A conversation with my young daughter today brought all my certainties into question.

“Mom, why aren’t you at Jantar Mantar?” I replied that I do not necessarily agree with the politics or methods of those leading the current protest. She sounded disappointed.

Then I realised that we were having two different conversations. I was thinking about the politics of the protest. She was thinking about the reason for the protest. For her, the real issue was not who stood at the front of the march, but the children whose lives have been shattered — including those who have died by suicide — because the state failed to ensure an examination process that is secure, transparent, and accountable. On that, I cannot disagree with her. Children have an extraordinary ability to cut through ideology and ask the simplest, hardest questions: If the system failed them, shouldn’t we all care? Perhaps that is the conversation we should be having — not about who is protesting, but about why such protests become necessary in the first place. And when protest strikes, should we not be engaging in a dialogue?

I cannot be the parent who banished Nachiketa for asking ethical questions. The Kathopanishad reminds us that civilisations do not progress by silencing uncomfortable questions; they progress by engaging with them. Today, we remember and revere Nachiketa — not his father — because he chose truth over obedience and inquiry over fear. In times when disagreement is often mistaken for disloyalty, the ideal of Nachiketa remains one of our greatest civilisational safeguards. Dialogue, not suppression, is what ultimately preserves a society.

What has been our defining political instinct when we talk of Indic culture? India’s instinct has never been conquest; it has been conversation. At a time when democracies across the world are becoming increasingly polarised, India........

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