, society, religion, or the boss who demands work 24/7. And the issue is not about being a slave to a ‘good’ cause (be it political, social, religious, professional, etc.) versus a slave to a ‘bad’ cause. The issue is freedom versus slavery.

If freedom is to be upheld, then individual rights need to be upheld, guaranteed and protected by the political system. However, despite all the rules in the Constitution that explicitly intend to do so, this has not been easy to implement in India.

For instance, the Indian Constitution equally empowers both free thinkers as well as the offended, who can pursue criminal charges against writers, artists, film-makers editors and reporters who may have allegedly hurt their sensibilities. Both groups have an equal claim to protection by the Constitution. An artist has as much freedom to paint what they wish to as any Indian citizen who claims to have been religiously offended by that artist’s painting. It is this