This is the age of dissent. I don’t
mean to imply that people have not expressed discontent before. They have and
there have been several revolutions that have been successful enough to bring
us to this point. Where for one, everyone has relative freedom to express
disagreement and even more importantly, it’s so easy to do this and broadcast one’s
opinion without too much personal effort or risk.
One does not have to be a Julian
Assange and paint a target on oneself for the superpowers of the world to aim
at or be an Anna Hazaare and endanger one’s life to get attention to one’s
cause. One does not even have to leave the house. A simple ‘like’ on Facebook
is all it takes to have an opinion and declare it. Twitter and status updates, online
petitions and blogs – technology has made it easy to participate, so even the
lazy and politically disinclined can create the illusion of a political stand.
It seems as if everyone is for or
against something today. And the canvas spreads all the way from the larger
issues like environmental concern to the seemingly trivial like the appropriate
age for drinking. Today nothing is trivial anymore. Nothing is small enough to
brush aside. Every issue is important because it seems to have enough passion
both for and against it. A political stance is the must-have accessory for the
fashionable and the unfashionable alike. And having one doesn’t mean that you
have to really care to be consistent with it.
I happened to be on D N Road when
Sunday’s protest turned violent and my brush with the incident was nothing like
I might have expected. There was little anger or fear emanating from the people
around and the people fleeing. Instead there was a palpable excitement. A thrill
to be part of something so out of the ordinary. Rather than seek safety, many
were clicking away on camera phones and composing their versions of the
incident to be shared and dispersed.
It seems as if we don’t know how
to protest without adding to the problem. We protest a riot with a riot, an
economic slowdown with a bandh that leads to further loss of productivity, lack
of political action with an opposition movement that only serves to further
distract the government from the real issues at hand.
It’s time to question our own
motives – do we really want something to be done or do we just want to act out
and ensure that we will always have something to dissent against? Do we want
India to emerge victorious and claim its place as one of the leaders of the
world economy? Or do we want to bask in the prospect of it, while making sure that
we get something out of the process even if it is got by standing in the way?
Dissent has become so important
to the political process in India that it seems to be all that has survived
from the legacy of Gandhi. We forget his self-discipline and commitment to
getting things right. So let’s participate in a rally, add a Facebook like to
our profile and tweet our opinions to the world. Let the Baba Ramdev’s come out
and exploit our boredom to bring down the government. It will be replaced by another
of our choice and that one too will be stuck in the quicksand of our dissent
till another self-serving politician comes along to manipulate us into bringing
that down too.
The freedom that previous
generations fought so hard for is actually the freedom of choice. To have the
ability to make a choice on anything that concerns us – from the choice of
religion and political views to the choice of clothes and lifestyle. Even the
choice of which soap or shampoo we want to use. This is the part that we all
celebrate and support. But we forget that with a choice, also come consequences
which belong as much to us as the choice that led to it. If we buy a soap we
don’t like, we made the wrong purchase decision and are quick to correct it the
next time we shop. But if we choose the wrong politician, we don’t accept
responsibility. If we choose an expression of dissent that actually compounds
the problem, we don’t see that.
There is an important role that
dissent has played in our history. But we need to face the fact that we have
things pretty good despite our pettiness. Now it’s time to do some hard work if
we really want to move forward. And this calls from some real introspection
when we choose a political stance. Why do we want one? Is it to make a
difference to the country or just to have something to say? When we disagree,
is it to solve the problem or compound it?
