Hum Dekhenge

December 15th 2019. I was at an Urdu literary festival when the attack on Jamia University took place. Jashn-e-Rekhta. It was a crisp, beautiful winter evening and Piyush Mishra was singing one of his most famous songs: Yaara Maula.

“Phir wo aaye bheed ban kar,

Haath mein they unke khanjar

Bole phenko ye kitaabein,

Aur sambhalo ye salaakhein.”

How poetically morbid. When I went home and watched videos of students, professors and journalists on social media, I was aghast and horrified. And quite honestly, scared. I couldn’t believe students were being attacked in their own hostels. Something changed inside me that day.

I stopped being passively angry. I stopped leaving the room when a bigoted co-worker talked against a community. I stopped ignoring a racist and misinformed WhatsApp text. I refused to turn a blind eye when a well-meaning uncle shared a baseless, hate-spreading video.

I began to speak up.

I have always been vocal about certain issues, but looking at what’s happening in our country currently, we can’t afford to be apolitical. That’s what led us here. Our apathy is more dangerous than we imagine. No matter how much we try to stay away from the circus of politics and media, we are and will always be a part of it. This will always be our country and we have no choice but to defend its people’s rights.

It has been more than a month and I haven’t begun to feel normal. And I don’t know when I will. We’ve seen many horrendous incidents since then. Multiple deaths, arrests, torture, hate speeches, communal violence, mob lynchings later, I still feel as disillusioned as I did that night.

For most of us who knew what was happening but wasn’t doing anything about it, it was the last straw. It opened the floodgates of everything that was simmering inside. All the incidents of intolerance and hate-filled propaganda started becoming crystal clear. It was not OK.

Talking to people is tough. While some of us are clearly prejudiced, most of us are snugly swaddled in our comfortable blankets of privilege. How do you appeal to anyone’s humanity when they seem to lack it? We can laugh and wonder how some people are still dealing with issues like caste and religion, not realising that for some it’s not a choice. Some are judged by the kind of clothes they wear or the type of surnames they use. I can’t blame them of being scared of people who look a certain way. We’ve all seen the news, the movies, and the way they are demonised. The ill-informed and the preconditioned can be easily swayed with fear-mongering propaganda.

And yet, despite all of this, a beacon of hope shines in the dark alleys of authoritarianism. For every oppressor, there is a sea of people standing united together. For every hater, there is a group of friends holding hands. For every lathi, there are poets and singers brandishing the Constitution of India. The sky is alive with songs and prayers of unity, hope and freedom. They come from all religions, all classes, all castes, all age groups. They are lawyers, authors, historians, students, activists, journalists. They’re the elite, the working class, the labourers, the shopkeepers. They’re the real chaiwallahs and chowkidaars. They represent the complex, indivisible, colourful tapestry that is India. They proudly unfurl the national flag and read out the Preamble. They are finally rising up against all those hate speeches and braindead remarks by politicians that have been slowly creeping up on us. These people have nerves of steel. They are refusing to be torn apart. And that makes me feel something I haven’t felt before.

We grew up in a free India when liberalisation had just opened our economy and things were looking up. I remember how we often discussed India’s economy in comparison with China’s in class. I remember how being best friends with Muslims, Christians and Sikhs was so normal it never needed a thought. Never before did anything else seem like such a threat to our democracy. Fast forward to now, and I’m feeling something akin to patriotism. It’s true when they say that you don’t realise the value of something unless it’s taken away from you. I’m realising for probably the first time, that our country is rare – that it’s not defined by a single religion, or a single language, or a single skin colour. We need to defend that.

I believe we will overcome this. Years later, we will remember the revolution of 2019. Hopefully, religion-based politics wouldn’t be the norm. We would be talking about bigger issues like safety, gender rights and climate change. We will look back at these protests and swell with pride. We will sing Hum Dekhenge and remember how the young and old decided to stand together. We will think of the revolutionaries, the brave women of Shaheen Bagh, the human chains in Kerala and Karnataka, and the countless, nameless others staying up all night fighting for a single cause – reclaiming Gandhi’s India.

When we are old, we shall talk about how they tried to snatch our rights from us and couldn’t. We shall be able to tell our younglings, “you stand in a united India because of the struggle of your freedom fighters. Never forget that.” And they won’t. And neither will we.

Happy Republic Day 🙂