True resistance comes from satyagraha

The recent rejection of my Rajya Sabha nomination gave me food for thought. Resistance cannot be just external, I thought — it must stem from an inner churn, a search for the truth. Without that churn, an act of resistance is mere spectacle, a reactionary outburst. Minus the intent to seek the truth, resistance is raw violence; it cannot give voice to a demand for rights.

While there are no lingering doubts anymore about the integrity of the Election Commission of India or the transparency of the electoral process, certain questions still gnawed at my conscience. The rejection of my Rajya Sabha nomination stunned everyone and exposed yet again the authoritarianism that has overwhelmed our democracy. Yet, this wasn’t the first time the tendency had bared itself. Initially no one paid heed, opportunism was even celebrated as political expediency, and those left behind in the process were dismissed as fools.

The tendency was already manifest when Madhya Pradesh, the state I come from, effectively stopped elections to the state’s APMCs (Agricultural Produce Market Committees) or mandis back in 2013. (The elected committees completed their terms in 2018, and the state government has kept deferring these elections ever since, placing the management of the mandis under state-appointed administrators. When this happened, we kept mum, I must concede.

The mandi is not an insignificant institution, not secondary to the Rajya Sabha in my reckoning. This is where the fate of a farmer’s produce is decided. A farmer’s voice rarely reaches the ministry of commerce, but it used to reach the mandi. That voice is fainter than the trader’s or the commission agent’s in the social pecking order, but their representation in the mandi still gave the farmers’ voice some strength.

Once those elections stopped, procurement at the minimum support price (MSP) declined and farmers began to be silenced with token relief instead of getting their rightful dues. They were offered ex-gratia payments, agricultural credit plans, loan waivers and price-difference compensation.

But amid these ‘acts of benevolence’, their actual rights got buried. No one seemed to realise that the right to representation, the very essence of democracy, was being stifled by this gilded cage of handouts. Even when farmers faced gunfire, the demand for elections to mandis never made it to the narrative. Today, as deals are struck with America, the voice of the farmer is nowhere to be heard.

Cooperative societies met the same fate. Their elections retained no trace of the cooperative spirit; the government determined the lists of both voters and candidates — obviously in alignment with the ruling party’s interests. Why are these elections important? Because the availability of rations and seeds and fertilisers for those at the very bottom of the social pyramid depends on these societies.

When powerful groups seize control, they script new narratives of exploitation. The most vulnerable get what remains after the village elites have taken their share. Where can they raise their voices? There is no mechanism left that will allow them to become decision-makers or to challenge the black-marketing, exploitation and plunder in the Public Distribution System. Even with reserved seats for the most oppressed sections of society, their voices go unheard because these positions usually go to pawns of the powerful.

While this was happening right under our noses, we didn’t register it as a hollowing out of our democracy. It didn’t trouble our political conscience. Instead, we saw this as a failure of the cooperative model, buying into the capitalist narrative that human nature is inherently uncooperative. Meanwhile, elected canal committees were dissolved; landowners took control. We weren’t happy about this, but didn’t offer meaningful resistance.

The panchayat elections were next. As the rights of the gram sabha (village assembly) were eroding, we told ourselves it might be best to wait for a favourable government. There were now eligibility criteria for candidates, yet we didn’t see this as an attack on democracy.

Most states conduct elections — or don’t — entirely at their whim. But all this left us quite unmoved. Why should it surprise me now that a Rajya Sabha election has come to resemble a cooperative society election?

The Rajya Sabha is, after all, a representative chamber elected by legislators. But there are many institutions, both elected and unelected, representing people far weaker. Cooperative societies, gram sabhas, panchayats, market committees, canal committees carry the voice of the marginalised, give voice to the soul of the nation. When those voices were being suppressed, we did sense that something was amiss. But did it strike us as injustice? That is the question that now occupies my mind.

There is another aspect to consider. The third candidate who was declared elected (following the rejection of the author’s nomination to the Rajya Sabha—Ed.) hails from a community that has for millennia faced rejection from powerful overlords solely on the basis of their birth. They faced exclusion everywhere — from temples, schools, communal dining, even cremation grounds.

I was born into the community that did the excluding. Although women do not wear the janeu (sacred thread) and are not considered dwija (twice-born), the privileges I do have — my own janeu, so to speak — are markers of inequality. Let’s say my fate in the present context is penance for the karma of my community.

The Constitution is a blueprint to eradicate this very inequality. It grants both me and the unopposed candidate the right to fight on equal terms, ensuring a level playing field. Yet, as Babasaheb Ambedkar warned, socio-economic inequalities can devour political equality. Justice and empowerment do not come from representing the powerful, they come from challenging them.

The practice of resistance raises uncomfortable questions. Confronting these questions is satyagraha, the means to fight a righteous battle.

Meenakshi Natarajan is a former Member of Parliament from Mandsaur, Madhya Pradesh