The top bestseller in France for a while is not thriller, not a romance, not a new novel by a literary superstar. It’s a slim volume (32 pages), titled “Indignez-Vous!” (roughly translated as ‘Be Indignant!’ but also something like ‘Protest!’ or ‘Cry Out’) by Stéphane Hessel. The crux of his essay is that the French people have forgotten the values of the republic.

Hessel, now 93, has the right credentials to preach the people: he was once a French hero who battled Nazis during the Resistance years, served as a diplomat and also helped draft the universal declaration of human rights.

In this book, he urges young people to emulate the spirit of resistance by rejecting the "insolent, selfish" power of money and markets and by defending the social "values of modern democracy".

"Indifference is crippling; be angry; revolt, peacefully, for what you believe in," he writes (going by the English translations available from the British press).

Another excerpt: "The productivist obsession of the west has plunged the world into a crisis which can only be resolved by a radical shift away from the 'ever more', in the world of finance but also in science and technology. It is high time that ethics, justice and a sustainable balance prevailed..."

You can get the gist of the book in this paragraph: "I would like everyone – every one of us – to find his or her own reason to cry out. That is a precious gift. When something makes you want to cry out, as I cried out against Nazism, you become a militant, tough and committed. You become part of the great stream of history... and this stream leads us towards more justice and more freedom but not the uncontrolled freedom of the fox in the hen-house."

The book (and its surprising success) has led to a debate in the west. Taking Hessel’s call as the peg, here are some random thoughts from the Indian perspective.

Fascism-lite: In France, gypsy immigrants are being packed off and sent away. In the US, anti-immigrant ‘tea-party’ movement is growing and has allegedly led to a massacre in which a governor barely survived. In Pakistan, a liberal governor did not survive and his killer was feted with a shower of petals. In India, we have our caste and communal divides. Even after ‘Swami’ Aseemanand’s confession, the BJP president is trying to hawk conspiracy theories. This, on top of other, pre-existing varieties of terrorism and extremism.

Ten Percent Solution: In his annual speech to the IPS probationers, prime minister Manmohan Singh wants all of us to see a growth rate of 10-11 percent as our top-most ambition as well as panacea for all the ills plaguing the nation. If the GDP growth, that is to say more products manufactured and more services rendered, were to deliver ram rajya, the US and the rest of the west would not have been where they are now (as in the para above). Isn’t it time we learnt the lessons of the financial crisis of the west and reconsider the emphasis on big, as in big dams versus check dams, for example?

Return to Values: If we pose the freedom struggle as our counterpart to what resistance was for France, which are the values that shaped our historic movement? These are, of course, the values enshrined in our constitution. And the Republic Day can be as good an occasion to browse it as any. But here is an off-the-cuff and shorter recap: economic equality (the gap between haves and have-nots have only increased), social equality (manual scavenging still continues and formerly untouchables are not yet so formerly in many places), and gender equality (from sex ratio figures to policymakers).

The upshot is that one only has to look around to "be angry; revolt, peacefully, for what you believe in". Because "(i)t's true that reasons to cry out can seem less obvious today. The world appears too complex. But in this world, there are things we should not tolerate... I say to the young, look around you a little and you will find them. The worst of all attitudes is indifference..."