The value of dissent

The Living Stream

The 8-hour work-day wasn’t always the reality: factory workers across the world have had to struggle for it to be put in place. The value of gender equality at home, schools, universities and workplaces, took decades of women’s activism to find a hold in the public imagination. If Indians feel safe about sending their children to study, work and settle down in Western countries, the bold civil rights movements led by African-Americans, migrant and other marginalised communities in those societies have made that possible. Large manufacturers would have wrecked nature much, much more, were it not for the spirited work of the environmentalists. The efforts and sacrifices of ordinary and extraordinary individuals, in other words, have done much to lend substance to the idea of modern democracy. But the way social memory seems to work, their contribution easily goes unseen.

While most Indians seem content to have a needs-based relationship with the government and get on with their lives without minding how the legislators, bureaucrats and judges don’t always act with the public interest in mind and how the ruling parties interfere with the bureaucracy and the judiciary, a small minority of courageous individuals have continued to act as if the quality of India’s democracy mattered.

Unlike the former, who prefer to play it safe, the latter determinedly call out the misdeeds of the powerful both inside the government and outside. They fight the good fight, often with meagre resources and at risk to their own lives. Their activism sustains hope in public institutions: the judiciary, the bureaucracy, the legislature, it shows, can still be counted on to listen to non-violent social struggles. If moral cynicism hasn’t completely taken over the political mood in the country, their efforts have had a part to play. The achievement is noble and immense.

While governments aren’t usually fond of dissenting activists – only an enlightened political leadership will applaud them – the present government seems to have an especial hostility towards them, as the recent arrests of Teesta Setalvad and Mohammed Zubair again showed. Among the most committed human rights activists in India, Teesta was arrested following the Supreme Court’s dismissal of Zakia Ehsan Jafri’s appeal to investigate the murder of her husband and former Member of Parliament, Ehsan Jafri, by a mob in her presence during the 2002 Gujarat violence. Former Supreme Court judge Madan Lokur has pointed out that the SC judgement doesn’t recommend that Teesta, the co-petitioner, be arrested. Why then was she arrested? Her tireless efforts to bring justice to the 2002 riot victims of Gujarat seem to be the probable reason.

Mohammed Zubair, the co-founder of Alt News, which has done incredible work to expose fake news, was arrested for tweeting a comic scene from a 1980s Hrishikesh Mukherjee film, the tweet itself being four years old. The attention he drew to a BJP spokesperson’s crude remarks on Prophet Muhammed during a live TV discussion, which invited global outrage and censure, appears the likely cause.

The views of particular activists or their political style might seem disagreeable, but we will need to stand by them when they are being targeted by those threatened by their work. Because non-violent dissent has a legitimate place in democracies, because they give the polity a soul. Expecting total obedience to the government is the signature feature of fascism. In a democracy, by contrast, the State keeps itself open to public criticism.

Whichever party might be in power, and whatever party we might support, political arbitrariness should worry everyone. Similarly, any resort to fake news should appear loathsome to all. A new social contract would therefore be in order -- to clarify the acceptable and the unacceptable in the world of Indian politics, to find a common moral ground above all party ideologies. Otherwise, it will be a tragic case of not knowing what we had till it’s gone.