'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