‘Nationalism’ as the enemy of dissent

Two events have happened in tandem over the past few days. A group of students who organised a meeting have been accused of being anti-nationals, for speeches that they gave. The police arrested their leader for sedition.

The central ministers have been beyond vocal in condemning the accused. Parallel to this, a campaign has been waged by nationalists pointing to the soldiers who have been fighting on the country’s borders, asking those who are less nationalistic — how can you even countenance these anti-national thoughts, let alone speak about them, when soldiers are dying on the battle field to protect you?

The accusing finger has been wagging in the print media, in online discussions and wherever else the anti-nationals dare present themselves.

Let us look at the subtext of the argument. Soldiers who protect the citizens are worthy of the highest commendation. A soldier protects the citizens by resorting to violence. Violence against external invaders is something that the society can justify, for it needs to protect itself. But who is to say what is justified violence, and where it stops?

The law might have something to say about it, but what about those higher laws — the ones that drive nationalists to go to the jails where these anti-nationals are kept, and courts where they are being brought to, and beat them up?

Soldiers using violence against external enemies becomes the mirror image for nationalists using violence against dissenting citizens, the images melding together into a distorted justification of violence.

The space of violence that is justified by social compact gets slowly invaded by those who can justify violence in their own minds. A society on this path slowly inches towards the inevitable, one where distorted reasoning leads to killing of neighbours and friends. If anyone believes that this could happen only in the distant past, let us not forget the riots and killings in Gujarat, Bombay or Delhi in recent memory.

It is no coincidence that the government, the ruling party, and the affiliated nationalists have focused their fervour on institutions of higher learning, those places where debate, discussion and dissent are fostered. For in the end, there is only one real protection for citizens against distorted justifications of violence — a discerning mind. One that debates with its own thoughts.

Weaken the universities, and you will eventually remove the dissenters, the ones who argue, and the ones who question. Society would slowly become amenable to different kinds of justifications for violence.

The protection of the right to dissent, of students and others, is difficult precisely because it tests the boundaries of the rights of citizens. It is not easy to stand by when the national flag is burned or the religious sentiments are attacked.

One might reason that the debates on capital punishment handed to a terrorist who was found guilty of launching a terrorist attack on the Parliament should be beyond the right of free speech.

That encouragement of such discussions threatens the security of the country. But it is worthwhile to recount the circumstances under which the American jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes delivered his dissent that marked the turning point for free speech in the US.

In 1919, five Russian born men were prosecuted for distributing pamphlets that allegedly provoked and encouraged resistance to the war efforts of the United States government. As Thomas Healy notes in his book, The Great Dissent: How Oliver Wendell Holmes Changed His Mind – and Changed the History of Free Speech in America , there was considerable worry that his dissent would weaken the country and help the enemy.

Even so, Holmes dissented with the court’s decision to convict the men, and delivered the memorable lines that have since then influenced the right to free speech in the United States more than anything else: “But when men have realised that time has upset many fighting faiths, they may come to believe even more than they believe the very foundations of their own conduct that the ultimate good desired is better reached by free trade in ideas — that the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market, and that truth is the only ground upon which their wishes safely can be carried out. That, at any rate, is the theory of our Constitution. It is an experiment, as all life is an experiment. Every year, if not every day, we have to wager our salvation upon some prophecy based upon imperfect knowledge.

While that experiment is part of our system, I think that we should be eternally vigilant against attempts to check the expression of opinions that we loathe and believe to be fraught with death, unless they so imminently threaten immediate interference with the lawful and pressing purposes of the law that an immediate check is required to save the country.”

The courts would soon hear the case of sedition against the students. But one should remember that the government is prosecuting students, the very group who above all else should be allowed to wager on imperfect knowledge.

By prosecuting students, the government has made clear the boundaries within which it is willing to allow the experiment that is Indian democracy.

Add to that the fact that the students belonged to a University that had a history of producing public figures who have challenged the ideology and agenda of the ruling party and its affiliates, one should indeed be vigilant, lest those boundaries keep inching inwards.

The right to dissent is a restraint not only on our notions of infallibility. An inviolable right to dissent leaves men of fighting faiths, especially those in a government, no legal recourse other than to compete and trade in ideas to win converts.

As Harold Laski, a close friend and correspondent of Oliver Wendell Holmes, put it: “We shall make the basis of our state consent to disagreement. Therein shall we ensure its deepest harmony.” Suppressing the right to dissent is an attack on a fundamental source of protection against violence, especially from an unbridled majority.

The writer is an Assistant Professor at SUNY Polytechnic Institute. The views expressed are personal and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of SUNY Polytechnic Institute, the State University of New York or the State of New York.