Cleofato Almeida Coutinho
A finest scholar cum public intellectual and a management academician is unable to teach at the Goa Institute of Management. At a time when the higher judiciary wanted release of under trials to avoid congestion in jails, Anand Teltumbde was taken into custody at the age of seventy.
In his own words, the state does not have anything against him in particular. He says the state is against ‘the idea of dissent’. “It’s me today, it can be anybody else tomorrow” But why is this follower of Ambedkar’s teachings considered so dangerous. He has been against the intolerance and hatred brought in by the present regime. Sudha Bharadwaj- an ITTian who gave up US citizenship and mathematics to study law, so that she could fight for exploited workers. She believed in the constitution, courts and the law but the State believes she cannot be free. Shoma Sen, ex-head of English Literature department at Nagpur University also finds herself within the four walls. Like Kanhaiya Kumar who was labeled as ‘Urban Naxal’, Teltumbde, Bharadwaj and Shoma and so many others are branded as Maoists for they stood for. Once a citizen gets that tag, liberty becomes a far cry.
Vocal critics of the regime, civil rights activists have been at the receiving end for the past eight years. Draconian laws like Sedition, UAPA and preventive detention laws come handy to incarcerate them with a hope that all other potential dissenters will get to know their place. In any democracy, NGOs ought to get special place for dialogue and dissent in a reasoned and respectable manner. How good and mature a democracy is could be gauged on how it treats its NGOs. But here respected NGOs like Amnesty International, Sabrang Trust (Teesta Setalvad), Lawyers Collective (Indira Jaising) and many others faced harassment under FCRA to such an extent Amnesty International wound up India Operations.
Where are our finest TV anchors? Punya Prasun Bajpai, Abhisar Sharma, Barkha Dutt and Faye D’ Souza are all out of mainstream media in their defense of the right to dissent. Even NDTV so maligned by regime backers did not have the spine to carry a story on Jay Shah’s financial dealings. How many of us know that electricity would go off when Bajpayee’s ‘Masterstroke’ Programme on ABP was to go on air at 9 pm? Comedian Munnawar Faruqui is in jail for a joke for a joke he never cracked. A BJP member’s word, without any other proof was enough to refuse bail. Another Comedian Kunal Kamra and cartoonist Sangita Taneja, creator of webcomics ‘sanitary panels’ face contempt of court proceedings for their tweets on the Supreme Court. We do not know whether they would get the same treatment as Prashant Bushan.
Rahul Bajaj who spoke of an atmosphere of fear and intolerance could not be branded as an ultra-leftist .Obviously he could not be made a state guest at Arthur Road. All they could do is accuse him of acting against national interest. Dissent and protest carries a chilling effect in our country. Country’s premier investigative and intelligence agencies can bring immense hardship and misery to those carrying the ‘anti national’ tag. The caged parrots CBDT, NIA, CBI, ED play havoc with lives of dissenters as the courts look the other way. ‘Maoists’, ‘Urban Naxals’, ‘Ultra-leftists’ all of whom could be fitted into a broad basket of ‘anti-nationals’ can live freely only with the grace of the regime.
The New Year started with a good note. In USA President Biden appears to restore semblance of sanity .Unlike the anti CAA movement, which got demonized, the farmers restored a sense of hope by their fortitude, tenacity and endurance in their movement against the three farm laws. With the government assurance of keeping the three laws on hold and permitting the tractor rally today, there is an impetus for protest and dissent. Right to dissent is an important part of freedom of speech and expression guaranteed under the constitution.
150 years back, the colonial power brought the sedition law to keep in custody without trial those who criticize the British government. Bal Gangadar Tilak and Mahatma Gandhi suffered that law. The same law is now pressed against students, journalists and academicians. Detention without trial may have been tolerated in 1950 as the country was nursing the wounds of partition. Independent India cannot fear free speech of its own citizens. After 71 years as a republic we must have the confidence to scrap draconian laws like sedition, National security Act which permits detention without trial. Such laws, invoked to deal with dissenters have played havoc with citizens’ liberties for the past seventy years. This disease is corroding our democracy and republic.
DY Chandrachud was spot on when he said, “The blanket labelling of dissent as anti-national or anti-democratic strikes at the heart of our commitment to protect constitutional values and the promotion of deliberative democracy”. Even in law it is dissenting judges who made law dynamic. Imagine what would have happened if Fazal Ali J. had not dissented in 1951 or Mudholkar J. had not taken that view in 1967.
It is only through disagreement, dissent and dialogue our democracy can flourish. Our democracy will be better served when citizens express views and mobilize protest and movements against unwarranted policies. As we celebrate the seventy first anniversary of our republic, the way our civil liberties of social and political activists are manipulated and subverted our collective conscience must get pricked. The greatest gift the republic day brought us is a chapter of fundamental rights with the freedoms of thought and speech occupying a special place. Flowering of dissent only can enhance the right of expression. We the people gave ourselves the constitution and the rights but with the passage of time the government has usurped the sovereignty from we the people. We are now a land of elections with our rights being taken over by the state. Suppression of freedom of thought, dissent and protest has created a crisis for the republic and institutions created to protect them including the courts have failed to rescue citizens. A fresh claim needs to be made on the republic. Time has come for we the people, to assert our supremacy. We need celebration of the ‘idea of dissent’.
