SubscriberWrites: Let sleeping dogs lie and barking dogs bark

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This title for the article would be apt to cite the incarceration of dissenters across the world. Every nation has someone who becomes a dissenter because of their political leanings or injustice meted out by the government in power. Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely- Lord Acton and that is why every arrest of dissenter is a display of the scale of corruptness of power.  Why should governments across the world be worried about dissent unless they consider there is some iota of truth or an inconvenient truth  in the case, leading to dissent? When truths become inconvenient, it is then States take it to their heart and try to crush dissent either by using the law which has no bearing on the cause of dissent or by plain brute force. That is a problem across the world. Instead of trying to correct the issue at hand or what caused the dissent, States across the world try to muzzle dissent through the brute force of law, riding shod over human rights. Modern nations are replete with examples of crushing dissent by the use of law. The use of law is a modern phenomenon used as an antidote to crush dissent.

If every utterance by an anguished individual is a statement against the integrity  and sovereignty of a nation, then on a similar vein every utterance by either spouse should shake the foundations of family life and end in divorce, every student who questions a science teacher in school on a particular experiment or theory should be expelled from school, every man who questions the existence of God or a religious practice should be excommunicated from the community. If this were so Newton wouldn’t have discovered the force of gravity. Copernicus discovered that the earth revolves around the sun and it remained a stellar scientific truth. However, Galileo was not only excommunicated, but was also suspected of heresy by the Church and was placed under house arrest when he propounded helio-centrism. He did it because he questioned the phenomenon . 

When a child is born in a country he or she is a citizen by birth. On birth, the individual rights as a citizen  have been signed away to the State by the force of law and as a  quid pro quo every State assures its citizen of rights in return. That is how rights are  balanced between the State and its citizens. When one right is taken away from the citizen, there is an imbalance of power between the State and the citizen. The right to criticize is an implicit reading into the fundamental rights of freedom of speech, guaranteed by a State. 

Poets, authors, artists, journalists, lawyers and teachers have a great role to play in a society. They are the guardians against excess power and abuse of power of the State.   Every utterance is not a dissent, every painting is not a picture of dissent, every investigative article by a journalist is not an essay on dissent, every case a lawyer fights for fundamental rights is not a display of dissent, every teacher who teaches political theory or political struggle is not a  dissenter  and every poet who writes on the crushing power of hunger in a country or curtailed freedom in a State, is not a dissenter.  Utterances by these people are a cry against the pain or injustice of a policy and that must be heard by the powers that be. They must rectify the actions that have caused pain or injustice or offer succor or justify the need for such an action.  Only then one can say there is true freedom and democracy celebrated in its true spirit. 

A State needs to have  broad shoulders for they are to carry the weight of the people on its shoulders. These shoulders must be able to carry the aspirations, fears, tears, hopes, anguish, joy of its people  and for that it needs to have very broad shoulders. Its shoulders must be broad like Atlas of the Greek mythology who carried the heavens on his shoulders. The first indication of a lack of its ability to carry these on its shoulders, is the arrest of those who write or suppress the cries and aspirations of its citizens.  A State needs to have shoulders that are wide and big to carry the aspirations of its citizens without fear or favour. A lack of this is an indication that a State is weak at its foundation. 

To prove otherwise, a State must let sleeping dogs lie and barking dogs bark. To disturb this state of equilibrium is to show that the State is weak at its foundation and is disturbed by the bark of a dog and the sleep of a  sleeping dog. 

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