As a rather inadequately educated Madrassi, it took me sometime to figure out the meaning of the word “aatmanirbhartha”. It took a friend to help me to understand that it meant self-reliance. Being self-reliant as an individual, as well as a nation has been an important part of our national discourse and also standpoint. Good, so be it, I thought.
But into this resolve, dear little Greta Thunberg has broken in. We are after her. We have made her persona non-Greta. We have associated charges of criminal conspiracy and promoting enmity with a tweet that she made in support of India’s farmers who are protesting the new agricultural laws. We have damaged the aatmanirbhar shield with which we were protecting ourselves.
Self-reliance was a strong and highly practiced idea in free India, right from the beginning. If we look at Gandhi’s exploration of swaraj, it is all about aatmanirbhartha: make your own cloth, eat your own field-grown food, trade amongst yourselves,…