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.