Freedom Run Goes Amok

In those days I was quite crazy about international cinema especially of the Festival kind. So when Godard released his Je vous salue, Marie (Hail Mary), I went to Bradford to see its special screening. As I approached the theatre, I saw a long protest march headed by a Cardinal in full regalia stationed at the gate. When I was about to enter one of the protesters came to me and said, “This film hurts the feelings of the Catholics, I would therefore, request you to boycott it.” I thought for a while and asked him, “Do you mind if I watch the film and make up my mind?” He immediately stepped back and allowed me in. I watched the film and came out – a bit titillated as it had some nude scenes, but no wiser either about the Catholic protest or the film, as it was in French – and went back home without a trace of any of the protesters around.  But what I did understand was how freedom can be exercised in a civilized manner. Freedom is not entirely my right; it is as much the right of others which I have no right to trespass.

Freedom in my country is understood in a whole new perspective. Freedom here is pitching your camping tent in the middle of the road for a protest, charity kitchen or religious celebration. Freedom is burning buses, trains, theatre or others’ property as a mark of your campaign. Freedom is blocking half the road for displaying your merchandise or mindlessly parking your vehicles. Freedom is speeding up and roaring through the town streets on motorbikes with high-decibel exhausts. Freedom is playing out blaring loudspeakers in the middle of the night for your family festivities. Freedom is clearing your home of garbage and piling it on the street. Freedom is selling adulterated food to unsuspecting public or charging ten times on life-saving drugs with no moral qualm. Freedom is giving a damn to others’ consideration and minding your own interests.

Not only the common people, our leaders too exercise this no-holds barred freedom. They have the right to use whatever means to amass unaccounted wealth and assets. They have the right to plunder the state exchequer with high pay packets, privileges and facilities and yet remain out of the tax net. They have the right, despite having majority support, to feel insecure and charge the state for their safety and honour. They have the right to buy their voters and then dump them to oblivion. They have the right to bully their dissidents with criminal violence or use the most prejudiced and offensive language in public. Above all, they have the right to tell blatant lies and make false promises and claims. In brief, they have the right to prioritise their self-interest and exploit the state without caring for the real thing – that is the public good.

Is it freedom, lawlessness, selfishness or the excess of a raw democracy? E.B. White writes that “Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time.” If democracy is a system of governance ‘by the people, for the people’, then, does it mean whatever people do is always right? Do leaders follow what people want or people follow what leaders want? Unfortunately, in our context, there does not seem much difference. Is it a typical case of people getting the leaders they deserve? Or of the might of ignorance getting the better of intelligence? Winston Churchill once said that the best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter. Is it the lowest intellectual denominator that runs our democracy? Does that make a good case for discrediting democracy that led us to this pass?

I do not know. And can’t even tell when the rot started. Certainly, it wasn’t so bad some seventy years ago. Teachers used to tell young learners to always keep others’ interest in mind; they would even punish us severely if we stole anything of others. Elders in the streets would stop us and tell not to shout as someone may be sick or sleeping. Parents would not let us play radio at high volume. Anybody in the neighbourhood would step in if we did something to hurt ourselves or others. Police was not such an intimidating face; in fact they were always the first to look forward to in case of a rescue. Political leaders also presented the look of a public head or a benign community chief. Civic training and disciplining of individuals started early at home.

Is civilized living merely a question of disciplining individuals? In a way, it is. Or is it a question of enforcing the laws of the land? Yes, that too, because to me, both are the same. Fortunately, the laws in our country are in the right place. Though, they are not as strict as in some western countries where you can be fined even for not mowing your lawn as the pest can harm the neighbours.

Disciplining people or making them abide the laws is essentially an exercise in social and mental control of individuals.  It is not fascism, though it works nearly the same way whether one is in a despotic or democratic set up. Laws are always enforced with a strong hand. Foucault in his book Discipline and Punish has traced the development of modern western societies by describing how the institution of punishment evolved from a spectacle of public brutalising of criminals in medieval times to the present day reformatory prisons. He asserts that all institutions like jails, schools, hospitals, corporate offices, factories and army barracks etc. work on the same principle of controlling an individual’s temporal and spatial movements. The exercise of high mental control ensures that individuals do not trespass their rights and encroach upon others’.

How long does a nation take to get conditioned to the public norms and show the expected standards of behaviour? Nobody can tell exactly. But, in our case, I guess, if we took seventy years to go down the civic or moral aberration road, then it may take about the same time to come back – that is from the date we start.

The bad news is that we haven’t started yet and don’t even plan to start any soon. The worse is that proverbial question – who will bell the cat?