Social awareness among today’s youth has increased manifold over the last few years. Evidence of this can be seen and heard in coffee bars and on campus. Gone are the days when the youth were far removed from issues of local and national importance. There is a heightened sense of impatience and intolerance among the young for bad governance and social injustices. They are sensitive and quick to react to incidents of oppression, human-rights violation, environmental degeneration and subjugation of individual freedom.
This awareness has resulted in a sudden burgeoning of organizations advocating equality, freedom and justice. There has been a marked increase in youth signing up as volunteers for social organizations and NGOs. All of them want to contribute in some manner to either better or change the system. There is a collective dream and hope of a society where every man and woman is judged without any biases; where freedom not only means freedom of personal choice but also an equal respect for the other’s freedom; where the law is the same for each citizen of the state, irrespective of gender, class, caste, rank or race.
But this idea of society is idyllic, truly Utopian-- a society, which Plato believed, will never come to be unless a philosopher administers society. But societies are in a state of regular flux, always growing, constantly maturing and slowly reaching out to that idealistic state. Change is infused into society through minor and major changes; minor changes being brought about by modifications in legislation and major ones brought about by revolutions, either social or political.
A revolution is a relatively sudden and drastic change. This may be a change in the social or political institutions over a relatively short period of time, or a major change in its culture or economy. History is replete with examples of revolutions, successful and aborted, which have changed local societies, in most cases for the better. Some of the more well-known of these have been the English Revolution (1642 – 1653), the American Revolution (1774 – 1783), the French Revolution (1789), the Russian Revolutions (1905 and 1917) and the Chinese Revolutions (1949 and 1966 – 1976). Closer home, we had the fight for freedom, which began in 1857 and terminated in 1947 with India gaining her independence.
The transition from being an English colony to a Sovereign nation was a tumultuous and major step in freeing Indian society, but the gains of that revolution have never reached all levels of society. Today, the words equality, freedom and justice are alien to most citizens of India. Discrimination at every stage, severe inequality and terrible injustice are rampant. Everyday we hear, read and see accounts where the basic benefits of our society, which a privileged few of us take for granted, are being denied to large numbers and groups of people. Clean drinking water, two meals a day, education, rudimentary shelter are still things for which the majority of Indians are still struggling, while at the other end there are a few of us who drive in cars which cost millions of rupees, live in houses costing billions and spend several thousands of rupees on one single meal.
To this decaying milieu are added large dollops of other but equally important factors of rampant corruption, animal rights, clear air, open spaces, forest cover, terrible infrastructure, unhealthy civic sense, unemployment and several others.
The path that Indian governance has taken is a relatively easy one to tread, a path which will slowly but steadily lead to social unrest. There is an alternative path, one which is more challenging, one which can lead to a society and a democracy that each and every citizen is proud of, a society which truly espouses the ideals and virtues of freedom, equality and justice. But for India to take up that path would require collective and monumental action.
The current scenario where there are many voices, shouting out in reaction to individual issues, will not be sufficient to change the path on which we currently meander. These numerous voices will only act as bumps on the road, but will not be strong enough to derail and subsequently change the path.
The youth in India today are the largest demographic group. Revolutions have always been brought about by an informed, proactive and a cohesive youth movement, backed by the working class, and directed by the educated voice of authors, poets and artists.
India at her current juncture has large measures of each of these components essential for a revolution, a social revolution, which can alter the course of Indian democracy permanently. What needs to be done is a massive cohesion of all efforts, efforts which seem ineffective and weak today. This cohesion has to be necessarily coupled with an active interest by the youth in the politics of the nation, however dirty and seedy the current image of Indian politics may seem.
There is always a danger that such large movements could easily slide into violence and result in armed attacks against the system. Such reactions, seemingly led by modern day Robin Hoods, will only result in the existing system to impose further restrictions on the rights of individuals and groups, thereby creating a large sense of alienation among the masses. There are several examples of such pockets of movements across Central, South and the North-East of India, whose intentions may have been good, but whose violent implementation have led them nowhere.
In the past, the years just before and during the Emergency of 1975, have given rise to such mass movements led by the venerable J P Narayan. It’s time to relive and reenact that movement with a burning fervor and strengthened vigor, a movement which shall achieve the goals that drive it, a movement whose success shall be in its popularity and broad vision. Let’s not wait for another Emergency to give rise to this movement. Let us collectively act today!