Skip to main content

Save Dissent NOW!

A patriot is one whose heart beats true to the country. While our archetypal vision of a patriot happens to be of pre-independence liberators and smartly dressed khaki suited army men, they happen to be a minority in the patriotic community. Howard Zinn, historian and playwright, once said: "Dissent is the highest form of patriotism." His words imply the significance of dissent in any nation. Agreeably, dissent plays a remarkably fundamental role as the guiding star of a nation's democratic polity. 

The real heroes of any nation's success lie shadowed and filmed over by overhanging politicians aiming to desist dissent amongst the voters. While we continually see incumbent governments whipping out advertisement campaigns and fiery speeches for patriotism and army service, almost rarely does any incumbent parliamentarian wish for active citizen participation. 

Dissenters in India who reject the incredulous proposal of the Citizenship Amendment Act of 2019, have taken to the streets. As they sloganeered and rallied, the police were compelled into action by the government (doubtlessly). The next few steps the police took surged a nation-wide student-led movement from colleges across India. It was police brutality. 

As video footage piled in on news channels, fear flooded the Indian populace. Fear shifted quickly to rage.  Images of police officers cornering protestors and caning them with stout bamboo lathis were disturbing and inciting. Peaceful marches instantly turned into chases unto death. Demonstrators at odds with the government were detained in quick succession for unknown causes. Many innocent civilians were caught in the crossfire. The events culminated with a dozen deaths of protestors and horrific injuries for civilians. 

The government expects the Indian citizens to enjoy brotherly splits and communal discrimination. We are not a group of yesmen and assenters. We do not want the failure of democracy. The government must be shown the power of active citizenship. It is time to take to the streets and protest. If not for the CAA, for the innocent civilians killed for supporting democracy. No man's life should die in vain. There is a tinge of sadness with which the author drops the pen, hoping that fellow citizens and brothers will rise in support of each other.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Dawn of Isratin

  ‘The metaphor for Palestine is stronger than the Palestine of reality’ – Mahmoud Darwish, Palestinian Poet. Dark plumes of smoke rose in the air, heralding a doom of unendurable potency. Widow and Widower, Orphan and Vilomah, all formed in an instant – as a missile crashes into their building. They are the unwilling victims of a war they are not part of. As children cry for their dead fathers, and vice versa, who really cares about the idea of Palestine if it comes at a cost which cannot and should not be borne. Except there is no alternative. Palestinians would not hesitate to live in Israel, but they are not allowed. Persecution, oppression, execution: that is the only fate which meets those who try to cross those imaginary lines which mark Israel from Palestine. And for those imaginary lines, wars are fought, homes are ravaged and people, precious people who are born with one and only life, are killed, mercilessly, causelessly, and inhumanely.  Although many people mark...

Math: Invention or Discovery?

  Why is one plus one two? Why is anything into zero zero? Why is two to the power zero one? Any mathematician would categorically reply to you, sighing deeply, that these are axioms in math; that they’re obvious . But are they really that obvious? And what really are axioms? Most significantly, what even is math, using certainties in a world where only uncertainty is certain? Is the universe really just math, or are we being presumptuous of our talents? Was math invented, or discovered? What are axioms? Merriam-Webster defines an axiom as ‘a statement accepted as true as the basis for argument or inference/an established rule or principle or a self-evident truth/a maxim widely accepted on its intrinsic merit’. A common feature of any mathematics textbook, they are those statements which we commit to our memory without question and utilise for the rest of our lives. If you are reading this, it’s almost guaranteed that you have studied some level of mathematics (as you are literate)...

Beyond Paradise on Earth: Kashmir

On a quintessentially frosty midwinter morning, a lone conifer stands tall, cursed with eternal greenery, looking onto the icy virgin snow by the glacial river while basking in the glory of the icy peaks behind it. This is Kashmir. Paradise on Earth. When the winter clears, the land will coruscate with its verdant scenery all around, completed by the frolicking of animals, birds, and children. Or rather, if winter clears. For the wintry dark hands of indifference, deceit, manipulation, hatred, and jealousy control Kashmir now. Where there used to be nature and villages, forming the milk of human kindness, there are now ugly machinated military camps and their soldiers, forming the dung of inhumanity. Where there once was heaven, there now is hell. Kashmir is a land that has been long embroiled in the Indian subcontinent’s gratuitous power struggles. These struggles and their subsequent pyrrhic and temporary victories have extracted a heavy toll from Kashmir. Who can we possibly blame f...