09 December 2013, 12:55 PM IST
Decades ago, when Indian passports carried printed statements informing holders that these documents were not valid in South Africa and certain other countries, we were as seafarers often required to go to South African ports because our ships went there. This was in the '70s and '80s, when the world was pretending that sanctions had been applied on South Africa for trade and more, but in actual fact reality is that the world continues to spin around its axis.
Every which way, a visit to South Africa in those heady days when many parts of the world were emerging out of colonial slavery and worse, was an education. Being Indians from India was a matter of pride globally, and we were held up as examples of the new hope that people had across continents, including in South Africa with its sizeable population of Indian origin people.
But even then, and this is post-Emergency when matters were supposed to have improved in India, realities of how "ordinary" citizens in India were treated were visible and well-known. Take apartheid for example - while much was made of white/non-white apartheid in South Africa, we would and continue to happily choose to ignore worse apartheid in India.
Sone of which extends to this date - the example of the Breach Candy Swimming Bath Trust in Mumbai, built on land given to it by the Indian government and enjoying all the subsidies that it can grab, but denying facilities to Indians, is an example that stares us in the face in the centre of so-called cosmopolitian Mumbai. Likewise, the huge number of "clubs" and similar "centres", built out of tax-payer funds and subsidised heavily by us, but which work ferociously to not even openly declare accounts as well as keep the rest of us out by one means or the other, continues to grow.
All over India.
So, back to South Africa - the one thing I learnt during their revolution was the desperate requirement for mutual respect from governed and those in governance, which was like a single-point agenda through all other aspects of the South African struggle for removal of apartheid and more.
That's the one big thing still missing in India. Where those in governance, or shall we say "rulers misbehaving in mis-governance", continue to mistreat the rest of us with impunity. For example - every time I see a "VIP-lane" at a toll booth, while buses full of people wait for hours to deal with a corrupt government and PPP machinery on the roads, I see this. Every time a Government official misbehaves from behind the safety of his desk, aware that i can not record his abusive behaviour, I see this.
These are just two examples of behaviour that I saw were not tolerated anywhere else in the world. Free world, or getting free.
If there is one thing that these mini-elections bring out to the forefront, over and above the issues of corruption and bad laws, is that those in power can not afford to be arrogant with the rest of us anymore. Nor, for example, can they flaunt those symbols of arrogance at us without being openly ridiculed first, and then thrown out of power next.
Which is also the message Mandela's passing on sends to India at and around the same time that the Aam Aadmi Party comes in with a bang in Delhi - that arrogance from those who govern us and lack of transparency will not work anymore.
The sooner those buses full of Indians whiz through the VIP lanes at toll booths all over the country, the better, to start with. That's mutual respect. And that would be a powerful way of honouring a symbol of what Mandela stood for.
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