This sentiment is new. Indians have for long said some good things about India, but many were probably faking it, or talking about an ancient India, or did not quite know what they were talking about. But what I hear now, that we are lucky to be Indians, is honest, and even true.
In the past, many of us have thought of the worst places on Earth and broadly thanked our stars that at least we are in India, but never before have so many regions made us feel so lucky.
In any relationship, saying that you are lucky to have it is high praise. And so too when people feel that way about their nation, even if it is just that half the world around us appears to be in ruins or under threat.
The world was always in turmoil, and there were always writers who told us about it. But now we can see extraordinary videos that show just how violent modern violence is.
Even when there is no war, a cartel of thugs can make generations suffer. A mere five years is half the span of a childhood, and in that period a whole generation can lose its future. In that way, many regions of the world have regressed.
Sometimes I do wonder, though, if we are really luckier than war-torn places. A few weeks ago, when Israel declared that it was going to attack some hideouts in southern Lebanon, the region’s residents fled north. I saw a photograph of cars leaving southern Lebanon—in three orderly lanes.
And as an Indian, I could only think there appeared to be a greater quality of life in the way Lebanese fled than in how Indians in Bengaluru drove every day to work.
Maybe Indians don’t need a war to be war-torn. Surely, bad air and filthy water kill more Indians than any war anywhere in the world. There are places in Gurgaon that are so filthy, poverty-stricken and filled with rubble, shanties and miserable people that I could fool half the world into thinking these are snapshots from Gaza.
But then, there is a difference between the effects of violence and of mere bad governance, even if they look and feel the same. That is why our flaws, even though they are destructive, appear trivial compared to what many places endure. India’s gift to its own is a shot at a peaceful life, even if it is an unnecessarily difficult one.
India is so large, and there are so many of us, that the nation cannot entirely escape everything that human nature can inflict. There are regions that have seen long periods of strife—like Punjab and parts of the Northeast. But still, broadly, most of us are right in feeling lucky for being Indian.
How come? Why have we got away? Why is there relative peace? Considering all the corruption and atrocities and poor quality of governance, how has India pulled off a largely peaceful society?
In some regions, India’s political wounds have been weaponized. But, outside Punjab and the Northeast, and some jungles in the south, they could not be sustained. One of the reasons is the nature of Indians.
After independence, ordinary Indians in most of India did not have a motive to risk their lives for a cause. For instance, outside Kashmir, very few Indian Muslims have been involved in acts of terror. Even those who tried it turned out to be lousy at it, compared to people from other nations.
A confidential report prepared in 2015 by the intelligence agencies of several nations suggested that the Islamic State thought that the few Indian Muslims who joined it were pretty bad at terror and could not be exploited as suicide bombers.
The Islamic State’s analysis was based on the mere two dozen or so Indians it had managed to recruit. Also, at the peak of its fame, Al Qaeda failed to draw in Indians.
In the 1980s, Velupillai Prabhakaran, who founded the Sri Lankan terror syndicate LTTE, seemed to have immense emotional support among Tamilians in Tamil Nadu, even though India officially was at war with the outfit. In fact, a popular DMK government was dismissed in 1991 by the Centre because of its ties with the LTTE.
But Prabhakaran may have miscalculated the nature of Tamilian sympathy for his cause. The LTTE assassinated former Indian prime minister Rajiv Gandhi in vengeance for sending in a peace-keeping force to fight his guerrillas. DMK leader Karunanidhi went around Madras in an open jeep, his palms joined in unspoken apology.
I saw the sight myself, standing on the street as a boy. In the polls that followed, his party lost in all but two constituencies. The people of Tamil Nadu had expressed their disgust. Apparently, they could support a violent struggle far away in a foreign land, but not if it had come home.
But then, the nature of people is not enough for peace. Just a few violent men can create and sustain violence in a region.
This did occur in some places in India, but a very Indian phenomenon always nipped it in the bud—in practice, there are few human rights for the poor, the sort of people who are hired by ideologues to carry out violence.
Security forces swiftly killed or made suspects vanish. The consequences of going to war against the Indian state were and are severe.
In a way, a part of our luck comes from some dark place.
#Manu #Joseph #lucky #Indians #terrible #world
