The (S)Mother of Democracy: On Independence & Freedom

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~ Bharat Vyas

Ganga flows fast at this time of the year at Har-Ki-Pauri.

As I sit and write this at 6 pm, I visualise the wrestler’s medals sinking below the fast moving grey-green waters.

It was easy to visualise as I had been there about three weeks back to help immerse my eldest cousin’s ashes. The one who gifted me a bicycle, giving me the freedom to travel independently.

What I hadn’t anticipated about this visualisation today - is this terrible sinking feeling that I have in my heart and in the pit of my stomach ...

I grew up in a place that had a long tradition of Akhaadaas.

Before I was gifted this bicycle, Pooran Lal Chakravarty – to me Pooran Pehalwaan Siddh Gond Ustaad - was my rescuer, bringing me back home on his bicycle from school whenever I stayed back for athletics and games.

We never went back home directly. There were always detours. To Bada Fouwaraa for the big glass of boiling milk topped with cream – that had been simmering and thickening in a huge shallow iron pan for hours.

There were the open ‘Dangals’ we went to at the Cobra Parade Ground. Pooran (& I) contemplated many times about throwing my hat in the ring by walking around the wrestling pit announcing, ‘Chand Pehalwaan Pooran Ustaad – jinsey inki lagti ho, aaker haath mila lein’.

Then both of us remembered my father and what would happen to us if he discovered what we had been up to. So it was only Pooran who took up the prize-money challenges. He mostly won with me cheering deliriously from the sidelines. (That’s where the money for the milk came from).

I remember a Dara Singh wrestling match he once took me to. It was mostly stunt. I had already seen the real thing, so I wasn’t fooled.

And then in School, I found an inspirational mentor in Prof. Binimoy Choudhuri – who taught economics and geography while running a successful poultry business and being a ‘Khalifa’ for his Akhaadaa. His quiz sessions during the lunch-break were legend!

As our Football Coach he put us through our paces – making us discover and push the boundaries of our physical strength and endurance.

He pushed me in discovering my ability to organize my schoolmates around worthwhile causes – a tree-plantation first, and then in re-making a sports ground through enormous physical labor.

I listened carefully to his words as a Prefect, paid attention to what he hinted in foresight after the School Assembly every morning, and by and by picked up his ability to see things from multiple perspectives. He, amongst many others who have blessed my life, ensured that when I became the School Captain, I had earned it and was worthy of it.

Alas Pooran is no more, and I have only beloved memories of Prof. Choudhurie now. Thanks to them, I did manage a podium finish in our school's arduous long distance cycling event.

Theirs' was a world where you slowly, patiently, with much effort, pain, and perseverance discovered and built on your strengths and found your own inner centre and an outer pivot to wrestle with the world.

That world was of champions who had in their own striving found a way to conquer their limitations, and then had the magnanimity to go on and help others become champions too.

That world which nurtured India’s champions, is mostly gone.

It’s that world’s ashes that would have been immersed had the wrestlers dropped their medals in the Ganga today.

I find that I am breathing easier now, that they didn’t.

Something immensely precious, unimaginably valuable, fragile at times but resilient and strong when it catches fire, would have been extinguished from our lives if they had.

The Human Spirit.

Much like Democracy.

Democracy is like a Panda.

It somehow plods along and rolls around, only sometimes seemingly going anywhere. It is immensely cute to look at, but extremely difficult to put your arms around, or to catch, or make it sit still. Or do anything at all. Neither black nor white but both together, it seems like a very inefficient living form always poised on the brink of extinction.

It can stay alive only on a very limited diet, much like equality, fraternity, institutional integrity, checks and balances, and above all – this thing called the Constitution.

The mother of democracy is not a place.

It’s a space inside each one of us.

That space is the Human Spirit.

If you are struggling like me today in finding that space within - watch this brilliant interview of one of our very best – P. Sainath:?See the video here

There are three things that I loved in this interview that revived my spirit:

That idealism is the default setting of youth.

(If there’s no idealism, there’s no youthfulness left.)

Those who choose to kill their idealism within – become slaves to situations, power, money, a corporation, an autocratic regime, and compromised institutions.

Mediocre, and arrogant.

Not champions.

That Mahatma Gandhi was important in winning our independence from the British.

That Babasaheb Ambedkar is essential today for our freedom.

Not Sengol.

It’s good that the wrestlers have chosen to stand and fight.

There’s a time to fight, and that time is now.

What about you?