As India completes 79 years of independence, The Federal asks a Septuagenarian and a Gen Z to write about the India they saw growing up and their visions for the country’s future. In this second of a two-part series, a Gen Z recalls the country’s transformation in recent decades.
For a Gen Z born in the late ‘90s-early 2000s, the first introduction to patriotism and the idea of India would happen in school. It was here, through the singing of the National Anthem in morning assembly, the hoisting of the tricolour on occasions such as Independence Day and Republic Day and the participation in cultural shows celebrating the country that those born decades after India gained Independence from British rule in 1947 (Gen Z is a term used roughly for those born between 1997 and 2012), learnt national pride.
Awareness about the long years of struggle for freedom came much later, through history lessons in higher classes; as did knowledge of Constitutional ideals of democracy, socialism and secularism.
But right from pre-school, those growing up in the late ‘90s and the first decade of the 2000s learnt to imbibe the goal of national integration and unity, through lived experiences.
Also read Part-I: A Septuagenarian's India: A tale of two Indias: How the country has evolved in the decades since Independence
It happened organically, through sampling the local cuisine of different states packed in classmates’ lunchboxes, hearing them speak different languages than your own with their family members, watching them celebrate festivals that you didn’t at home, but participated in socially, learning about prayers varied across families.
The classroom became the window to a culturally diverse country that all were taught to respect and celebrate equally.
And yet, outside the classroom that unity was already fragmenting.
For Gen Z, the first rude shock of religious hostility came in the form of the Gujarat riots of 2002. Most in the generation would still be too young to understand the magnitude of hatred, but as news of the violence played out across news channels, the contrast between the idyllic picture of a united India presented to students and the cracks in the adult world would be confusingly clear.
File photo of the 2002 Gujarat riots.
As one grew up, the reality of a hostile world became more apparent — in the history of Partition that one is taught only later in their school life, in news reports of violence in Kashmir, in clashes big and small that kept erupting across the country. And then, in the very character of state politics in the past decade or so.
As parties played the majority and minority communities against each other for electoral gains, Gen Z was witness to changing interpersonal relationships; friends who had once been family being viewed through the lens of religion, festivals that once brought joy, now ushering an easy apprehension of potential hostilities.
And so as Gen Z started stepping out of classrooms, the real world, which had promised to be more expansive, was also strangely constricting.
Simultaneously, one became aware of the problems of corruption in education and employment, issues of joblessness, the widening gap between the haves and have-nots (according to report’s India’s top 10 per cent, now take 58 per cent of the national income) and the political rot where dynastic control over elections and lack of space for dissent (think of the systemic action initiated against anyone who question those in power) threaten the very basis of democracy.
Yet, it’s not been all downhill.
For example, the LGBTQIA+ narrative, which hardly found space in mainstream discourse when Gen Z were young, has much more agency today. (Of course, the recent Transgender Persons Amendment Act, by narrowing legal recognition to specific identities, excludes many non-binary persons from legal recognition, but the pushback against it is encouraging.)
Films that once portrayed stalking and harassment as romance are increasingly being challenged by a cinema that is more sensitive to consent. A standout moment in this was when Amitabh Bachchan in Pink said ‘No means No’.
Awareness of mental health issues has increased, with icons like Deepika Padukone speaking up about it. As a society, we are more sensitive towards persons with disabilities, though the infrastructure has to go a long way in making our physical spaces more accessible and inclusive.
File photo of a Pride Parade.
We have made strides in the field of science and technology — one example is space research, with the Indian Space Research Organisation having mounted successful missions to the moon and Mars in recent years; next in line is a manned mission to space.
What’s lacking can be changed by Gen Z’s greater involvement in public life. As the recent students’ protest for accountability and reforms in education has shown, the generation does have the potential to bring about change.
The list of goals is long — equality of opportunity in education, employment and politics, yes. But also achieving a society reflective of that Gen Z classroom, or more recently, the students’ protest site at Jantar Mantar, where differences of class, caste, religion and economy dissolved in the common desire for reform.
A safe space for women, where she can walk unfettered and is not judged for what she wears, how she talks and where she goes.
A society free of violence, prejudice and judgement.
Also read: 79 years after Independence, what a ‘free’ India looks like to Gen Z
Seventy-nine years ago, the newly-independent India was a country burdened by poverty, was famine-prone and overwhelmingly dependent on agriculture, with very low literacy levels. None of that changed like magic… It required vision and work.
Today, Gen Z must shoulder that responsibility for a future India to experience that idyllic country that lives on in our classrooms.
