NEW DELHI: You Cannot Dissent: this is the message loud and clear from the ruling elite.
Thats a given.
But the questions that then arise are: who is a dissenter? and how does one not dissent?
The Citizen has put together some broad do’s and don’ts as weekend advice to save our readers from being killed by the police in fake encounters, being thrown into jail without bail, or just plain assault by right wing private armies. The list is based on a careful perusal of events and incidents over the past one year by our Research team.
DONT’s:
1. Don’t be poor. Try and get out of at least the below poverty line threshold to a safer threshold where you are not so totally at the mercy of the sharks of different colours, with many in uniform. The recent massacre of 20 poor labourers by the Andhra Pradesh police is a case in point. The police and the state government have justified this massacre, maintaining that the men including the seven dragged out of a bus by the cops, were all smugglers. Sandalwood farming is a rich man’s crime but the poorest of the poor working as labour became the targets and were killed with impunity.
2. Don’t be a Muslim or a Christian. You are automatically suspect. And can die when they attack your home, in an engineered act of communal violence, or in an encounter that are increasing on a daily basis. If you escape from all this, you can be killed in custody. The massacre of five Muslim youth by the Telangana police is an example of the same with their relatives, human rights activists asking for a high level judicial probe into the incident that is being condemned from all across the country.
3. Don’t be a Woman. You are the target of every anti-social out there, including relatives and elected representatives. And if raped cannot even file a complaint without undergoing severe humiliation at the hands of the police, and even of governments in power.
4. Don’t be an activist. And certainly not a ‘five star’ activist. For if you are you can be choked of all funding, as anything you do, any issue you raise will be dubbed anti national. Particularly worse are those working with foreign funded NGOs and taking up global issues of freedoms and rights for this then works against “our” interests and places “you” on the side of the anti-nationals campaigning against nuclear dangers when “we” want to be a nuclear power; pesticides in our crops that threatens “our” food security; and filming of documentaries on “our” forests (that “we” of course can plunder and destroy at will); and so on and so forth. Also remember you cannot contest an election, even if you resign from the concerned NGO, as it can show up in a dossier well after the event as it has in the government chargesheet against Greenpeace.
5. Don’t drive in Delhi. Road Rage will get you sooner or later.
DO’s:
1. Praise the government, as often and as loudly as possible then you can be any of the above without a problem;
2. Speak softly, always. Concur never demur, or contradict, or dissent.
And in the process remember that there are two sets of laws, one for the citizens and one for the governments and the ruling establishment. The Citizen Research Team came up with some dual laws for the benefit of our readers:
1. Citizens cannot shoot documentaries with foreign money on environment, protests, human rights and other such issues without attracting the government’s whip; defence middlemen representing foreign multinationals can crowd the corridors of power with envelopes and suitcases to push their case. The first is anti-national, the second of course totally in tune with the growth and development of India;
2. For citizens the world is round and flat, and unbridgeable. So rights and freedoms cannot cross international boundaries, and have to remain confined within Indian’ national’ parameters, those who transgress can face the governments wrath; for the politicians and the corporates the world is small, with money travelling easily across borders to facilitate ‘growth and development’ through foreign direct investments, land acquisitions, nuclear laws and understandings. The first is anti-national, the second totally national.
In short money is international. And for this purpose the government and the politician has institutionalised an exchange system ---through banks for the obviously well to do citizens, but through hawala and Swiss Banks for the even more privileged. Rights and freedoms are not international. So make no mistake as anyone daring to even think so can attract the ‘national’ laws.
The Citizen will keep posting these updates in the interest of its readers.