For a country whose history textbooks generate so much controversy (either allegedly too Leftish, a.k.a. the CBSE books, or purportedly too Rightish Hindu revivalist in BJP-ruled states), we learn little from history.

Forget the textbooks; to take just one example, even Bollywood tells us that most freedom fighters were hanged early in the morning, and their bodies disposed of quietly without letting the public know. Though that was done as per (British-written) jail manual, it was of course a move to arrest a public outcry. And thereby a protest-turned-riotous situation-turned rebellion-turned (perhaps) a revolution.

The British, in fact, outdid themselves with the hanging of Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev and Rajguru. According to a recent article in Frontline magazine, they were to be “executed early in the morning on March 24 as per jail practice. But in a rare aberration in history, the trio was executed around 7 p.m. the previous evening, on secret orders.... After the execution, bodies of the three martyrs were taken to Ganda Singhwala village near Kasur, now in India, on the Hussainiwala border in Ferozepur district of Punjab, and half-burnt.... The police had secretly taken the bodies out through the back gate of the jail fearing a backlash from people...at the jail gate.”

But those were the British, right? And we should outgrow those fear patterns, right? After all, despite the obvious likelihood of what in police and administration jargon is a ‘law and order situation’, we cannot, in fact should not, fear our own to rise against their own. Right?

Wrong. In a different context and era, Sunday morning’s hush-hush cremation of the 23-year-old Delhi rape and murder victim proved precisely that — that this UPA government fears its own people.

In fact, just like the government wanted them to, even news channels, willingly and purely by coincidence, decided for a blackout of the funeral. Are they equipped to pre-guess people’s response? Do they have the right, in fact, to presume that it could lead to a ‘law and order situation’?

As BJP spokesperson Ravishankar Prasad told reporters in New Delhi hours after the cremation, “The hurried manner in which the cremation was done was avoidable. We understand the right of privacy (which) has to be respected. But this hush-hush manner certainly raises a lot of curious questions, too.”

The BJP cannot escape criticism for its bid to milk the issue — even on Sunday activists of ABVP, the party’s students’ wing, tried to create chaos by trying to take down police barricades, seen as a bid to hijack the demonstration — but Prasad is not incorrect. The government secrecy does raise a few questions:

1. If people have found a voice thanks largely to the unnamed victim, and the bestiality done to her in a Delhi bus on December 16, why then should they not be allowed to bid her adieu a full two weeks later?

2. If the youth of the capital, including the upwardly mobile “dented and painted” (thank President Pranab’s son Abhijit Mukherjee for introducing the word in our uber-colourful political lexicon) section that is forever mocked and never taken seriously by the political class, have shed tears after her death in chilly Delhi evenings at Jantar Mantar and torn their vocal cords by braving the police baton, water cannon and teargas shells at India Gate area to demand action, why should they not be allowed to shed tears and raise their voice at the funeral?

3. If a generation known more for tom-tomming its frustration with all political discourse has come around to speaking in a voice that is nothing if not speaking up for the crying need for better governance and administration, what is wrong in respecting it, and expecting it to be responsible at a time of pure grief?

4. If the youth, women and men, children and the concerned citizenry stopped the 23-year-old’s case from being just another single-column footnote in media, and a case closed in police files after a few days, what is wrong in them condoling the family members from up front?

5. And what is the government scared of? Rebellion and revolution? By its own people?

That’s laughable. So let’s correct the top paragraph. We may or may not learn from history. But we sure never unlearn history’s antediluvian baggage. In electing, we select a ruling class that reminds us of the British.