Yet another anniversary of the terror attack on Mumbai passed by on Friday. Amitabh Bachchan wrote a remembrance piece exclusively for this newspaper to mark the anniversary. He wrote: “Each year we count, now it’s 13 years later, and the dark night that stretched over three long days is still vivid in our collective memory. That was also the terrorists’ aim, the vividness was part of their design. The strike on Mumbai, November 26, 2008, played out as slow-motion mayhem, targeting its landmarks, while audiences watched the terrible spectacle, live and uninterrupted, on TV.”
Thirteen years later, the nation continue to remember that extended night when 10 terrorists went on a random killing spree.
Bachchan, who has been associated with this newspaper in its endeavours to mark the day and “celebrate the spirit of survival and understanding” writes, “26/11 was spectacular, most of all, because it was a strike on the city of the common Indian, man, woman and child”. He asks the question, “How do we pay the real tribute to the 166 people who died in the 26/11 attacks, in Mumbai, the one they truly deserved? How do we move out of the shadows of that paralysing moment? Are we, who survived in Mumbai and in India, free to tell new stories?”
The answer, he says, is that the “power of survival is linked to the power of humanity, of our collective commitment that we shall not let the terrorists define who we become. And yet, the danger is of letting the language and mantra of security spread and grow, till ‘we’ are locked in constant and mortal combat with ‘them’, till accusation becomes more believable than proof, and only the spectres are clear and present, while everything else is looked upon as uncertain and subject to verification.
“The spectres must not be allowed to become more real than the people. The people must remain heroes and heroines of their own stories, in which the villain can be vanquished with better arguments, and the police inspector comes only in the last scene. For, the stories we tell can often become larger than us, and they can skip lightly across borders, sometimes riding on cricket, sometimes through film... No terrorist must be allowed to change the way we are in the dark, or with our neighbour, or ourselves. No single act of terror must be given the power to destroy the interconnectedness of our stories, our plural solidarities.”
On a different front, the discovery of a new variant of the novel coronavirus, Omicron, has revived the spectre of another wave of Covid-19 infections. Our editorial (‘Safety First’, November 27) reminded people to take necessary precautions and reiterated the need for the country to complete its vaccination targets. It’s welcome that conversations on the way ahead, including booster shots for those who have already been vaccinated, have begun in the country.
The winter session of Parliament begins on Monday. A slew of bills are slated to be introduced in the House. High on the House agenda will be the repeal of the three controversial farm legislations. The Opposition will want to haul the government over the coals for persisting with them despite the pleas to repeal them. Much slander was heaped on the protestors who had braved the sun and rain and the might of the State to mobilise on Delhi borders and stay put for nearly a year. The Opposition has demanded the resignation of Ajay Mishra, the Minister of State for Home, whose son is an accused in the Lakhimpur Kheri incident of October 3, in which an SUV ran over a farmers’ march killing four people, which the government has refused to accede to. Prime Minister Narendra Modi bowed to the protestors and withdrew the legislation, but it is unlikely that the government would let the Opposition dictate the agenda of the House.
The controversy around Constitution Day celebrations gave a hint of the animosity that now defines the relations between the treasury benches and the Opposition. On Friday, the Opposition stayed away from the function in Parliament that was addressed by President Ram Nath Kovind as a mark of protest. Congress leader in the Lok Sabha Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury said the Opposition boycotted the function since “this government does not believe in democracy” and because “they are hell bent on dismantling each and every institution of democratic India”. Meanwhile, Prime Minister Narendra Modi held that the constitutional spirit is hurt when political parties lose their democratic character and pointed to the fact that some parties are dominated by certain families.
That said, a boycott, which is a legitimate act of protest in politics, always serves its purpose. The Indian Express editorial (What use a boycott, November 27), advised the Opposition “to choose its boycotts intelligently and judiciously”. The editorial said, “Constitution Day offered it an opportunity to convince Parliament to reflect on the working of the nation’s founding document in the past seven decades and corner the government on its interpretation of constitutional provisions. Instead, it preferred to stay away from the proceedings allowing the government to paint the sulking Opposition as disrespectful of the Constitution itself.” The editorial said the tactic of boycotts and disruptions may “well be playing into the hands of a government that is not particularly uncomfortable with the absence of House debates.”
Menaka Guruswamy’s fine essay (The Day India was Born, November 28) framed the making of the Constitution in its historical context, the aftermath of a bloody partition, and invited us to reflect on its continuing relevance. She wrote: “The women and men of the founding assembly continued thoughtfully, rigorously, and heroically. Their discussions culminated in who we would be -- ‘We the People’ all citizens, not subjects. And what we will become -- a nation that would secure liberty of thought, expression, belief, faith and worship, and ensure equality of status and opportunity.
“The drafting conversations at our founding, meant that we would commit to making reparations for the structural injustices of caste that permeated our society. India’s Constitution is unique in its approach for making reparations for historical discrimination on grounds of caste that defines the present and future of so many Indians. By contrast, America’s Constitution makes no apology nor enables reparations for slavery. A sturdy provision that prohibited discrimination on grounds of religion, race, caste, sex or place of birth also meant that the new nation embraced those who had been left out of the fold of citizenship for so long -- women, lower castes and minorities...
“Despite being a body that was not significantly diverse, the founders, having appreciated the concerns of their people, were able to stand outside of their own privilege and conceive of a founding document that would speak for those who have been silenced for thousands of years. That may be why India’s Constitution has endured for so long. It has become an instrument for silenced minorities to express themselves, to have injustices redressed and in turn owe their allegiance to their Constitution.”
Essays by Amartya Lahiri (‘Farm needs the factory’, November 26) and A R Vasavi (‘Minimum Support Policy’, November 24) on the crisis in Indian agriculture in the backdrop of the repeal of the farm legislations, Pratap Bhanu Mehta (‘Cryptopolitics’, November 27) on the crypto currency debate, and D Parthasarathy and Suryakanth Waghmare on IITs and affirmative action policies (‘Excellence and exclusion’, November 26) offered deep insights into some of the issues that dominated the headlines.
India also reached a major demographic landmark with the total fertility rate (TFR) dropping below what the United Nations Population Council deems the “replacement level”. The National Family Health Survey-5 numbers suggest that the country has taken the first step towards an outright reduction in population. Our take (‘The Right Numbers’) was: “This is a notable achievement for the country’s family planning programme and a resounding repudiation of politicians and policymakers who have, of late, been crying hoarse about population explosion.”
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