I have grown up with independent India. But my life cannot form the graph or the indicator through which we can measure the history of the past 60 years. India was born with a Constitution formed under the leadership of Ambedkar, a democratic polity guided by Gandhi, and a tradition of protest and sacrifice inspired by Bhagat Singh. There is no doubt that for India’s elite, despite a new regime of legal equality, things are better in many ways today than they have ever been, and for many at the bottom of the socio-economic ladder, little has changed. India remains a land of many contradictions, and the perceptions of change are bound to be similarly skewed.

As a member of the privileged English-speaking elite, I have had the opportunities that very few have. But the history of the past 60 years must also be written by my many friends who are now lettered and can get a job, by the woman who dares to speak and occupy public office, by Dalit youth across the country who use the political space now created to fight the innumerable forms of injustice they face every day, and by the many ordinary people who see secularism as not just a term but as the only way of fighting exclusion and oppressive controls of fundamentalism.

The elite talk about the value of democracy, but it is the poor who have more than any other group fought to protect it. The India they see, and the future they dream of, may seemingly contradict mine at many places. Their dreams of a polyester-swathed beauty may hurt my sense of aesthetics, and I might want to hear the music of Bismillah Khan and they, the latest film hits. But these are superficial factors that do not reflect what we stand for together. By osmosis, and by having been so much a part of a collective journey, we share a dream, and a vision of a more equitable and just India.

... contd.