Why Not India?

Even as the mass upsurges in the Arab world give new hope to progressives all over the world and instil confi dence in the strength of the masses, the pathetic situation of indifference and inaction in India causes despair. Essentially there is no difference, be it in Tunisia, Yemen, Jordan, Libya, Qatar, Kuwait, Egypt or India. The size and composition of the population might differ and there may be a difference in degree. But there have been similar stories of poverty, unemployment, rigged elections and sham democracies, overt and covert dictatorships, corruption at high places, a self-seeking political class, and an indulgence of middle classes…in one word, antipeople regimes. But why are there no similar consequences? Does one have to seriously introspect on the inability of “subjective forces” in the face of “ripe objective conditions” for a mass upsurge? Or does one have to rethink the meaning of “ripening of objective forces” and the willingness as well as capability of subjective forces? If the picture of one Mohammad Bouazizi, who immolated himself against bureaucratic high-handedness, could inspire hundreds of thousands of Tunisians to rise and overthrow an anti-people government, why are the self-immolations, starvation deaths, suicides, unnatural deaths, encounter killings as well as sacrifices in armed movements of thousands of our brothers and sisters not able to move and prod us into some action?

One tends to think that if there were only two Indias in the country it would have been an easier replay here of Tunisia and Egypt. Maybe there are hundreds of Indias divided with unbridgeable cleavages on the lines of caste, religion, gender, region, language, ethnicity…what not, added with political divisions and our own argumentative knack of ever splitting one into two and luxuriating in our fragmentations. There seem to be more hurdles in India to achieving a unity of people like that we are witnessing right now across north Africa and west Asia. Are these valiant Arabs showing a way to achieve unity to dethrone unpopular regimes? Do pro-people, progressive Indians learn a lesson here?