Keynote address delivered at the seminar
organized by
Centre for Amenities Rehabilitation and Education (CARE)
Centre for Social Action
and
St. Josephs’ College of Commerce
on the
Right to Dissent: A look at the Present Scenario
14th February 2019
By
Leo F. Saldanha
Coordinator
As we grow up, we are taught to conform, to listen to elders, our parents, and in general conform to the ways of the community we grow up in. The idea is to ensure that there is orderliness in how everyone behaves, for the collective good perhaps. From our childhood when we question e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g out of curiosity; when we turn into our adolescence challenging everyone with questions and as a matter of right; and then into our teens when we do what we feel like, sometimes with problematic consequences, we are practicing the right to dissent.
In families and societies which deal with such questions and allow for such challenges, with reasonable restrictions, the outcome is reasonably healthy: a young man and woman emerges with confidence, to walk into the world alone, and face its challenges. And when such opportunities are denied, or non-existent, the likelihood of the opposite result is very high.
We don’t need to go far to check this out. It is happening in our families, in our neighbourhoods, in our cities and in our villages. In villages, elders' greater control over the emerging young person, armed as they are with the long tradition of conformism with elders's views, plays a strong role in constricting spaces for dissent. In urbanised settings, the liberation extended by anonymity and the lack of obvious social structures makes space for dissent from conservatism and conformism.
The object of ensuring social order for collective good is indisputable; it is like following road discipline, of keeping time, of ensuring what we express and how we express is meaningful, and communicates even if it may be something not everyone agrees with. What then remains is of the question of the content of our expression. Should that be regulated at all?
Should a child growing up in a family be reprimanded, or made to feel small, for asking, “What is sex?”, as I was? And immediately asked to go clean the garden to hide the visible discomfort I had placed my parents and others elders in, while my sisters and brother giggled? But then the school text book I had, I recall, had an image of the male and female sex organs. The teacher was not very happy with that page and she quickly asked us to skip to the next one; in fact skip that chapter altogether Clearly, the question remained unanswered, at home and in school.
The issue with my simple question, of course, is that my parents, teacher and elders were left nonplussed. They were required to address this question with maturity. But they did not. As though they never had wondered about it?
The problematique is in the normalization of silence in addressing such “embarrassing”, or contentious matters. Silences over what is to be spoken and what not. Sex is taboo, we are taught by the silences. And in worse cases reprimanded, harshly, as was the case with a classmate who similarly asked that very question in school, and received a none too pleasant whack in return.
What do we do when uncomfortable questions come up that need answers, and none are willing to engage in the conversation? Or are afraid to?
A long time ago a young man with a young family was so deeply troubled by his questions - and he asked around. Everyone he spoke with returned uncomfortable glances or shied away from the questions. Perhaps even tried to advise him to focus on worldly matters. This man had hardly walked into his manhood, but so troubling were his questions - with which none tried to engage - that he just left. Left all of it and walked away to seek enlightenment. He did not receive any lawyers’ notices from his abandoned wife and child, and so ended up, thankfully, not devoured by animals in the forest where he sought refuse. Instead he achieved enlightenment under the Bodhi tree. Less than a millennium after Buddha, a carpenter’s son decided enough of is enough and mobilized a revolt against slavery, against oppression, against abuse of power, and was nailed to the cross . And we now know, a couple of thousand years later, that Christ's preachings and his life continue to affect us, and guide us.
Arjuna dissented with everyone and did not want to engage in war with his own brethren, we are told. Sometimes I wish Krishna had agreed with him, and the Bhagwad Gita was a text justifying Arjuna’s feelings, rather than a justification of conquest of good over evil, by war. The idea of superiority would have ended, perhaps? And in the millennia that followed, there would not be the quest for a Ram Rajya, as some now insist will result with Prime Minister Narendra Modi's second term, never mind that the ‘ache din’ he promised never arrived through his first term.
Why the chasing of a mirage of a utopian world, I ask? Why can’t it be enjoyed now, given that we have a super-abundance of needed intelligence to ensure everyone’s rights are secured and obligations to each other are honoured and respected?
What would have resulted in this land mass we now call India if Krishna had agreed with Arjuna that peace is a greater objective than the expression of valour through war? What would have resulted, let’s wonder, if Krishna had stepped out of the chariot and walked across to Bhishmapitaaha, and sat in a Gandhian Sathyagraha in solidarity with Arjuna’s feelings for his brethren? Would the Kauravas have had the ‘strength’ to trample Lord Krishna with all their military power then? Of course, the narrative that most believe in is that they did go to war with each other, and yes, ever since then there never has been an end to the catastrophic consequences of such battles of egos.
What you and I learn, through our history textbooks, and quite disturbingly observe through movies such as the most white-dominated narrative ever - in Steven Spielberg’s Dunkirk, is that the white soldiers, not Indians (who actually were in large numbers there at Dunkirk, but not one is visible in the entire movie), were the valiant lot. War creates narratives from the victor’s end, we are told. And it seems true even when there are no bullets fired, bombs dropped, grenades chucked, as is now the case on evening TV shows (not news) in India.
It is a war of words. It is a war of views. It does not make sense. Not in the least. And if you are interested in sense, then you need to invest your efforts in an effort that is all too simple but extremely difficult to achieve often: turn the TV off. But the allure of the ongoing war of words – “Don’t go away, we will be back with more”- is such that we are hooked on to a narrative that is controlled by the dominant party in power. If you care to disagree, you are dubbed anti-national, urban naxal, seditious. I sometimes wonder about the kinds of terminologies and conceptual underpinnings that would be employed in time … Aren’t they running out of ideas to chuck at those who disagree, who dissent, who speak differently, who have something very different to say than the dominant narrative?
As we have witnessed over the past few years in India, lumpenisation pays rich dividends. It helps capture political power, and control how we all live our lives. It helps those who want to control our lives, to train our actions to conform wit ways which are determined as 'appropriate'. And all this adds up to ensure mass compliance, often employing fear and terror; so that there is no deviance to the expected norm.
If you are walking cattle away from a village, or worse, loading them on a truck at a cattle-fair to take them home, because you are a a milk man, as Pehlu Khan was in 2017, chances are high that you will end up dead as Khan did. Vigilantes decided he had to die because they claimed he was trading them into the beef market. What if he indeed was planning to do just that, for it is a lawful act? The raising of this question in Rajasthan, or across the region called the ‘cow belt’, in itself will attract serious consequences. As we know, in the land ruled by Yogi Adityanatha that unproductive bullocks that are being abandoned by the lakhs across Uttar Pradesh, due to the fear unleashed against trading them to cattle traders as farmers have done for millenia, are now munching relentlessly into farmers’ strenuous efforts to grow food, are being allowed to destroy food and economic security of millions. By the lynching of about two dozen cattle rearers and beef traders, most of them selected because they were Muslim even when people of other religions also trade cattle for beef, the entire country’s cattle trade is frozen. As a consequence, an ecological catastrophe is in the offing.
This is the power of fear, of employing violence strategically. It silences millions into submission. It makes them conform to a way of living that is destructive of their economic and political choices. It turns neighbour against neighbour to such an extent that it ghettoises everyone – the ghettoiser and the ghettoised.
Muslims across India have been ghettoized for generations now, particularly after the horrendous division of south Asia by the British. And if you look around the world, you will notice the British have done such things everywhere, leaving behind a mess in the Middle East, perpetuating conflicts within and between Syria, Turkey, Iraq and Iran, whilst wilfully almost, dismembering the hopes and identities of the Kurdish peoples. In how the creation of Israel out of Palestine has ensured we all are on tenterhooks every time Netanyahu says something, when Palestinians cannot hope for a better life than what is now a mass prison.
We have witnessed how the imperialist propaganda by America - which dreams now under Trump of being great again, has ensured the world is riddled with conflicts, killing millions. And of the great promise of socialism that has ended up in the most demoniacal control of billions of peoples through tyrannical communism producing oligarchs, as in China and Russia. And particularly now in China where a “social credit” system ensures that those who conform will benefit from the comfort of a ‘good life’. As for those who do not, and instead choose the right to express, to dissent, they will be subjugated to unspeakable horrors. It is like in the “Hunger Games”, but at a much grander scale.
We are living through times of unprecedented social engineering. Where the power of the corporate sector to control what we do, how we live, how we look, what we eat, who we socialise with, what we believe in, and what we know, is immense, and growing still. So immense that most of us would not even know what we don’t know. Because, as we are now aware, social media and internet searches are designed to lead us on pathways that we have not chosen, instead move along paths that have been chosen for us by mega corporations raking in mega profits. Even as their leading men and women work relentlessly to have an overbearing influence on our decision makers, our senior politicians and our senior bureaucracy. It is not what we choose that we get – through active participation in a democratic gamble we call the elections, but by what is ordinated by them. If we do not agree with them, we are then told again by trolls that we are anti-national, seditious, urban naxals, etc.
Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) exists so people who ask uncomfortable questions, hold the State and Corporate sectors accountable to the people, can be picked up and locked away for long periods of detention. As examples to the rest of us, so we conform to the dominant narrative of ‘progress’ and ‘democracy’. Sudha Bharadwaj (Human rights lawyer), P Varavara Rao (revolutionary poet and writer), Vernon Gonsalves (college Prof), Arun Fereira (political activist), Gautam Navlakha (journalist), Stan Lourduswamy (Jesuit priest who has helped shape so many of us), K Sathyanarayana (Professor of Cultural Studies), K. V. Kurmanath (Journalist), Kranti Tekula (photojournalist), Anand Teltumbe (academic and writer) are all targeted and imprisoned. They have worked and spoken without fear. And that is unacceptable to those who rule by employing fear at a mass scale. Which is also why Kanhaiya Kumar, Umar Khalid, Sheila Rashid and other students of Jawaharlal Nehru University are being targeted, so that all of you will better attend class, have a little fun, but not engage in asking uncomfortable questions. Thus behave as the ruling dispensation demands you must. Or else be ready to face consequences.
Educate. Organise. Agitate, said a man we now revere everywhere with statues of his form. Were he to say that now, he would have ended up in prison under the current dispensation, notwithstanding the fact that he is also considered the Father of the Indian Constitution by many. Which scholars argue, and most sane people agree, was perhaps the finest document on good governance written till now.
We revere Ambedkar as a Father, as a parent. There is something that we do by putting such people up on a pedestal. They are up there. While down below, we end up making a mess of all that they struggled against: to secure for us our fundamental freedoms. Was Ambedkar to be able to come now and see how we have followed up on his efforts, he would be appalled I am sure. That we still have laws like the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act, and the Armed Forces Special Powers Act which Ambedkar argued contains provisions that render “nullity” to the Constitution itself, would have shocked the man.
We have much to do in this young democracy. We have the promise of equity and justice for all, as is contained in Article 39 of the Constitution. We have hoary language employed in a variety of rulings of the Supreme Court upholding the primacy of the Right to Life, as in Article 21. But the question to ask is if it is life enhancing at all, if we are restricted by fear and terror from expressing?
19. Protection of certain rights regarding freedom of speech etc
(1) All citizens shall have the right
(a) to freedom of speech and expression;
(b) to assemble peaceably and without arms;
(c) to form associations or unions;
(d) to move freely throughout the territory of India;
(e) to reside and settle in any part of the territory of India; and
(f) omitted
(g) to practise any profession, or to carry on any occupation, trade or business
(2) Nothing in sub clause (a) of clause ( 1 ) shall affect the operation of any existing law, or prevent the State from making any law, in so far as such law imposes reasonable restrictions on the exercise of the right conferred by the said sub clause in the interests of the sovereignty and integrity of India, the security of the State, friendly relations with foreign States, public order, decency or morality or in relation to contempt of court, defamation or incitement to an offence
Have Sudha Bharadwaj et al done anything at all to threaten the sovereignty and integrity of India? Should the Supreme Court not realise that the persistence of such unconstitutional laws as UAPA and AFSPA is in itself affording power to tyranny by those who now control the power of the State, especially to a party intent on amending the Constitution to promote their bigoted idea of Hindutwa as the method of statecraft? Should not the Apex court ensure such cases are not allowed to fester, instead dealt with on an emergency basis, as Ambedkar would have wanted? And if the Court does find that there has been gross abuse of power by the State, should it not take to task those who have abused such power embedded in such tyrannical laws, which would put even British tyranny to shame?
And when the Supreme Court takes its time to decide on such matters; even defeats the right of the accused to bail, especially when none of the accused have ever been a part of Lynch mob; or of being anywhere near any effort that can even remotely be considered as a plot to assassinate the Prime Minister; when not one of the accused has any intent whatsoever of fleeing the country as have Vijay Mallya, Nirav Modi, Atul Chokshi (all indisputably assisted to flee, for how else could they have?) and are valiant sons and daughters who have invested their lifetimes in fighting for the rights of the Adivasis, the poor, the working classes, what is the Court saying to the people of India when their calls for justice is delayed?
We now live through a grave period of crises, when serious erosion of human rights and planetary scale environmental degradation have conflated with economic distress of the billions, to produce a situation that needs us all to be more humane than ever before. We need to care about Rohingyas, as we should about Syrian refugees, and Africans who trudge across the Sahara in search of a better life. This is a world fraught with multiple crises, and the Government of the day will not want you and I to know how grave the situation is.
This is when students and teachers, bank officials and industrial workers, farmers and fishworkers, scientists and bureaucrats, just about everybody needs to question what one is being told, through the mass media, by Governments, even the United Nations.
We live in a world where fake news, such as that generated by a man called Trump, is in itself presented as reliable news. When Narendra Modi, our dear Prime Minister, speaks to children and says to little girl not to worry, as it is not climate that has changed if someone has a fever!
The ability to reason and debate is under attack. We need to be alert. All of us. Not only for our sakes, but also for those more vulnerable. So they do not suffer worse. That is the humaneness demanded of us now.
Thank you.
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