A heartboken freedom

Readers of this column know that I am a hopeful type who sees signs of the sun in dark clouds But this Independence Day scrounging for hope feels hardOn the heels of a year and half of privations the days leading up to this day commemorating freedom have been rending Last weekend a group led by BJP activist Ashwini Upadhyaya gathered at Jantar Mantar to shout slogans about slaughtering Muslims We have heard these slogans once too often but this time they werenrsquot even reacting to an event distorted by fake news They were the event The event was supremacist aggressionWhen a young man filed an FIR against them for hate speech the police responded hate speech hi toh kiya hai mara toh nahin hai na The violence of a system that invalidates citizensrsquo equality and humanity so wilfully echoes loudly in the silence of the governmentSoon after a video emerged from Kanpur where a group of men in saffron scarves beat up a 34year old Muslim rickshaw driver while his sixyearold daughter clung to him and wept ldquoMere papa ko mat maarordquo The demonic quality of the violence feels increasingly heartbreaking Your heart breaks for the child for the man powerless and poor for all those who feel these blows on their own being as Indian citizens who are Muslim It breaks differently at the glee of those who have imagined themselves to be powerful through their ultimate dehumanisation of themselves as much as others Could there be a more paltry dream of powerIf ever a relationship status could be ldquoitrsquos complicatedrdquo it is between the idea of the nation and the fact of the nation The borders of culture are hard to demarcate shading into each other unlike sharply imagined boundaries that run through fields rivers songs and declare who is apna or paraya Nations are also a set of idealsmdashunity in diversity equality neighbourliness friendship cultural commonalities They are also edifices of power often not living up to their own ideals Hence celebrations of freedom everywhere are underscored by unease about the many whose unfreedom and repression because of caste race gender sexuality or political divergence continue in a free country Freedom is an idea without limits its meaning has to be continually renewed Stuck in maintaining power over others through acts of violence is hardly a liberation even for the oppressor leave alone the oppressed who must suffer the meaning of this powerThe police investigating the Kanpur case said that there was a preexisting dispute between two families which the rightwing activists had capitalised on to stage their violence almost as if that explained something Did it What is this power that feeds on human relationships It brings to mind an old political song by Brijmohan ldquowoh chahte hain baantna dilon ke saare valvalewoh chaahte hain khatma ho zindagi ke kaafilerdquo They want to split the ardours of the heart they want the caravans of life to break apartPeople often say lsquosomething is brokenrsquo when they talk about the times Yes it is the heart that is broken That song also says despite everything we must persist with beliefmdashrdquochale chalo dilon mein khwab leke bhi chale chalordquo How do we carry dreams inside a broken heart A song of that must soon be sungParomita Vohra is an awardwinning Mumbaibased filmmaker writer and curator working with fiction and nonfiction Reach her at paromitavohramiddaycom