At the end of a hundred days, Indians went from radical gathering to radical distancing – from physically converging as a public to lay claim to their republic to waking up isolated in a world of private boxes barred from touch. But the two are not opposite. A spirit of collective action and care, of protecting one another, drove them both – the danger of the time in lockdown was that India would spend the time only thinking about its solitude, and forgetting its solidarity. But social distancing does not need to mean the loss of political togetherness – the gift to India from the garden of
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