The Protest of an Unknown Indian

                                      The Protest of an Unknown Indian

I want to protest, but I am not a national awardee and I have nothing to return to register my protest. I am not among the distinguished writers, film producers, scientists that would give credibility to my protest. The only thing I can return are the certificates I got for English declamation and recitation in my school though excelling in English (rather in Tamilinglish pronunciation  that leaves no ‘r’ silent in any English word)  is in today’s Bharat, a disqualification. Had it been Hindi or Sanskrit recitation, my return of those certificates might have found at least an obscure reference in small print in the obituary page of a local newspaper. I do have one or two more awards to sacrifice-for standing first in my under graduate and post graduate classes – a Book of English Poems with a citation pasted on the inner cover, but even that paper has become yellow and the ink lettering on it feeble for anyone to decipher and compliment me for my noble sacrifice of a university award. I can return the degrees I had received but the critics may look askance at the worth of those degrees because they can no longer fetch me a job as I am well past the employability age. The other awards I had received during my professional career as an educationist-cum- teacher have not been bestowed by the Government and therefore will attract no one’s attention. Even if it is argued for the sake of arguing, that an award is an award and that an award of any kind would be just the same as any other award, I know the return of   my awards will carry little import. Thus the moral of my protest story is aam admis (and aam aurats, as is the case with me) should never seek any distinction of nobility, selflessness, sacrifice and renunciation for a selfless sacrifice (where’selfless’ may sound redundant in the context of ‘sacrifice’, but nevertheless used here to augment the signification of the sacrifice of this ‘ magnitude’).

But I do want to protest. My family members and a few well wishers caution me not to indulge in any act that may anger the ruling establishment and sneer at my fancifulness that I am Jhansi Rani or Joan of Arc reborn. “At your age, you may not like to be an inmate of Tihar jail for attempting to spread disaffection in the society. Don’t attempt any such thing in your blah-blah blog.  Even if you write your protest blog under the poetic title ‘Creative Truth’, you will be booked for spreading creative falsehood and neither you nor your blog will ever see the light of the day after you are whisked off to a solitary confinement.”

Wise counseling, no doubt about the sincere intentions of my family and friends. But still I  want to protest, albeit with a  feeble voice  because with age, my protest  will sound like that of the fading song of the Keatsian nightingale flying far into “fairy lands forlorn”. Even if I do not possess any literary, artistic, scientific or intellectual credentials to be called to the TV studios whose protest is  that of the noblesse oblige, I silently affirm my genuine credentials of being an Indian, an Indian born slightly ahead of the “Midnights children”, an Indian who while still in my mother’s womb, like Abhimanyu, had listened to the voices of Gandhi , Nehru and illustrious freedom fighters  and had been shaped by civic nationalism in the individual sphere and the collective spirit of democratic nationalism in the public sphere( as referred to  by Wendy Doniger and Martha Nussbaum in Pluralism and Democracy in India: Debating the Hindu Right). I had grown up in India that was founded on sound liberal values such as pluralism and secularism to usher in a cohesive unity amidst its bewildering diversity.  For nearly 67 years, I along with millions of Indians had enjoyed the secular democracy that India proudly showcased to the entire world. There were some aberrations like the Emergency of 1975, the 1984 mob rising against the Sikhs, the 2002 Gujarat riots, the 2003 Mumbai killings, the 2008 Taj tragedy but all these aberrations were one off incidents that lasted at best a fortnight-if not less than that except for the Emergency that continued for 19 months. The State was able to quell these disturbances and ensured normalcy swiftly.

Even though I am an insignificant person, my protest will be frowned upon by the current Establishment that will pillory me for having not given up my “awards” earlier ( in 1975,1984, 2003, 2008 etc)  But my simple defence is there were no sequential incidents of intolerance during those years to drive fear psychosis into anyone of us. We quaked during the emergency, we were frightened at the scale of mob fury against the Sikhs and we trembled during the Gujarat communal riots and the 2003/2008 Mumbai attacks.  But all these fears were temporary as communal harmony was quickly restored. I would like to remind the Establishment and specially Gujarat state about their proud claims that there had been no communal conflict since 2002. Hence my only answer is that in the past no cataclysmic consequences threatened to disrupt the syncretic unity and integrity of the nation. No protest was called for or would have served any purpose in those times. Today I protest to share my nervousness at the thought of losing the privileges I had enjoyed for nearly seven decades of amity and unity in the multi- religious,multi-cultural, multi- lingual and multi -ethnic India. 

But I have an advantage over the celebrity protesters. Arun Jaitley will not accuse me of manufacturing a rebellion. I do not know how rebellions are manufactured. First I do not have a smart phone nor the ubiquitous ‘Apps’ as a part of its appendage. So neither am I a communicator nor a receiver of communication.  It is difficult to understand and be persuaded by what is being said on TV debates which are nothing but a cacophony of voices speaking at the same time. Therefore I cannot –rather I am not capable of- manufacturing a rebellion. I do not know if those who accuse us -the award returnees –know the correct meaning of rebellion mistaking dissent or protest as synonymous with rebellion. Protest is about something or against something; rebellion is organized insurrection against authority. Every celebrity and every non-celebrity like me protest as individuals. This is not to be confused with engineering organized mutiny or rebellion which is a collective uprising.

I join the few protestors whose protest is to highlight the growing intolerance in the nation that threatens to sunder the social and communal harmony of the society. This protest as felt by different individuals  in different places and from different walks of life is towards lack of grace and civility in the language and tone of speeches made by some fringe fanatics that have resulted in the killing and murder of rationalists and writers who advocate rationality, objectivity and open mindedness.  This protest is against the curtailing of individual liberty in terms of what to eat, what to wear, what to write, what to speak and whom to worship. The protest is against losing my voice or being forced to be His Masters Voice. This protest is against naked display of anger and intolerance towards icons of the past forgetting their contribution to the establishment of a democratic, pluralistic, secular India that the present rulers are presiding over. The protest is against irrationality, superstition and religious bigotry that are advocated as the true image of our hoary past. The protest is against a slow closure of our tradition of argumentation and debate and the open spirit of enquiry. The protest is against the gradual and subtle imposition of Hindutva ideology without a deep understanding of its essential core that stands for acceptance, accommodation and respect for all other religions and cultures. The protest is against the withdrawal of specific personal rights to live life as one wants without treading on another’s toes. The protest is against the imposition of bans and vigilante acts in the name of what the RBI governor in his convocation address at IIT graduation ceremony calls “excessive  political correctness” and then  quotes Mahatma Gandhi’s words:“The golden rule of conduct is mutual toleration, seeing that we will never all think alike and we shall always see Truth in fragments and from different points of vision." The protest is against the lack of understanding of this uniqueness of diversity that makes the human society. Last but not the least, the protest is against the hubris and intolerance of the many ardent sympathizers of the ruling establishment against all those argumentative Indians who generate ideas through the process of questioning and debating alternate view points.

I protest though I am an unknown Indian. I protest because I have the right to protest. I protest because protest is my only means of persuasion.

I protest and therefore I am an argumentative Indian.