It is not the question of stifling dissent, it is the question of gagging those standing for destitute.
Image: AFP
Stan Swamy, in his opinion piece, on August 1, questioned the value of dissent in India. He has now been raided by Maharashtra Police in connection with Bhima-Koregaon violence. His question still remains intact,” I raise my voice for Adivasis, am I a Traitor?”
Pune Police teamed up with other states’ police and raided the homes of citizens that are known as activists for Dalits, marginalised, oppressed and poor. Unlawful Activities Prevention Act(UAPA) was invoked and the charges levelled against them appeared feeble when the police failed to produce any solid evidence before the Delhi High Court. The court interjected and warned the police of Contempt of Court. Supreme Court has granted an extended interim relief to the detained activists and a petition filed by Romila Thapar has been listed for September 6.
This episode came as a shocker for many and a gameplay for some. Vivek Agnihotri, a Bollywood director, jumped to promoting a terminology he coined- “Urban Naxal” and branded the defenders of the activists with the same tag. Pratik Sinha, the founder of AltNews, responded with #MeTooUrbanNaxal and the repartee proved to be efficient, logical and resilient.
Prashant Bhushan has marked the arrest-row as the steady erosion of civil rights and called it “Worse than emergency”. Will Vivek Agnihotri also list former Supreme Court judge Justice P B Sawant and former High Court judge Justice Kolse Patil as “Urban Naxal” for being attendees of the Elgaar Parishad meeting? That is a serious concern. Analysts will wait and assess but the scars our civil liberties have been left with after this episode are no. to be observed as an instantaneous outcome. This is a result of development which took place over decades.
It is quite disappointing to note that in the BJP, in the madness of power, has no time to even connect the dots of Loknayak Jai Prakash Narayan, whom BJP idealizes. Sudha Bhardwaj who left her US citizenship to serve the marginalized in India is a national secretary of People’s Union for Civil Liberties(PUCL), an organization founded by Jai Prakash Narayan. Bhardwaj’s arrest narrows not only the ethics of the incumbent party but brings disrepute to their comments on mid-70’s emergency. In a country where trade unionists are feared by the government, there can’t be any future of labour rights.
It also becomes important to note that it is not the first time where Gautam Navlakha is being tortured by authorities, or Vernon Gonsalves’ family is feeling hopeless. Arun Ferriera has also earlier been imprisoned for his leftist beliefs, barbaric UAPA- a soft touch by the police remains as the pivot.
Only the government has changed. The brutalities and innuendos to favour the rule of propaganda remain the same. Do the opposition and anti-BJP front fail to list what has been done before? Was Gautam Navlakha detained at Jammu & Kashmir by BJP government? Or, was there BJP government in power when Gonsalves was kept in jail for five-and-a-half years on false charges? These questions bear deep leanings and are not result of a sudden upheaval.
They are correlated with political mappings where dissent is always crushed under the umbrella of majoritarianism. That remains the same for all parties who never speak when things come to religion, caste, creed, and dogma. Was “Democracy” maintained when the Padmavati issue rocked the nation? Gujarat Congress President Bharat Sinh Solanki remained silent on state government’s inaction towards the issue. Did he speak against outfits which bred the controversy? Point to be noted.
Whether you are a writer, or you make films or you voice for righthood-or-believe in change- it must not cross the line of majoritarian belief no matter what rights our constitution grants us. This has become an undocumented law of the land. Threats, fatwas, and rewards for killings- they sum up to new heights in our neo-culture.
The Supreme Court bench of Justices A M Khanwilkar and D Y Chandrachud, on the last day of hearing the petition by Romila Thapar, said that dissent as a safety valve of democracy. Bench warned the authority that the safety valve is not to be punctured, or else it will be burst. Bench indirectly hinted at a wider concern, that is, stifling dissent. The question remains, why is India moving towards an age of censorship where the flow of ideas is cross-checked for its safety measures every moment. Why are we checking the safety of an idea? How is that mechanically perturbing the system or a national threat?
In the same series of raids, Maharashtra and Telangana Police raided the residence of Prof. K Satyanarayana, the Head of the Cultural Studies department and the Dean of School of Inter-Disciplinary Studies at EFL University, Hyderabad. Prof. Satyanarayana said the following after his release, “My thirty years of academic life has been destroyed in five minutes. They asked me ‘Why are you reading Mao?’, ‘Why are you reading Marx?’, ‘Why are you having the songs of Gaddar?’ and, ‘Why are you keeping the photos of Ambedkar and Phule instead of gods and goddesses?’ They also asked me, ‘Why do you want to become an intellectual, why can’t you be happy with the money you are getting?’ I am happy, but I have to read and teach.”
This highlights a serious dilemma. Another question resurfaces: what is wrong in reading Marx? What is wrong if your ideals are Ambedkar and Phule? The answer remains rooted in the hypocrisy where the first line of the preamble of the constitution defines India as a socialist country and on the other hand in-office defenders of constitutional values are way forward to ask people to stop reading socialist theories. In that scenario- will we ever be able to become a truly socialist nation? Crony capitalism remains the wheel, those on sides of Rafale today were on the sides of 2G yesterday; only common citizens are to be looted and fooled. It is now solely upto us, to stand for ourself and defend our cause. Seven decades have been enough to show that independence is still not a ground reality. Dalits and marginalised were being crushed yesterday, and they are crushed today too. It is not a question of stifling dissent, it is a question of stifling those standing for destitute.
While delivering the presidential address of the Hindi Sahitya Sammelan, Udaipur, on October 6, 1945, KM Munshi, father of fundamental rights in India, had said:
“In 1916, I wrote a short story called ‘My Temporary Wife.’ Then Gujarat grew very angry. Some critics said that it would have been better if my hand had been cut off. When my novel Prithvi Vallabh was put on the screen, an association from Karnataka sent me a resolution and demanded of me that I should write a novel on the lines indicated by them. But when I write, I do not write for others, but in order to fulfil myself. I tear my heart open in bringing forth its hidden treasure. If you can appreciate it, take it; if you cannot, throw it away. But I shall body forth in towards only that beauty which is born of my imagination, those cultural values which make up my equipment and my ideas. I will not be a father to other people’s children.”
KM Munshi was not an ardent supporter of Communist Party of India and communism in general but he never tried to deter any civil rights based on personal views. In his inaugural address at the Indian Congress for Cultural Freedom, on March 23, 1951, KM Munshi heavily criticized CPI for furnishing the British attempt to crush the ‘Quit India’ movement of 1942, called CPI as the programme of ‘insectification’ in India. But that never excited KM Munshi to push even a talk in government to seek a ban on Communist Party because that was purely an ideology against which he was speaking. That was purely his thought. That’s because he believed that the opinion is a subject of difference and in an evolving polity like ours, political dissent can’t be a subject of censor.
Sadly, the beliefs of founding fathers of this democratic nation are meaningless today. We appear to have evolved, little less than completely, into a dinosaur of trim-cut-censor.
Dissenting voice invites sedition, the difference in thought results into anti-nationalism row and activism is called Naxalism, if promoted by scholars-then preferably “Urban Naxalism.”
Ujjawal Krishnam is an editor to Academia.edu and Wikiprojects. He writes on Indian polity and Jurisprudence.