Congress vandalism and India's nightmare after Independence

The real nightmare began after India attained political freedom. In this era, the agitations that had begun as a struggle for freedom transformed into a never-ending fight for the spoils of freedom premised on the politics of a race to the bottom. When the euphoria of the departure of the British subsided, unending protests and agitations became the norm in our public life.

Thus, nation-building, which was pompously touted by the Congress party in August 1947, was slaughtered at the altar of seeking the perfect answer to this question: how better than the British can we oppress our own people? Needless, the full credit for reducing India to this pathetic state goes to the Congress because a cardinal technique which the Congress used for accomplishing this enterprise on a national scale was agitations. In this, they were ably aided by the Communists who had already perfected this dark art of street-level agitations because they had the model of and took direct orders from the USSR to keep India permanently on the boil.

Those who are old enough to remember will recall the various organisational alphabet soups that regularly rampaged Indian cities and towns from the late 1950s up to the early 1990s: SUCI, NSUI, SFI, AITUC, INTUC, AICCTU, CITU, etc. Recurrent arson, rioting, vandalism and political murders were the daily-life manifestations of such agitations which were meant to achieve a supposed good.

Arguably, the worst of the lot was the notorious Youth Congress that charted a deadly course of ruin under Sanjay Gandhi. It is a familiar story of how he stuffed it with convicted criminals, street goondas, bootleggers, third-rated car mechanics, black marketers, racketeers, history-sheeters, pimps, and smugglers. A good chunk of this lot went on to become Central ministers. The ultimate purpose of this refurbished Youth Congress was to give expression of “popular support” to the assured future prime ministership of Sanjay Gandhi. “Son also rises” was a popular slogan back then. And street-level agitations and vandalism proved to be the most effective methods of this expression.

But then, Sanjay had learned these stock-in-trade tricks from his mother, the prime minister. SL Bhyrappa narrates a personal account of how Indira Gandhi, out of thin air, could materialise massive crowds which regularly came to her house to “get a Darshan of desh ki Mata.” Needless, they were hired agitators agitating on behalf of the alleged Iron Lady. In my own growing up years, I have seen how hired Congress goons would regularly descend on the streets for various reasons: in some cases, these goons belonged to, say, Minister X who wanted to topple Minister Y. Both ministers were from the same party inhabiting the same government. Buses would be burnt. Streets would be littered with shards of broken glass bottles. Government offices would be stoned.

Papers would normalise this as agitation and protest.

When this sort of thing went on uninterruptedly for half a century, quite obviously, stability became the primary and the greatest casualty. Those who quickly point out that successive Congress governments gave stability to the country during this period – the prevailing discourse in that period was that there was no alternative to the Congress – should answer this logical question: what constructive growth occurred as an outcome of this stability? With unprecedented cruelty, this “stability” not only impoverished India further but actually undid whatever little good had been done even during the British rule.

Indeed, we need to see exactly one item which the Communists and Congress haven’t agitated against: business, infrastructure projects, defence preparedness, space missions, agriculture reforms, education, social issues…just one. That it took fifty-five years to kickstart something as basic as a decent national road network – the Golden Quadrilateral – is one of the interconnected themes of this agitation-engineered tragedy.

Because the aforementioned brazen methods of agitation have largely become outmoded in recent times, its new incarnation has become fairly popular: change. Even here, the duplicity is apparent: why does one need change when things are stable, i.e., when the going is good? Indeed, the decadal agitational politics of the Congress and Communists and their clones have induced an amnesia regarding a basic, timeless wisdom: stability is not stagnation. The formidable Lee Kuan Yew operated by this wisdom when he initially said that the coming generations will enjoy the fruits of the hard work that our generation invests in.

Appalling human cost

Undoubtedly, the most expensive price of all these agitations has been the human cost it has extracted: millions of innocent Indian lives unnecessarily lost to these agitations and protests, the clear goal of which remains unclear even today because there was no goal to begin with except the capture of political power. In other words, a handful of unscrupulous Indians pitting their own against each other so they could wield political power for perpetuity. This is not only national destruction but generational annihilation, something that can never be fixed or undone.

And so, if we honestly wish to understand the manufactured, periodic eruptions of violence like the CAA, farmer “protests,” etc., its roots are in the foregoing capsuled history of agitations and activism.

Epilogue

At no point in history was India in this pathetic state. In the past, even in the early years of Independence, the most learned, decent, cultured, and wise people chose politics as a form of offering their contribution to nation building and development. This sentiment came from the ancient Sanatana tradition where the ordinary masses implicitly trusted people in positions of authority because they lived the values they preached, topmost of which was integrity and delivery of impartial justice in a timely fashion. This was the national tradition which adhered to this dictum: that in me which is low, elevate; that which is elevated, refine.

The transition from that summit to this nadir has been swift and brutal. That this happened after Independence is the more profound tragedy and is yet another reason I repeatedly use the word “independence” and its variants in quotes.

Today, while street-level agitation has comparatively reduced in frequency and intensity, it has only become more sinister because a section of our urban and semi-urban youth regard protest and agitation as a lifestyle. This is the consequence of drilling it into the minds of our children through an education system that is designed to wage war against everything that still keeps India united. But that is a story to be told in detail another day.

[This is the second and concluding part of the series.>

The author is the founder and chief editor, The Dharma Dispatch. Views expressed are personal

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