Rising to Life with Jesus Breaking out from Babylon
by Rev Dr Praveen P. S. Perumalla, PhD, Church of South India - Ecumenical Mission in Solidarity (CSI-EMS) Liaison Officer
A
sian experiences are not limited to any geographical limits. They are experiences of encounters with the oppressive systems; whither it is colonial, internal colonies, racial or caste oppressions. In the process we discover an intellectual stream at work that challenges perverted authorities over its commitment to social justice. It is public intellectual. A women’s movement in 1980’s and early 90’s in the Telugu language States of South India known as anti-arrack movement had introduced women as public intellectuals. It is not that they were scholars but, they had collectively demonstrated their ability to raise critical questions with the State government at different levels of governance starting from the State capital to the village Panchayat. They had not left any social institution untouched by their questioning such as family, education, business, political parties and governance, etc., Their questions are instruments to analyse lack of social justice in the government policies as the government revenue accrued is through auctioning of arrack. The patriarchal State governance based on contract system is exposed by the women analysing market-led contract system in shaping society. The hour has come to identify public intellectuals, recover its potency to experience Rising to Life with Jesus. Why Public Intellectuals? The idea of nation is dipped in particular colour, quoted with ideology, taken out as a brand of cultural nationalism in India. In the light of this brand the Indian citizens who stand in the tradition of public intellectuals are portrayed as anti-nationals, communists, and their knowledge to bring alternatives is projected as seditious activities. Indifference in the very conception of nation-state seems to be nurtured in the branding of cultural national vs anti- national. It uses religious category in amended legal framework and creates people without a nation within the nation. In an exercise of updating Citizens Register under the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019 in the State of Assam in India, it is reported that 1.9 million Indian Citizens are turned into people without a nation within the nation. Indifference is evident in exclusion of minorities through changes in legal framework. Replacement of Planning Commission by the National Institute for Transforming India (NITI) Aayog has direct 25
implications over the budgetary proceedings, resulting in non-allocation of funds to the minorities, which was mandatary under the Planning Commission. Such a rationality lacks legitimate political will for social justice and welfare of the marginalised communities. Consequently, the SC, ST sub-plan provisions in the Central budget as well as State budget are eroded. Revising the Indian past using communal lens and re-writing school text books in religious lines is yet another face of deviation from the secular nature of the Indian educational system. A blatant neglect of increasing rate of poverty, violence against women and minorities, increasing malnutrition among women and children creating a cycle of chronic deficiency and deaths among young children and among the women, unemployment, weakening of industrial and agricultural sectors is vivid in a shift of political debates side lining sustainable developmental goals. The foreseen agenda to implement National Register of Citizens (NRC) and intended financial bill by name Financial Sector Development Resolution (FSDR) Bill 2019 creates a fear of turning Indian minorities, secularists, and all those who do not comply with the cultural nationalism ideology into people without a nation within the nation. With such a context of a deliberate move away from human rights, welfare of the minorities, secular fabric of social life and social justice, it is public intellectuals that nurtures to create breathing spaces. Cutting Across the Boundaries by the Public Intellectuals Perpetuating indifference and hate are not limited to particular national boundary. The forces behind create and propagate cultural nationalism across the boundaries. They strive hard to stall every step towards secular and democratic organisation of society that includes constitutional initiatives. There had been attempts across the Asian continent to stall secular and democratic reasoning by forcefully imposing cultural nationalism on its citizens and naming the nations after a
INSiGHT | June 2020
