The death of a sewer worker in India’s capital, New Delhi, would normally seem like news of relative insignificance. But one tragic photo has proved why that’s slowly changing.
Hindustan Times reporter Shiv Sunny’s photograph of an 11 year-old boy grieving over his father’s body has led to a massive outreach by Indian civil society. The boy’s father, Anil, was a sewer worker who died when his safety rope snapped as he cleaned sewers in India’s capital, New Delhi. As the BBC notes, the boy often accompanied his father to his work sites in order to protect his clothes and shoes from being stolen. This is the nature of poverty.
The boy walked up to his father’s body at a crematorium, moved the sheet from the face, held the cheeks with both hands, just said ‘papa’ & began sobbing.
The man was yet another poor labourer who died in a Delhi sewer on Friday. Family did not have money even for cremating him. pic.twitter.com/4nOWD9Aial
— Shiv Sunny (@shivsunny) September 17, 2018
Yet the photo also unleashed new hope. Seeing the death of a young man and the suffering of his young family, Indians didn’t turn away. Instead, as has become custom in America and other places, civil society reached out in a tangible way by providing Anil’s family with tens of thousands of dollars to support their better future. They raised just under $44,000 in one day. In a nation where many citizens remain very poor, these sums are a big deal.
They are also highly significant in what they tell us about the slow but sustaining decline of India’s traditional caste-based class system. This system, which involves the honoring or subjugating of citizens based on their particular family origins and employment, would regard Indians like Anil as among the lowest ranking. But considering that many of Anil’s fellow poor would not be in a position to support his family with direct monetary support, we can safely assume that the money his family has received is coming from the donations of higher-ranking castes.
That they would reach out to their fellow citizen based on the basic concern of alleviated suffering might seem simple, but it isn’t. Because it speaks to a willingness to challenge an accepted order in pursuit of a more communitarian national identity. Empowered by growing technological connectivity (the fundraising for Anil’s family is taking place on a crowdfunding website), this developing civil society is modern in social philosophy and modern in means.
This is obviously good news for the human interest, and for India’s democracy. But it’s also good news for America. After all, India offers the U.S. the keystone partnership on which to strengthen the U.S.-led international order in the 21st century. But that partnership cannot not find its full potential unless Indians can, as with Anil, put aside their ethnic, religious, and caste-based sympathies, and look to the shared prosperity possible with democratic modernity.
