Despite all my cynicism over democracy in general and Uttar Pradesh in particular, I don’t know why but I am still warmed in my cockles (is that a phrase?) when I hear an Indian speak passionately and energetically about their right to vote. Today, as I switch on the tv or browse the web, I see illiterate Maataajis from Jat land and suave former military officers from Lucknow talking about who they voted for and how they are done giving a chance to the incumbents, on-the-ground journalists from Prayagraj speaking to rustic people from Najibabad about their preferences and why the current dispensation is actually deserving of their vote, worldly-wise Taujis from Meerut and smart farmers from Saharanpur who vote their caste and are proud of it, and I am not taking in or counting the numbers of ayes and nays for and against the Modi-Yogi regime and wondering where the election is going. I am actually marvelling at the confidence in the single vote that the average Indian voter has and how regardless of all the booth capturing and EVM-rigging, election violence and threats, wrong counting and cash-for-votes happening around them, the complete and total trust in their vote, in democracy, in the idea of India as a country that will be ruled by those that the people choose to represent them, has not diminished.
And then I thank our Founding Fathers (& Mothers, of course) for creating and sustaining this confidence and trust in the electoral process, our courts for standing up to tyranny when they could and did, our media for fearlessly reporting what those in power wanted to hide, and our administrative and executive services for selflessly and professionally doing their jobs in the face of overwhelming odds and under tremendous pressure to buckle. Forget what you see recently. This is a flash in the pan. Remember how difficult it has been just to get here and remain a democracy and the yeoman service all these pillars of democracy have offered at the altar of the idea of India.
Come on, educated, liberal, social-media-enabled urban people who speak of democracy dying in India. Just go and watch the ordinary citizens of India voting, and then speaking of their vote. It is enough to hold out hope for the future. All is not lost yet (and frankly, this has nothing to do with who will eventually win UP; this is bigger than that). Nor does it seem it will be in the near future. Democracy is too deeply ingrained in us by the Gandhis and Boses, Nehrus and Patels, Ambedkars and Azads, the Amrit Kaurs and the NV Gadgils, the Baldev Singhs and the John Mathais, the Kidwais and Jagjivan Rams, even Shyama Prasad Mookherjee. All of them were, in their own way, instrumental in making of this vast nation (sorry RaGa, I disagree with that word you used; while India may not have been a nation once, it is now learning how to be one, and I believe it is beautiful to watch it evolve its own version of what it means) into a firmly democratic country, and I cannot but shudder when I think of what other direction, of the million other options available to us, we could have taken.
Thank you, all of you. All of you who gave your sweat, blood, and tears for this country. All of you who fought to free us from the colonial yoke. All of you who decided that of every alternative available to you, democracy was the best path to take, despite it being fraught with the risk of failure in the short, medium, and long run. You showed faith in the Indian people. And they have repaid it in spades, with interest, by entrenching the value of their vote as somehow extremely important, critical even, in the larger scheme of things so firmly that there could have been no better way to show their gratitude to those who put us on that path in the first place.
The extremists who want to turn us into a dictatorship will never win, not because we won’t vote for bigots and hatemongers (we will; we are humans after all) for reasons other than development and prosperity, peace and fraternity, equality and justice, or security and order, but because even if they are voted into power, and manage to cling on to it for whatever small sliver of time they do when seen in the perspective of the life-cycle of a nation, they will never be able to kill the idea of a democratic India. The seed that has been sowed by dedicated people that were committed to the cause has gone too deep for too long and been nurtured by over a billion people for almost a century (since 26 January 1930). You can dig. But you cannot destroy it.
Long live India. Long live democracy. Jai Hind.
