Long back I had read an opinion in the newspaper talking about “others“. He said Indians are not liked by Hongkongers because they did atrocity on them under the British regime that native Chinese refuses to do because native Chinese think of Chinese as “us” and all others including British as “others“. He argued that Indians have a different sense of “us” and “others” and do not depend on nationality. He also wondered if Jaliawalan bag could ever occur in China while it happened in India where Indian soldiers fired on their own Indian unarmed civilians under the direction of a foreigner Britisher. That idea stuck to me and made me keep pondering over it over years.
I realized his premise is wrong for two accounts. 1) Chinese did on themselves far worse atrocity than jallianwalan incident in the form of the Tianmen Square massacre where they don’t just use guns but tanks too on their own unarmed Chinese civilians. 2) I read in my studies about the ‘in’famous Milgram experiments and obedience to authority. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment). In short, in that experiment, common people like you and me were found to be willing to do atrocities on our own people under directives. They did not put the onus of doing atrocities on their own concise but on authority where they were mentally passing the onus to the authorities. (bad karma will not come to me but to one who is asking me to do that).
As per Hindu philosophy, these arguments hold no moral ground. In Mahabharata, Dushasan was punished brutally for his misadventure under directions from Duryodhan on Draupadi. Bhisma and Drona were punished too because they too did not stop their employer. In fact, everyone in that hall was punished in one way or other for not trying to stop a bad deed. The silence was taken as acceptance of that bad deed. Only Vidura was spared as he said no to it and left the room. From here the genesis of my thought emerged. The right to say NO.
But before we discuss that let’s look into what happened in Independent India. We took the British legal system and its administration almost as it is with minimal changes. The British build the system to benefit themselves the rulers. And they expected nay rewarded people who were willing to do anything on their command. any of their employee who refused their order was punished heavily. Our whole independence movement was built on their right to say no, the proverbial “Savinay avagya”. Ironically, this British system was never dismantled and used by the nouveau Britishers. Nehru used the administration to spy on Netaji’s family without anyone saying NO to him. Sardar Patel who confronted Nehru on his blunders was sidelined. Indira took it to nadir with her YES-mam culture where Indira became India and India became Indira. All government machinery made themselves busy implementing draconian emergency.
Even today we see people blindly following orders causing great harm to society and Dharma. An SP orders shooting on unarmed civilians going for Durga visarjan in Darbhanga and her orders duly comply. No one said NO to that draconian “orders”. On other far ends Delhi police face violent attackers on Red fort and do not use lethal force as there are no “orders” to use force and get maimed and injured grievously. No one revolted and said NO to the “orders” of not using the force to protect their lives.
In far and few cases we do see people revolting and implicitly saying NO. The most recent one is the cracker ban on Diwali this year. But there is no support or legal framework to provide citizens their right to say NO even when they are right and morally obligated to say NO.
We need to arm our people, our police, our administration, our politicians, and even our government to say no when they think what is being asked of them is not right. An unfettered right to say NO can make the working of society chaotic. However, still, we need to arm every citizen of this country in its role to say NO at least twice in a year to any ask/directive that is contrary to his/her concise. Let a policeman say NO to an SP and not fire on unarmed civilians going on Durga visarjan.
Let a Govt say NO to judge that is meddling in govt functioning. Let a citizen say NO to govt trying to put unwarranted restrictions on their lives. When every citizen of India gets a right to say NO (even if a limited number of times yearly) without any consequences then only s/he will be free in a true sense. This will also put a limit/restriction on any authority. This will truly be the safety valve of our Democracy and make it more vibrant and protect it from misuse.
