For sentient citizens with memory and/or knowledge of India’s unique freedom struggle led by Mahatma Gandhi, Nehru, Sardar Patel, Dr. Ambedkar and a galaxy of leaders invested with genuine idealism and integrity, the nation’s 75th Independence Day (August 15) is likely to be an occasion for sober introspection. To be sure, commemoration of the day when almost two centuries of extractive misrule by British imperialists which beggared the country ended, will be celebrated with pomp, ceremony and bombast. The prime minister will address the citizenry from the ramparts of Delhi’s Red Fort and proclaim the greatness and prosperity of free India set to become a $5 trillion economy in the near future, detail the nation’s robust defence capability, and claim credit for the rising prosperity of citizens at the base of free India’s socio-economic pyramid.

Yet the plain truth is that the idea of a religiously secular, economically/egalitarian and socially harmonious India governed by the rule of law, is unravelling. Never in the history of independent India has society been as deeply divided along religious, caste, language, ethnicity and class fault lines as it is today.

The RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh), the ideological mentor organisation of the Bharatiya Janata Party ruling at the Centre and in 18 states of India with an iron hand, was a non-participant in the freedom struggle led by Mahatma Gandhi, a passionate champion of Hindu-Muslim unity, because it was — and remains — committed to transforming India into a Hindu majoritarian nation. With the prime minister and most of his cabinet colleagues having begun their careers as RSS foot-soldiers, the BJP which was swept to power at the Centre in 2014 and again in 2019, has used its brute majority in Parliament to enact legislation — Citizenship Amendment Act, anti-cow slaughter, religious conversion, love jihad etc — targeting India’s 215 million-strong Muslim minority. The party’s plain intent is to consolidate the majoritarian (85 percent) Hindu vote and win the legislative assembly elections imminent in several states.

Although electorally successful, BJP’s divide-and-rule strategy is inimical to national development. It is deepening atavistic antagonisms at a critical time when the economy is struggling to recover momentum after suffering its first-ever GDP growth contraction in 2021-22 because of the Covid-19 pandemic disruption.

Demonization of minorities, muscular nationalism and persecution of civil rights and media activists at a time when Parliament is in chaos, the judiciary is wilting under the weight of a 30 million cases backlog, unemployment and inflation is soaring and foreign investment is pulling out, is reckless politics.

Independence Day celebrations need to be tempered by quiet introspection about the idea of India envisioned by the great men and women who won the country its freedom from foreign rule 75 years ago.