'India Dissents' is a reminder of India's robust history of dissension

Not so long ago, Freedom was not only accepted as a founding principle for our society but also celebrated and guarded with vigour

Some readers may recall a message that used to be aired on Indian television — Doordarshan, to be precise — during the late 1980s, typically on the eve of the Independence Day. It showed a mouse looking longingly at a piece of cheese placed inside a mousetrap. The mouse was shown to dither and then, quite unexpectedly, move away from the cheese. In the last frame, the mouse was shown exulting — jumping in the air and pumping its fists — with a Hindi tag line that was unbeatable: “Asli cheese hai freedom”. “Cheese”, in Hindi, means a “thing”. So the message was: The real cheese (or the thing) is freedom.

If this is hard to recall, then many readers would easily hum the Pepsi advertisement showing India’s rising filmstar Shah Rukh Khan proclaim: “Freedom, to be; Azaadi, dil ki”. The advertisement explicitly enumerated values such as the freedom to say what one wants and, equally importantly, the freedom to stay quiet. 

Today, Azaadi is an “anti-national” word.

The point is, not so long ago, India was passionate about its freedoms. Freedom was not only accepted as a founding principle for our society but also celebrated and guarded with vigour. That is not to say that Indians have not had their freedoms suppressed in the past. Indeed, they have suffered enough and more repression and yet, through the ages, the right to disagree has been the hallmark of India’s soul. 

Where did the story change? When did we forget that we won our freedom primarily by non-violent satyagrahas ? When did peaceful civil disobedience and non-cooperation give way to violent mob lynchings in broad daylight? Worse still, when people resented such incidents — cast your mind to the killing of Mohammad Akhlaq in Dadri in 2015 — many in the ruling establishment, and those associated with it, tried to delegitimise protest and dissent.  

For many, including Ashok Vajpeyi, the editor of India Dissents, the Narendra Modi “regime appears to have convinced itself that it has the democratic right to crush all dissent, disagreement and opposition, even independent thought”. Of course, this is not happening for the first time. We have a relatively recent example of the Emergency being imposed by Indira Gandhi-led Congress party. But this book has been prompted by something more specific: it is the virulent strain of thinking today that justifies suppression of dissent “on the grounds that Indian traditions are being wrongly interpreted, and that there’s an urgent need to correct such distortions and prevent a civilisational collapse,” as Vajpeyi puts it. 

India Dissents: 3,000 years of difference, doubt and argument; Edited by: Ashok Vajpeyi;
Publisher: Speaking Tiger;
Pages: 546. Price: Rs 499

In his introduction, Vajpeyi, a poet and former art administrator as well as recipient of several literary awards, states: “A massive cultural amnesia is being spread through biased, unpardonably partisan cultural events, education and media.”

To counter this, he has attempted to refresh India’s memory about where it has stood, over the ages, on dissent. He quotes from various scriptures and writings, revered by different people for different reasons, and hence the sub-title: 3,000 years of difference, doubt and argument. 

The book, without being preachy, tells the story of India — the growth of its myriad beliefs and religions and sects — through the prism of dissent. It is divided into two parts. The first half is titled “Dissent in History” and the second “Dissent in Democracy”. The latter starts with excerpts from the Constituent Assembly debates, quotes a wide variety of politicians from B R Ambedkar to Kanu Sanyal, poets, artists and thinkers of independent India — from Firaq Gorakhpuri to T M Krishna  — and everyone in between including the Nobel-Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen to present day stand-up comedy star Varun Grover. No matter who you are, there will be a para, a couplet  or a phrase that will strike home. 

For instance, Adhinaayak by Hindi poet Raghuvir Sahay, might give readers a moment of pause and make them wonder why so many in India today are so afraid of speaking their minds:

“So who is this Lord of India’s Destiny in our anthem whose glories does every child in torn pyjamas sings?...

And just who exactly is this Jana-Gana-Mana-Adhinaayak,

This Emperor of our hearts and minds, who praise the frightened parrot every day, whether they want to or not? “

The more interesting half, however, is the second part, “Dissent in History”. While Uttar Pradesh’s chief minister, Yogi Adityanath, defends the crushing tyranny of caste by comparing it to the innocuous bunds on a farm, that is not how Gautam Buddha, who lived and propagated his wisdom is the same region from where Adityanath hails, saw caste. Nor did Mahavir. In fact, both Buddhism and Jainism, just as two examples, grew out of dissent against Hinduism. 

After sharing how Buddhist and Jain scriptures discard the notion of caste by birth, the book shares the sarcastic brilliance of  Subhashita, a form of poetry in Prakrit and Sanskrit. There are several examples here of the king being reproached through the mask of praise. For instance, Sohnoka, a Bengali poet who wrote in Sanskrit, describes his dilapidated house, overrun by serpents and bats, to the king in an ironic comment on the state of his subjects:

“O king, the jewel of the Saina dynasty!

Our house is just as the house

of your enemy ought to have been!”

Then there excerpts from the Kannada poetry of Virashaiva movement, which intensely argued for an egalitarian society. A key figure here was Basavanna, a 12th century Shaivite Brahmin who boldly questioned bigotry and hypocritical customs of society. It is ironical that slain journalist Gauri Lankesh’s brother failed to spot his sister’s similarity with Basavanna and instead saw fit to compare B S Yeddyurappa, the Bharatiya Janata Party leader who was also associated with the RSS, to the iconic social reformer. 

Both Buddhism and Jainism grew out of dissent against Hinduism. WikiMedia Commons

There is a section on the classic Tamil poets who expressed strong dissent against orthodox rituals and patriarchy. Uttiranallur Nangai, an “untouchable” woman poet, provocatively asks the elders in her village when they came to punish her for learning the Vedas from a Brahmin: Does a Brahmin burn differently from a lower caste?

The evidence of dissent and revolt against bigoted social norms and irrationality and the freedom to criticise even the most authoritarian rulers carries on to the Varkari movement in Maharashtra and onwards to include the teachings of the Sikh gurus, the sufis, the classical Telugu poets, the Bauls and the classical Urdu poets such as Ghalib and Mir.

A personal favourite is by Dara Shikoh and it is apt since we live in times where “godmen” rule our society, politics and our minds.

“May the world become free from the noise of the mullah,

And none should pay any heed to his decrees!

In the city where a mullah resides, no wise man ever stays.”