Shohini Banerjee

Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.

Rabindranath Thakur

It’s been hard to get myself to write this post. After my last one about going down the “Rabbithole” of social media and the state of India and the world, I had thought about writing a post for myself and others about personal responsibility with a general upbeat note. Except on December 15, one day after my last post, the university students of Jamia Millia Islamia unknowingly spurred into action the citizens of India.

34 days later, protests-pan India are going strong. But the government refuses to role back CAA-NRC-NPR, the new Personal Data Protection Bill has been introduced, spaces to dissent are shrinking, freedom of speech is being curbed and let’s not forget that the world is literally burning in Australia and there are locust swarms in Kenya. So it’s a little hard to stay positive and look at the rainbows and sunshine of life. There are so many questions like “what next” and “will this make a difference” or “what’s the point.” The last few weeks have presented with a range of conversations that illustrate a universal feeling of low (to put it mildly).

In social settings, it is becoming more common to hear discussions about not producing children so that the next generation does not have to face this state of the world. There is a fear that the next generation will have completely bought into the fascist and authoritarian way of living like in China, where certain human rights don’t matter in exchange for a promise of a “better life”. Not to mention the conversations about our own experiences of quite a nightmare-ish existence.

But one of the most inspiring things for me has been attending protests. I am not an activist. I believe in activism but the passion and unending tenacity that is required is for better people than me; I can do the research, the policy advocacy, the program implementation. I used to feel that what is the point of being just one more body in these protests because my question is always “what’s next”.

Going to the protests, I realised it’s the present and the presence that counts. Your body in that crowd matters but more importantly, how other people there move you matters. The love, the honesty, the passion that I saw moved me. And on days that I feel low, I remember that and keep going. The people there also constantly (in the moments I forget) remind me of the privilege I had of only now feeling like it’s doomsday; other communities, other people have been feeling this for a lot longer.

After the inspiration, followed by personal disillusionment and then again a resurgence of trying to find the shining sun, I have come up with the following (non-exhaustive) list.

1. Understand your role I tend to have a messiah complex that is borne out of a lifetime of feeling like I’m not doing enough. But like I said before, I’m not an activist. I know I cannot get 200 people out on the streets, organised, get the permissions and hold a protest. I know I can engage people one-on-one and have a dialogue. I know I can share information on social media. I know that my work on gender equality comes from the lens of human rights and speaks to the larger issue at hand that people are fighting for. I also know that I need to turn to people smarter than me and I do that constantly, which leads to the next point.

2. Share Information Responsibly There has been a lot written and documentaries about how fake news and information manipulation is one of the scariest things out there. But we are all responsible. Before sharing any information, I assess whether it’s a trusted source. Especially if the information is incendiary, I do a quick background check if it can be correlated. The question is am I disseminating information responsibly, regardless of whether I am on the right or left. There has been a lot of speculation (now Delhi Police has confirmed) about the identity of a girl who was part of the violence in a university campus. People on twitter, people I find are trusted source, was posting information based on random twitter investigation. I understand that we are in a place we cannot trust the police but how important was a social media investigation? And who takes the guarantee that it won’t turn into offline vigilantism?

3. Structural Issues are Complicated to Resolve Complicated problems don’t have easy systemic answers. It is hard to pin down concepts like the right to live with dignity, turn it into a real, sustainable solution, when most people are struggling for day to day survival. We also didn’t land in the present – it is based on years and decades of wrong decisions and will take the best of minds and time to get out of the gutter. It doesn’t mean that we should feel hopeless or apathetic that nothing will change but just that we have to be active, work and be patient about the results.

4. Take a break One of the things that I LOVE about this generation of activism is the self-care. I see 1 in 5 posts about self-care while also working towards a revolution. I have seen people from the previous generation who balk at self-care. Who have been so selfless that they continue doing what they do but absolutely in a burnt out state which means they have less time for reflection, less time for improvement and less time to teach others when all they are focused on is the work. The break, the reflection, the care is so important.

So along with a little bit of advice, I leave you some Kraantikari poetry below.

Chitto Jetha Bhayshunyo (Where the mind is without fear)

(Translated by the poet himself)

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high
Where knowledge is free
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments
By narrow domestic walls
Where words come out from the depth of truth
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way
Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit
Where the mind is led forward by thee
Into ever-widening thought and action
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.

– Rabindranath Thakur (Collected from Naivedya)

চিত্ত যেথা ভয়শূন্য

চিত্ত যেথা ভয়শূন্য, উচ্চ যেথা শির,
জ্ঞান যেথা মুক্ত, যেথা গৃহের প্রাচীর
আপন প্রাঙ্গণতলে দিবসশর্বরী
বসুধারে রাখে নাই খন্ড ক্ষুদ্র করি,
যেথা বাক্য হৃদয়ের উৎসমুখ হতে
উচ্ছ্বসিয়া উঠে, যেথা নির্বারিত স্রোতে
দেশে দেশে দিশে দিশে কর্মধারা ধায়
অজস্র সহস্রবিধ চরিতার্থতায়–
যেথা তুচ্ছ আচারের মরুবালুরাশি
বিচারের স্রোতঃপথ ফেলে নাই গ্রাসি,
পৌরুষেরে করে নি শতধা; নিত্য যেথা
তুমি সর্ব কর্ম চিন্তা আনন্দের নেতা–
নিজ হস্তে নির্দয় আঘাত করি, পিতঃ,
ভারতেরে সেই স্বর্গে করো জাগরিত।

– রবীন্দ্রনাথ ঠাকুর (নৈবেদ্য  হতে সংগ্রহীত)