A question for the Indian middle class: Why so silent?
July 10, 2021, 11:36 PM IST Sagarika Ghose
Sagarika Ghose has been a journalist for over three decades, starting her career with The Times of India, subsequently moving … MORE
The death of the ailing and aged Stan Swamy, repeatedly denied bail, sparks outrage. But primarily on social media. Fuel prices touch record highs and satirical memes abound. But not much else happens. In Covid times, urban unemployment spikes, and scores of urban families face tragedy amid dire shortages of health services. But does India’s urban middle class complain? Are there any signs of visible anger manifesting in physical protests? No.
Galvanised by a death: George Floyd’s killing in May 2020 sparked the largest racial justice protests in the US since the Civil Rights Movement.
The vast majority of India’s urban middle class appears to have abandoned the opportunities of citizenship. They are willing to sacrifice liberty, even dignity, for some mercy from the mai-baap sarkar. Society is deeply polarised and mutual trust has broken down, making peaceful citizen’s solidarity next to impossible. State assaults on personal liberty — like instant imprisonment without bail or trial — do not agitate India’s middle class. Apathetic and listless, they simply couldn’t care less. There are exceptions of course. The middle class is not a monolith: rights campaigners and many political prisoners and dissenters are from middle-class backgrounds.
But the bulk of the middle class is as meek as it was in the mid-1970s when it hailed the Emergency. Even in the face of grave provocation like loss of lives and livelihoods, there is no peaceful, civic rallying by citizens as there was during the India Against Corruption days in 2010-11 or the Nirbhaya protest in 2012. Today it is marginalised citizens directly threatened by state action who are moved to democratic action such as the anti-CAA-NRC and farm protests.
India’s timid middle class is in sharp contrast with other countries. America saw a massive anti-racism movement after the killing of George Floyd. Recently Brazil has been convulsed by anti-corruption, anti-Bolsonaro protests. The only comparable movement is the farm agitation in north India, but although agrarian communities have joined in huge numbers, the movement has not attracted a wider range of urban people nor become a focal point for diverse issues.
What are the reasons for the passivity of India’s middle class? One explanation could be that in times of Covid and economic hardship, people are too stressed for peaceful collective action or demonstrations. Lockdown restrictions in any case prevent public gatherings. So much easier to simply tweet or post on social media and substitute activism with ‘slacktivism’. Besides, for many, PM Modi still remains highly popular, answering the Indian middle class’s desire for cultural majoritarianism coupled with promises of development. The middle class’s deep investment in the Modi cult makes it hard for them to easily break away from their long-held admiration. India’s middle class has always been attracted to non-democratic leadership.
In a CSDS poll in 2008, 51% “strongly agreed” that rather than parliamentary democracy, there should be a CEO-style “managerial” approach to leading India.
Actually we Indians have been lulled into taking democracy for granted with successive good-old-boy prime ministers from PV Narasimha Rao to AB Vajpayee to Manmohan Singh running broad, tolerant-minded administrations. By sharp contrast, in the Modi years, a super powerful, ideology-driven Big State has risen up and state and party actors are intruding into almost every personal liberty from the right to protest to the right to marry or the right to make movies. For middle-class citizens, spoiled by decades of easy-going governments, it is a tall order to suddenly jump into vigilant activist mode and start defending liberty on the streets.
There is also the chilling effect. The indiscriminate use of the anti-terror law, UAPA, which doesn’t allow bail, imprisonment of protesters like Pinjra Tod or Disha Ravi strike mortal fear. Powerful politicians are using epithets like “anti-national”, “andolanjivi” and “urban naxal” as if to criminalise all criticism. There is a political vacuum too: there is no inspirational figure who today can become the focus of middle class enthusiasm or stand up as a middle class hero.
A passive middle class — when citizens fail fellow citizens — poses dangers for us all. Freedom is indivisible. When one citizen’s freedom is threatened by a repressive state, the freedom of all is imperiled. In a democracy, there is no substitute for the right to peaceful protest, enabling crucial public negotiations with governments and functioning as a social balm for citizens’ grievances. Hong Kong billionaire Jimmy Lai put his own freedom on the line to defend freedom in Hong Kong. It’s time for India’s middle class to break out of the insular, social media comfort zone and realise that Lady Justice and Lady Liberty badly need robust support from educated citizens. If the educated middle class refuses to take up the challenges and opportunities of citizenship, only students, cartoonists and standup comedians will remain as the last guardians of our freedom.
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DISCLAIMER
Views expressed above are the author’s own.
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