Supreme Court Justice DY Chandrachud while delivering the 6th MC Chagla memorial lecture has stressed why it is primarily essential for intellectuals to expose the hypocrisy and lies of the state unresponsive in discharging its duties ensuring wellbeing and welfare of its people. Post-truth taking a triumph with your truth versus my truth in the fray contesting, clashing, and confronting running counter to the opinions and views of the significant others around us. Thus, for our ready acceptance and acknowledgement of all those on the same page as us coming out of our comforts and confines is something discounted, disregarded and discontented by our in whatever be our class and capacity.
This isn’t right for our democracy which is both argumentative and accommodative of differences of perceptions and principles in developing an understanding of claims and counterclaims- who gets what, when, where and how as for a Corona pandemic battering and bruising our livelihood and existence targeting and excluding the oppressed and marginalized. If this is New India than I am afraid what ails our future and destiny?
Why citizens like us are being reminded and reprimanded for taking political sides and positions on bigotry, chauvinism and communalism which are a bloat on our composition as a constitutionally defined liberal. It’s time for us to own the charge demanding answers and accountability from a regime digging and peddling polemics and rhetorics to match its political ascendancy and capital.
Fixing what lies ahead of us should be our priority and not preference as for those activists and intellectuals risking their everything for the greater good. From Bhima Koregaon to Farmers agitation, there are endless examples of movements shaping, preserving, and nourishing our ethical and moral conscience of checking ruthless and arbitrary coercive dominance of the state in question in the first place.