The Song of Democracy

“If I have to take police protection in my own country from my own people, then there is something wrong with me, I’m fighting within the framework of the Indian constitution and it is not against anyone, but for everyone.”^[1]

-Narendra Dabholkar

 

On August 20^th 2013, Narendra Dabholkar was shot dead while out on a morning walk. A doctor by vocation, he was a rationalist on a mission to eradicate superstition and the practise of black magic in the state of Maharashtra in India. He ruffled many a political feather and antagonised quite a few religious sects. He was an atheist, but his fight was not against God or people’s religious sentiments. His organization, ‘Maharashtra AndhashraddhaNirmoolanSamiti’ (MANS, Committee for eradication of Blind faith in Maharashtra) formulated the ‘Anti-Superstition & Black Magic Ordinance’ which criminalises practices related to human sacrifices, black magic, use of magic ailments for curing diseases and other such exploitative acts.^[1]

Four rounds of shots were fired from a point-blank range, no questions asked.^[2]His assailants didn’t argue the merits or demerits of the bill, didn’t try to understand his point-of-view, they were not even in mood to strike a compromise. They felt threatened by his work, and they simply chose to stifle his voice once and for all.Whether Dabholkar was right or not, is a moot point. In the world’s largest democracy, deliverance took precedence over debate or dialogue. A hue and cry erupted after his death. Posthumously, the ordinance was enacted into the law by the Maharashtra government, and he was also awarded Padma Shri, India’s fourth-highest civilian award. But then, the damage was already done.

THE GREAT DIVIDE

We live in a society that is quick to take offense and unable to stand a diverging opinion. Online trolls are used to shoot down ideas not in line with popular sentiments, books and effigies are burnt, property is damaged, and people are blackmailed, assaulted and in some cases, killed. Being offended by something isn’t wrong, but taking the law in your hands doesn’t necessarily pave the path for conflict resolution. One might argue that it is only the fringe section of the society that is responsible for this attack on free speech. If it were so, public outrage would have led to their decline.

One major reason for the absence of outrage, is the increasing polarization of public opinion. Increasing partisanship and selective filtering of information blindsides people from making an objective assessment of any situation, and these distorted mental maps lead them to make choices that might be fallacious – whether it be the recent US Presidential elections or Brexit. According to William Poundstone, today’s mediascape also doesn’t offer any guidance. In his book ‘Head in the Cloud’, he says: “It [mediascape] encourages us to create personal, solipsistic filters over information, making it unprecedentedly easy to gorge on news of favourite celebrities, TV shows, political ideologies, and tech toys.”^[3] We don’t know what we don’t know, and we couldn’t care less.

We no longer deliberate, but instead echo the opinions and fears of those around us – neighbours, friends, family. Our ill-formed opinions and ideological differences are often a result of this herd-mentality than a careful deliberation of facts. And the demagogues take advantage of this tendency to gain political bandwidth across caste and religious lines. On the pretext of hurting religious sentiments, censorship and banning of art and literature is rampant across the country. From Salman Rushdie to Taslima Nasreen, everyone has borne the brunt of the Hate Speech laws – whose utter ambiguity fails to distinguish between deliberate provocation and a balanced critique. Blanket ban and curtailment of the freedom of speech is carried out by few ideologues in the name of the vast citizenry of the country, which is largely uninformed/misinformed. Tabloid news has replaced hard-hitting journalism to bolster viewership – which doesn’t do much in educating the population with lower attention spans.

That’s why, we need to have a “disruptive” social platform which encourages public debate and dialogue on issues of the day which not only forces people to see the two sides of the coin, but alsochallenge regressive societal norms, and in the process, refine and elevate public opinion so that they could make informed decisions.

AN ANCIENT DEBATING CULTURE

A platform for discussion is not a revolutionary concept. The long tradition of deliberation and dialogue have been prevalent throughout ages and across all the major cultures of the world. But it is often said that the idea of democracy is typically Western in origination. Often it is believed that a dichotomy exists between Eastern and Western philosophies – that the Western thought allows for scepticism and heterodoxy, whereas Eastern thought is mostly faith-based and unreasoning. In ‘The Argumentative India’, the Nobel laureate Amartya Sen incontrovertibly proves that India, a melting pot of various Eastern philosophies, has not been a “country of uncritical faiths and unquestioned practices”^[4].

An argumentative tradition has long been prevalent in the country, and as a representative example – one should look at the 3^rd Buddhist Council organized under the patronage of Emperor Ashoka in the third century BCE in the ancient city of Pataliputra (now, Patna). These Buddhist councils were organized to primarily resolve religious disputes in an open environment, and to a lesser extent, the differences in the social and the civic duties. Ashoka formulated certain codes of conduct for the discussion – one of them being, ‘restraint in regard to speech, so that there should be no extolment of one’s own sect or disparagement of other sects on inappropriate occasions, and it should be moderate even on appropriate occasions’^[4]. He provided a platform for uninhibited public discussion in a climate of mutual respect.

Roughly two thousand years later, Mughal Emperor Akbar sponsored and supported multi-religion dialogic encounters in his capital city, Agra – wherein he promoted a “pursuit of reason” in lieu of “reliance of tradition”^[4]. Even atheists and agnostics were well-represented – the Carvaka school of thought which denied the existence of God as well soul for that matter, while holding true all that is material – wasselected to make a presentation in these dialogues. Throughout ancient Indian history, we would find numerous examples of such dialogic encounters across caste, creed and gender.

OF POETRY AND SONG

So,what does the author propose to do in this day and age to foster a tradition for debate? It was Thomas Hardy who had said, “If Galileo had said in verse that the world moved, the inquisition might have left him alone”. A poetic treatment channelling both – emotion and logic, would pave a path for holistic conflict resolution!Human beings are emotional creatures – their response to any situation or conflict, derives as much from emotion as from logic, if not more. Cold rationality becomes much more nuanced if sprinkled with emotion, the interplay of the two via the medium of the poetry can become a powerful tool for dialogue.

‘Debate poems’^[5] as a literary form, have been quite popular in England and France during the late medieval period wherein a dialogue between natural dichotomies,i.e. sun and the moon, were explored. But the central theme of this essay isn’t fixated on any form of poetry (it can even be a haiku, ghazal or rap) or any language, butis concerned more with abetting a‘verbal joust’. And as jousts go, Indian parliamentarians have long used poetry as a tool to make a point. In fact, between February and May 2016, members of parliament (MPs) of the Lower House had recited 43 poems (mainly in form of ghazals), making the 16^th Lok Sabha the most poetic of all sessions.^[6] One is reminded of the poetic duel between the former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and the Leader of Opposition, SushmaSwaraj as they channelled Urdu poet MirzaGhalib and Hindi poet Bashir Badr respectively, while debating on the issue of corruption charges against the government!^[7]

The reason for selecting poetry as a medium is to bring the art of debate to the common people, so that it is no longer the realm of the privileged few. And because it is entertaining, it would hold the attention spans, and people would be more likely to appreciate contrarian viewpoints. And just like the ‘street theatre’, which is an effective tool for spreading awareness about important issues of the day, these debates would be out on the road, in between the people.

So how would this format work?

In February 2014, Penguin Publishing House voluntarily recalled ‘The Hindus: An Alternative History’ by Wendy Doniger from the market and pulped all the copies within 6 months. Immediately after the publication of the first edition in 2009, Dina Nath Batra, a school teacher and member of the right-wing organization RSS had filed a criminal and civil law-suit against the publisher and the author for “deliberate and malicious acts intended to outrage religious feelings of any class.”^[8] Instead of fighting a long-drawn-out battle in the legal courtroom, Penguin caved in and decided to withdraw the book*.

I would like to paint an alternate scenario.

Immediately after the publication of the first edition of ‘The Hindus: An Alternative History’ by Wendy Doniger in 2009, Dina Nath Batra, a school teacher and member of the right-wing organization RSS had filed a criminal and civil law-suit against the publisher and the author for “deliberate and malicious acts intended to outrage religious feelings of any class.”

Penguin, on its part, invited Dina Nath Batra in a televised poetic debate ona prominent news channel. Prior to the debate, a third party ran a poll to gauge the public opinion on the matter. On the D-Day, Penguin lined a panel of scholars, experts and celebrity authors led by Wendy Doniger herself while Dina Nath Batra spearheaded the team of RSS pracharaks, pundits and politicians. What followed was a colourful, entertaining and enlightening display of logic and emotion in pithy Sanskrit chants, pure Hindi quotes and verbose English poetry. At the end of the session, another poll was run asking the viewers for their opinion on the issue. Post-debate poll results were compared with pre-debate poll results, and a dramatic difference in public opinion was observed**.

Furthermore, focus groups were conducted across the country. From the holy city of Varanasi to the metropolitan Mumbai, townhall-styled poetic debates were organized at 15 locations in the country, which collectively pulled in a crowd of around 25,000 people. Along with the experts, even the common man took the centre-stage to express his opinion. These events were widely publicized in the local newspapers.

Polling results from the televised debate as well as the 15 focus groups were submitted to the court of law, which took them into considering while mulling over the verdict.

Organizing large number of discussions across the country is going to be a costly undertaking, it would also be a slow process as we would be going out on the street to get people’s opinion. But with time, it would rake in sponsorship money courtesy the number of eyeballs it would grab, so the process can eventually become self-sufficient. What it would also do, is make people deliberate over issues, encourage them to participate in the governance of the nation, aid leaders in gauging the demands of an informed citizenry, protect freedom of speech and the secular credentials of the nation, and deepen the democracy. Not a small feat/challenge for a “disruptive” idea!

*‘The Hindus: An Alternative History’ did make a comeback a year later with an independent publisher Speaking Tiger^[7]

**This type of polling is ‘Deliberative Polling’, pioneered by University of Texas Professor James S. Fishkin^[3][9]

 

References: –

1. Jadhav, Radheshyam. “Doctor who fought to stamp out Superstition”. Times of India, http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Doctor-who-fought-to-stamp-out-superstition/articleshow/21945021.cms
2. Gokhale, Sandhya and Palekar, Amol. “Sorry Doctor, we don’t deserve you”. The Hindu, http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/sorry-doctor-we-didnt-deserve-you/article5065450.ece
3. Poundstone, William. (2016). Head in the cloud. London, London: Oneworld Publications
4. Sen, Amartya. (2005). The Argumentative Indian: Writings on Indian History, Culture & Identity. London, London: Picador Publications
5. Burt, Kathleen. (2009).Argument in Poetry: (Re)Defining the Middle English Debate in Academic, Popular, and Physical Contexts. Marquette University, Wisconsin,http://epublications.marquette.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1365&context=dissertations_mu
6. Moloney, Charlie (IndiaSpend). “Why the 16^thLokSabha was the most poetic in Indian Parlianment’s history”. The Hindustan Times, http://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/mps-recited-43-poems-in-16th-lok-sabha-breaking-previous-poetic-records/story-eGm9xQA6L9gVyjSnuEj3hP.html
7. “Parliament witnesses poetic duel between Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and SushmaSwaraj”. India Today, http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/manmohan-singh-sushma-swaraj-urdu-couplets-parliament/1/256747.html
8. Mahesh. “Doniger’s Hindus returns, 20 months after its withdrawal”. Pune Mirror, http://punemirror.indiatimes.com/news/india/Donigers-Hindus-returns-20-months-after-its-withdrawal/articleshow/50080603.cms
9. Fishkin, James and Luskin, Robert. (2005). Experimenting with a democratic ideal: Deliberative Polling and Public Opinion. ActaPolitica, Amsterdam, https://www.uvm.edu/~dguber/POLS234/articles/fishkin.pdf