By Banshaikupar L. Mawlong &Batskhem Marboh
Paraphrasing Antonio Gramsci’s words, ‘the old world is dying and the new struggles to be born. Now is the time of struggles and changes,’ from Tunisia’s Jasmine Revolution to the Arab Spring, from Athens to Wall Street, and here in India, these words ring true today. It’s 1789 all over again. All of us hold our breath for tomorrow – and the future beyond it. Since our younger days we were told there was no alternative; that the world was flat and a rising tide would lift all boats. But the rising tide was a deluge of state’s autocracy, inequality, corruption, unaccoun-tability and the lifeboats have long since been replaced with the cold logic of underdevelopment, insecurity, poverty and social injustice. As we stare at this ocean of despair, the endless agitations against the government’s acts of tyranny have become the ‘only hope’ for a genuine alternative. When the system pushes ordinary people to become ‘revolutionaries’, the deceptive ideological mirror of Fukuyama’s End of History is shattered; history appears to have started anew. The endless struggle has recommenced, and in the process, the horizon of the possible is rapidly shifting.
Accountability, transp-arency, rule of law and continuous responsiveness to citizens’ demands are the building blocks of democracy. The democratic vacuum in the country created by the absence of the above elements serves as the political alluvium for the widespread recurrence of protests, agitations and revolutions by the citizens against the system. Samuel P. Huntington contends that in democracy, political participation takes the shape of strikes, demonstrations, protests and violence. As such, freedom of expression of one’s opinions and voices, regarding public policy is the central theme of democracy. J. S. Mill, puts the freedom of expression and speech as the essence of democratic society, without which it would turn ‘Victorian Britain’ into a nation of ‘dull conformists’. Freedom of speech and expression in today’s world is catalyzed by the process of what Underwood and Jabre call conscientisation where citizens learn to analyze critically their circumstances, come to recognize that the world is subject to change, and ultimately are empowered to rise to the challenge of changing or preserving the world in which they live.
In 67 years of democratic experience in India, freedom of speech and expression has taken multitude forms of agitations and protests against the established authority, which threatens the very stability and integrity of the country. Public agitations and protests in India vary from public rallies, road blockades, hunger strikes, office picketing, bandhs and in extreme cases even armed struggles against the state. And this conscientisation process is being ably aided by the rise of the geometric popularity of the social media. The role of the techno-savvy in fuelling the Arab Spring has caught the eyes of the world to the penetrating and revolutionizing power of the social media. Ignoring this unregulated world would be suicidal.
The Government of Meghalaya, disturbed and concerned by the recurrence of bandhs called by different pressure groups and its consequential effects on the people, had on March 26th, 2010, passed the ‘historic legislation’ known as the Meghalaya Maintenance of Public Order (Amendment) Act, 2010, replacing the Meghalaya Maintenance of Public Order (Amendment) Act,1953. The Act reads, “Whosoever, whether an individual or any organization…either singly or collectively does/do…by whatever means any act for causing abstention from normal activities by members of public, employee, disrupts normal life…shall be guilty of offence…(and breach of public order).” The Government’s decision to declare bandhs and hartals illegal came in the backdrop of the Apex Court ruling, passed in the case of CPI (M) vs. Bharat Kumar and others, and the Gauhati High Court Order of 2010 in the Mrinal Talukdar vs. State of Assam and others case, asking states to take all necessary steps for preventing infringement of various fundamental rights of the citizens on account of various calls of ‘bandhs’ by political parties and other organizations. The purpose behind the Act is to quell bandhs and agitations. This issue has now re-surfaced, thanks to the Inner Line Permit (ILP) movement by the conglomeration of 10 NGOs demanding the implementation of ILP in the state. While the Chief Minister seems firm in tackling the issue with an ‘iron fist,’ promising strict action against the pressure groups, the latter are in no mood to relent. Ironically while the agitators term the Meghalaya Maintenance of Public Order (Amendment) Bill, 2010 as the “suppression of democratic rights”, the government is quick to declare bandh as illegal and unconstitutional. It is in the light of this tussle between the Government and the NGOs, especially with the ongoing ILP movement that the Act has generated much debate and attention.
A counter-question from pressure groups is whether bandhs violate the fundamental rights of the citizens and if so whose rights is Government actually protecting? Would banning bandhs and all forms of public agitations not lead to an authoritarian rule? Is the government an absolute sovereign? Or what is democracy without freedom of speech and expression (for that matter freedom of choice)? A discourse on the above questions lead us to the Marxist contention, that although the state proclaims to be acting for the common good it is actually a wheel for promoting and protecting the interests of the elite and dominant class. The NGOs opine that the State is in essence protecting the interests of the rich business class and of the upper echelons capitalist class in society. At best the provisions of the Act like ‘public order’ are but debatable and subjective.
NGOs have time and again condemned the Act as being undemocratic and going against the spirit of the Constitution. It has led to almost complete erosion of the freedom of expression mentioned in Art. 19(1) of the Constitution. No doubt, denial of the freedom of speech and expression would render democracy, no democracy at all. However, the rights conscious citizens are forgetting the underlying point that rights as we understand today are no longer negative in nature but they have their own positive connotations i.e. rights with reasonable restrictions. That is to say one’s rights and liberty are conditioned by other’s rights and liberties; one cannot enjoy one’s rights at the expense or cost of others. Democracy relies on a balance between one man’s rights and another’s.
However, we must also not turn a blind eye to the hard reality of the Indian political landscape where no matter how legitimate and genuine a demand might be, the state does not respond unless groups resorts to pressure tactics and lobbying with the government. Given the monistic, indifferent and adamant attitude of those in authority, civil society is left with ‘no option’ but to turn to agitations and protests against the state. The government does not seem to have learnt any lessons from its failure in its appointed task. Having failed to deliver and discharge the functions expected of it, it is trying to curtail and nullify the freedom of its citizens more than ever before and if anything, things have gone from bad to worse.
It is obvious that the Act mirrors the concerns and seriousness of the then government to maintain peace and harmony in a multi-religious, multi-cultural and multi-lingual state. Considering the socio-political conditions obtaining in the country, we can say the act is justified. Still, there is no doubt that the government over-reacted in enacting the draconian Act referred to above. The lesson of this tussle between the state and the pressure groups has once again shown that democracy has become a revolutionary force. As Ronald Reagan, the former American president once said agitations… means democracy in today’s world, not the enslavement of peoples to the corrupt and degrading horrors of totalitarianism. But the great revenge is this: the generation that grew up being told they were the heirs to John Locke’s reserved right of resentment, agitation and revolution, is now working its damnedest hoping to prove how the States Order wrong, not for the sake of utopian imagination but to resolve the very problems that the system has created. In fine, the best way forward is voiced by Justice Prafulla Chandra Pant, the new Chief justice of the High Court of Meghalaya when he recently said, “Resent but not through violence”.
(The authors are Asst. Professors of Political Science at Union Christian College and Synod College respectively can be contacted at: [email protected] & [email protected]