Tender are the words

Where books are burnt and the mind is cowered with fear, 

where the so called doyens of public morality are given a free hand 

where the voice of reason is stifled with wild emotion

where words come out of depth of government rule books

And led into ever narrowing thought and action.

Into that hell of bondage, my father, let my country slumber

--RN Tagore 

Since the censor board, the hooligans, the shrill 'sentimentalists', the government officials are now so afraid of the dissident voices, or even the truth for that matter, wouldn't it be fair to edit the redundant calls of freedom made by past revolutionaries? Preempting that kind of an action, I decided to edit the famous ' Where the mind is without fear' of Tagore. 

I hope I will soon get congratulationary notes by the MHA, by the press networks owned by media barons, by industry lobbyists and by the fanatics belonging to every caste, religion or creed. Truly it may be watershed moment in the annals of our history. Already over the years, the ability to express has been stifled with years of subtle changes to law, with incarcerations and with unwillingness to protect the outspoken critics and so it seems only natural that we leave any hypocrisy of freedom of expression behind. 

Benevolent Shielders

Surely the infantile public that resides in India cannot bear anything that challenges the preset notions, surely it cannot handle anything slanderous, anything that deviates from traditional discourse. The doctors have coined a term for it, Outrage Violenta. It is a deadly disease spread by any sort of enlightening conversation. Recommended precautions are staying an arms length from any such person and gagging them as soon as possible. Culling is done if the other measures don't work. 

For years we have heard the discourse of outraged modesty and hurt sentimentality. Any unnatural ideas such as atheism, female rights, sex or for that matter any difficult subject has been banned for it hurts emotions. The definition of the rational man, for determining offence is now modelled on the victim from a Disprin ad. It seems odd that despite having a fundamental right of expression, the only expression allowed is the repetitive bleating of the sheep. Government officials have recommended bleating highly to relieve one self of stress and attain 'Moksha'. 

Learning From the Best

North Korea, or rather the Democratic People's Republic of Korea holds elections and describes itself as a socialist state. There is an elaborate cult of personality around its leaders with it's people believing the leader Kim Jong il to have created the universe and the weather. There are no underground literary critics or dissident writers. Foreign works are mostly limited to fairy tales. It seems that every one is perfectly happy there, gauging by the lack of any opposition to governments policies and ideologies.

The notion of a democratic state, the notion of a constitution, of police all amount to null when they cannot setup a mechanism to protect its citizens, when they cannot create an atmosphere of liberal debate. The expression of 'disturbing peace' has been used so often that it has become the automatic response mechanism in coping with any threatening idea. What is then the difference between us and a fascist state, except the musical chairs played in political circles? 

'Where they have burned books, they will end in burning human beings' said Christian Johann Heinrich Heine. He was proved right, agonisingly so when the Nazi regime came in power. This is the fundamental nature of ideas. If the right ones aren't allowed, if the wrong ones aren't debated, then hypocrisy rules and the most hypocritical ones get to rule. I desperately hope for a different future for our nation. But for that, we all may have to be a little less sensitive, a little more open, a lot more compassionate and understanding. 

'Going on the other way' is a topic too sensitive for Indian ears to write

Ravi can't be dimmed

In one of the best cinematic performances, Mel Gibson stands as the Scottish hero William Walace in front of his demoralised army and exhorts them to fight for their rights. The lines that he uses have since become immemorial. This is what he says as a response to a soldier who asks him why should he fight when he could run and survive.
“Aye, fight and you may die. Run and you’ll live — at least a while. And dying in your beds many years from now, would you be willing to trade all the days from this day to that for one chance, just one chance to come back here and tell our enemies that they may take our lives, but they’ll never take our freedom!!!’’

In the fight against tyranny, there are seldom such heroes which can galvanise entire communities and lead them into a fight for the higher cause, there are seldom such men who don’t care about their own well being in the fight for what’s right and what ought to be, rather than compromise and deal with what is. It wouldn’t be wrong to say, that it is only because of handful of these men that our nation stands today.

Mark of Honesty
DK Ravi was one such man. He might not look like Mel Gibson, but his deeds were just as worthy. The mark of an honest IAS officer in our country is sadly not the awards that were bequeathed to him, but the number of transfers that he was awarded with and in this case, the officer was a highly decorated war hero with 28 transfers to his name. He was also currently fighting as a one man army against the land mafia, and winning it too, gauging by the extreme step that had to be taken by them to control him.
The question on everyone’s mind shouldn’t be ‘who killed him?’ but rather, what has happened to us as a society that makes punishing its finest officers the norm rather than the exception. In the past too, officers like Durga Shakti Nagpal and Mr. Khemka have been taken to the books for doing their duty honestly. There’s an implicit understanding prevalent in the civil society that ‘too much’ honesty wouldn’t be tolerated and the price for that would have to be paid ultimately.

Cowered down Nation
That the people have come en masse to protest against the irregularities of this death just goes on to show how fed up the people have become of the corruption in their daily lives. The vicious circle of giving in to corrupt demands and thus further promoting them seems to have entered it’s breaking point. The problem is that we have stopped questioning these practices and we seem to have accepted corruption as inevitable. No one wants to be the hero and stand up for what’s right.

The ideology of ‘chalta hai’ is what makes the problem stick even after so many years of independence. The roots of the problem go down to the core of people’s thinking. Instead of choosing the morally upright candidates, the public goes for the ones who they think can solve their problems by hook or by crook. No one is concerned much about the ramifications of selecting a dishonest politician on broader society, if he can ‘deliver’ on the development front.
The politicians too, having had spent massive amounts on getting elected, want ‘returns’ on their investment. They encourage the corrupt segments of the executives to get their ‘cuts’ and have to bow down to the interests of the businessmen, the mafia who had financed their victory. From the ballot to the highest public office, the entire process is thus mired in darkness.

Honouring a Hero
It is in these circumstances that officers like DK Ravi have risen. They have striven to keep clear of the pressures of the politicians in doing their duty and given a big blow to the economic interests of the corrupt. But, what they have really done is more than that, what they have done is to give birth to an idea. An idea that it’s not acceptable to be corrupt any longer, that an officer has to do his duty no matter what the consequence, an idea that true courage requires us to walk on the right path despite all the allurements and dangers of doing so. Public imagination has been caught by this idea, an almost romantic notion of selfless duty. There would be protests, there would be marches, there would be an intense scrutiny on this case. But that is not how we truly honour our heroes. To truly honour them, we need to change our mindset, to stop accepting corruption as a norm, to strive like vigilantes against all the wrongs in the society. This we have to do now and not in our twilight years, when we have more than had our share and we take up the cause of good as a saving grace for our soul.

When it comes to it, dying on our beds, we would happily trade all of the years of cowering under tyranny of the wicked for that one glorious moment of upholding justice like Ravi.