Patriotism and protest: The Gaza dilemma in India

Alice, if she had wandered into our wonderland, would have found things getting “curiouser and curiouser”, particularly at the Honourable Bombay High Court. Deploying logic that some may call blinkered, the court peremptorily dismissed a petition by Indian citizens—their political affiliations are immaterial to my point—challenging Mumbai Police’s refusal to allow a protest against the unfolding tragedy in Gaza.

Calling the petitioners short-sighted, the court, in reported oral observations, then blamed them for looking too far: Gaza was thousands of miles away and should not concern them. Instead, the petitioners were advised to protest local causes such as garbage disposal, illegal parking and blocked drainage. In the honourable court’s wisdom, that would be patriotic. By implication, it is unpatriotic to protest against the repeated mass displacement of two million people, the killing of 60,000 civilians, the drip-feeding of humanitarian aid, the cynical cackle of mercenaries shooting at hungry children, near-famine conditions, the bulldozing of homes, hospitals and heritage.

Would the court where Bal Gangadhar Tilak was tried for sedition consider me unpatriotic if I simply want to be true to India’s essence, to just be human? If I want to retain my belief that humanity is indivisible and stretches across borders, ethnicities and religions? If I want to never forget my inherited pain of being colonised and occupied, of being beaten by imperial lathis, of being butchered by Dyer’s troops in Jallianwala Bagh, of being starved during the Bengal famine? If I want to hold close the memories handed down by my parents’ generation, memories of forced migration under looming violence, of loss of home and hearth, of becoming refugees overnight; in short, of being ethnically cleansed in the cause of partition?

Those memories are embedded in our national consciousness and if our hearts have not become mechanical calculators of profit and loss but are still pulsating founts of blood and emotion, then to protest against the starvation of Gaza’s children is natural. To give priority to my problems of illegal parking and garbage disposal over that apocalyptic tragedy would be truly short-sighted, and an affront to human dignity.

For that matter, it would also go against India’s long-term interests, our democratic credentials, our global ambitions: you cannot play a role in world affairs if your gaze does not extend beyond your navel. Foreign policy—it needs to be clarified since the honourable court would rather that citizens leave such matters to the foreign ministry—is not made in a vacuum, particularly in a democracy; domestic voices and concerns shape a country’s stances on foreign affairs. Protests reflect political opinions, and they matter: our freedom movement was one long protest.

India’s foreign policy has internationalist roots and cherishes the concept of unity of mankind: vasudhaiva kutumbakam. India pronounced on international issues even before attaining her own freedom, confident of her moral authority, smelted in our nonviolent freedom struggle. Our credibility enabled us to play a critical role in the crises in Indochina, Korea and Congo as well as in multiple UN peacekeeping operations. This credibility was earned not by worrying about our blocked drainage systems alone, important as they always are, but by taking positions on matters which were not only about ourselves, matters that impacted mankind at large—racism wherever it existed, colonialism in Asia and Africa, apartheid in South Africa. True that the world has changed, and relationships have evolved, but hopefully not so much that Indian citizens cannot even express their anguish.

We need not send out to know “for whom the bells toll” in Gaza. If we remain silent, the next time they may toll for us.