More than five decades later, we still need to keep our eyes as well as our ears open. Today, millions of people grope in the dark, as they have done for so long, in search of food, water, shelter and health care. Indeed, the problems afflicting the nation are no different from what they were in the first year of the millennium. What is different now is the renewed threat to communal peace from scores of sants and sadhus, backed by the VHP-RSS combine, who have raised the communal temperature over the construction of the Ram temple at Ayodhya.
Historians are no prophets but the writing on the wall is for everybody to see.
Social and political grievances will be heightened across the board because of farmer's unrest, the feverish pace of liberalisation, resurgence of militancy in Kashmir, and the erosion in the popularity of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance on account of its poor record of governance. To add to the growing uncertainties, new alignments and a massive mobilisation of caste and communal sentiments will precede the assembly elections that will take place in five states this year. Apart from their scepticism over the so-called idyllic stability of the government, the mere fact of a fragile coalition being held together by the prime minister brings no comfort to, among others, the Dalits, the backward castes and the minorities. The persecution of Christians in certain pockets continues unabatedly, whereas the Sikh establishment is up in arms against the activities of the RSS in Punjab. Whether it is Kashmir, Punjab or the Northeast, majoritarianism in any garb will lend weight to divisive forces and add credence to the belief that Hindutva is the new mantra of civil society.