Law will take its own course!

In public conversations, 'law will take its own course' tag has almost become a cliche. Law taking its own course is the most favorable course any case can take for the benefit of the accused. Corrupt politicians often take refuge under this umbrella to lengthen the courtroom proceedings, buy time and bailout culprits. This terminology in blame game politics implies that who ever is guilty of an offence will get punished as per law. Law will take its own course is meant for the educated people who are afraid of the law, which is not to be crossed over under any circumstances. Upholding the majesty of law and the principle of equality of all before the law, however high or mighty the persons may be, is the bounden duty of the government. In India, we have the best drafted laws but the problem is that the law enforcing agencies doesn't work effectively and the common people are the worst hit. The law almost never takes its own course in India. The state is always up to mischief against the citizen and the judiciary usually does not resist it. The conduct of democracy rests on three core ideas – representation, rule of law and freedoms. A substantive idea of representation goes beyond the minimalist protocol of electing representatives. It includes an idea of representation of voiceless people who do not know how to speak to power, or who do not know how to use existing laws to protect their lands and forests from rapacious loot by crony capitalists. The second feature of democracy is the rule of law and the accountability of those who implement and use law. The rule of law aims to protect and preserve the rights of people, and if these rights are being infringed, to provide recourse and remedies. And finally, democracy functions through a range of freedoms – to speak, express, form associations, dissent, basically through a mobilization and institutionalization of demands, and a competition of ideas and agendas. Dissent is the safety valve of democracy. If not allowed, the safety valve will burst. This is not part of some revolutionary ethic but comes out of a standard understanding of the mechanics of liberal democracy. Truth is self-effulgent. If truth requires evidence, what will evidence that evidence? - Swami Vivekananda

Hinduism, Islam and Christianity are equal

• Retired Chief Justice of the Delhi High Court, Ajit Prakash Shah, declared scathingly, “The Republic of Intolerance that India has turned into in the last few years reflects and confirms to us our collective psychological malady, where we have lost sensitivity to the pain of our fellow citizens, and have become numb to the increasing loss of rights as citizens.”
• Justice Shah confessed that his own roots were seeped in saffron: “My grandfather was one of the founding members of the Hindu Mahasabha in pre-Independent India. I grew up reading the poems of Veer Savarkar.”
• He said, “Until the day the RSS declares that Islam and Christianity are equal to Hinduism and other religions born in India, there will be little scope for social harmony.”
• He said that those who lead the mob violence are clearly doing so with impunity, while fear spreads amongst the minorities. The mobile phone and the violent content it brings to you has become a terrorising device, with mob lynchers recording their acts and spreading them.
• The home ministry has directed wide publicity of the severe punishments that participation and abetment to mob fury can draw, it needs to be seen how sincere the government is in implementing this stated intent, Justice Shah said.
• The Indian media has been a big disappointment. “Far from questioning the government on behalf of the people, the media today circulates fake news and questions those who question the government. If the media at large feels compromised, barring a few exceptions, then democracy is in peril. Lynchings have to be condemned by news anchors, not used as ‘masala’ for prime time television,” he said.
• Justice Shah said that in the recent judgement of the Supreme Court directing continued detention at home for activists accused of conspiracy, the value was is in the dissenting verdict of Justice DY Chandrachud. 
• “Dissent is being curbed. Sloganeering is becoming a test of patriotism. When Akhlaq was killed, it wasn’t his body that was sent for post-mortem first. It was the meat which was sent for testing,” he said, pointing out the prejudice in the law and order machinery.
• “When violence happens in small doses, and regularly, we find it hard to remain angry, and accept it as commonplace.”
• The hope for the nation lies in common citizens refusing to accept any deviation of the founding values of the Constitution, Justice Shah concluded.

The one-day event saw nearly 2,000 people register to attend and listen to various speakers, which also included the articulate MP Shashi Tharoor and student leader Kanhaiya Kumar.

Dissent in a democracy

From being called as a largest democracy to improbable democracy, democracy in India has in general received a positive note. No freedom can be absolute, for frequently freedom of one limits freedom of another. Dissent is the most essential ingredient of a democratic society and right to disobey is a legitimate form of dissent.

• In liberal democracies citizens have not only got the right to express their views but also the right to protest and express dissent against prevailing procedure and laws, so long as they do not rely on violence or coercion.
• Despite India’s failure to promote rapid economic development and abolish abject poverty, the country can be justifiably proud of having sustained a democratic order. 
• Resistance is a very old form of political action - much older than democracy itself. Resistance is a form of collective civil disobedience. It involves physical presence and solidarity; it appeals to moral law or human rights; it is usually illegal but non-violent; it is locally and communally based; its activists are angry citizens and lower-level officials. 
• We should promote it and celebrate it - and recognize at the same time that it is only half a politics. Resistance is a defensive politics, but we also need a politics of offense - a politics aimed at winning elections and seizing power.
• The protest movement is generally directed against political system or class or segment of the society or an organization considered harmful to the interest of those who have been activated in launching such protest.
• The only movement which has been clear about its ideology is Naxalite movement.
• Mahatma Gandhi gave a more strident expression when he called upon the people to listen to their conscience and refuse to accept what is unjust and morally unacceptable. He asked those joining him in non-cooperation and civil disobedience to resist unjust laws, but be willing to suffer the consequence of their actions. It is morally required that one must be willing to accept punishment for breaking the law because rule of law deserves respect.
• It is one’s duty to infuse the legal with morally just. If self-critique and change could be ushered in through reasoned argument, then all forms of action outside the domain of constitutionally mandated institutions would be unnecessary. 
• When reason fails to deliver and the quest for power and interests comes to dominate, maintaining the stability of a just constitution may require stronger action, including protests against institutionalized authority.
• It is with the help of protests that democracy grew and grew to give us this splendid shade under which most of us sit. It took decades of activism before women got the right to vote and before blacks became legally equal to the rest in America.
• Most of the protest movements in India have raised pertinent questions on the implementation of the directive principles of the constitution. The establishment’s general response to movements and their demonstrations is negative one. It treats movements and demonstrations as a law and order problem, instead of inquiring into their causes and seeking a solution through negotiations, and dispatches the police to suppress them. Adventures on the part of political establishment in India is its intolerant attitude towards protest and dissent.

Indian polity to remain as democratic needs greater maturity in accommodating dissent rather than rejecting every action as anarchic, and anti-constitutional. Every protest and dissent would not always necessarily be anarchic. Anarchy is dangerous but protest which is in the framework of democracy always revitalizes democracy.

One person’s anarchist could well be another person’s activist.

Patriotism

Patriotism is defined as love for or devotion to one's country. Frequently compared or contrasted with nationalism which is also loyalty and devotion to a nation; especially a sense of national consciousness exalting one nation above all others and placing primary emphasis on promotion of its culture and interests as opposed to those of other nations or supranational groups. The difference between patriotism and nationalism is that the patriot is proud of his country for what it does, and the nationalist is proud of his country no matter what it does; the first attitude creates a feeling of responsibility, but the second a feeling of blind arrogance that leads to war.

Some famous quotations are:

• When a nation is filled with strife, then do patriots flourish ... Lao Tzu
• Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel ... Samuel Johnson
• It is but refusing to gratify an unreasonable or an insolent demand, and up starts a patriot ... Robert Walpole
• No man can be a patriot on an empty stomach ... William Cowper
• There are seasons in every country when noise and impudence pass current for worth; and in popular commotions especially, the clamors of interested and factious men are often mistaken for patriotism ... Alexander Hamilton
• Guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism ... George Washington
• Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it ... Mark Twain
• Patriot is the person who can holler the loudest without knowing what he is hollering about ... Mark Twain
• Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious ... Oscar Wilde
• Patriotism consists not in waving the flag, but in striving that our country shall be righteous as well as strong ... James Bryce
• True patriotism hates injustice in its own land more than anywhere else ... Clarence Darrow
• Patriotism is not a short and frenzied outburst of emotion but the tranquil and steady dedication of a lifetime ... Adlai Stevenson
• Patriotism is looking out for yourself by looking out for your country ... Calvin Coolidge
• A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government ... Edward Abbey
• No matter that patriotism is too often the refuge of scoundrels. Dissent, rebellion, and all-around hell-raising remain the true duty of patriots ... Barbara Ehrenreich
• Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism - how passionately I hate them! ... Albert Einstein
• Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty ... John F. Kennedy
• Patriotism is when love of your own people comes first; nationalism, when hate for people other than your own comes first ... Charles de Gaulle
• If we love our country, we should also love our countrymen ... Ronald Reagan
• I saw courage both in the Vietnam War and in the struggle to stop it. I learned that patriotism includes protest, not just military service ... John F. Kerry
• Unless our conception of patriotism is progressive, it cannot hope to embody the real affection and the real interest of the nation ... Jane Addams
• I don't want to see the military falling. I want to see the military rising to dignified heights of professionalism and true patriotism ... Aung San Suu Kyi
• Dissent is the highest form of patriotism ... Howard Zinn
• Real patriotism is a willingness to challenge the government when it's wrong ... Ron Paul

Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel; 

Pseudo patriotism is the last refuge of the incompetent.

My View:
Modi invoking patriotism following fiasco due to his senseless demonetization to cover up his unauthorized decision is nothing but tyranny. His cabinet ministers, BJP MPs, several opposition leaders and even media were suppressed in raising dissent for the fear of being branded as anti-nationals by Modi with unchallenged grip on the country.Propaganda that cashless transaction as a solution with out any infrastructure or public awareness is a diversionary tactic from the man made economic disaster.

Ironically, middle class educated and salaried classes who were in complete disconnect with poor, peasants and rural masses were solidly behind Modi with blind belief that desired results will be achieved despite crores of people confined to queues for over 40 days for their meager cash needs and queue deaths nearing 100 and informal sector grounded.

From the above quotes it clear that dissenting, challenging and fighting tyrannical government which destroyed the nation with its ill conceived, secretly unveiled and unscientific demonetization is patriotic, but not silently co-operating. Modi not taking experts into confidence for bailing out the national chaos with corrective measures and blindly going in the same wrong direction with increasing speed is nothing but insanity. 

All political parties and people should unite and dislodge Modi from seat of power and save the nation from his authoritarian regime, otherwise we will find ourselves ten years backwards with democracy and institutions facing extinction.

Singing national anthem has nothing to do with either patriotism or nationalism.