The sadhana of citizenship
#India #RepublicDay #Democracy
A strange day, in strange times, in a strange Republic…
Even as we continue reeling without a clear ethical axis as a polity, our relationship with our land, food and its farmers continues to peel off layer after layer, exposing cores that those of us living have perhaps never touched in our lives.
In a context where justice is divorced from law, knowledge is bereft of learning, and wealth does not lead to communal prosperity, I am wondering about my role, our role, as citizens, wherever we are in the world today.
There is a word in Sanskrit, sadhana (साधना), that does not quite have an equivalent in English. It is often translated as meditation, or practice (with a spiritual connotation). While that is part of the meaning, it is more than that. I relate to sadhana as active prayer — where praying is the act of becoming. It is not about stating one’s wishes to a higher power and waiting, but naming what one wants to become as a declaration, and to start becoming it. Most ritual sadhanas in the Vedic tradition are also about this: the process of becoming the deity one invokes, the process of cultivating those attributes oneself. For example, a sadhana of Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth, is really about practising recognition of multiple forms of wealth in and around self, and beginning to be generous (with time, attention, skills, etc. if not money, as a form of wealth). But I digress.
Today, I am thinking of the sadhana of citizenship, and of democracy. Somehow, a lot of our conversations and actions around both of these areas are around rights, not so much about roles and engagement. In that process, at least in India, we have abandoned the idea of the Republic: over 1.3 billion citizens, but with very little citizenship. Naturally, we have many leaders, but very little leadership.
What if we could retake consciously, our role as citizens? What if we held it as a sadhana — as something we are consciously in the process of becoming? There is always more to become, well beyond the idea of possessing a passport or any other form of identification. How do we participate in co-creating the world we want to live in, by becoming that world?
Democracy, in its true ideal form, was never meant to be a mere form of government. It can only be an aspiration, made possible if citizens engage equitably and consciously. It is not a birthright, only a distant possibility we can doggedly pursue. Our living history has taught us how quickly it can degenerate into demagoguery if we make any other assumption. While we prepare ourselves as citizens, as the vessels that can potentially contain democracy in the very long run, the path at the current moment may not be entirely democratic. We need to be led by those that are able to uphold the ideals of citizenship, firmly anchored around a universal ethical axis. Our current definitions of citizenship and of democracy comes in the way of this process.
These are of course, personal reflections, and may be construed as being against the popular narrative. Having said that, as a peacebuilder, I have experienced that the path to peace is naturally paved with conflict. Similarly perhaps, the path to democracy is not quite about taking it for granted. And citizenship? Well, it is certainly not merely a right.
What would it be, if we were to engage in a sadhana of citizenship?
#RukminiIyer
