Unheard, Until Violent?

A silent democracy is a dead democracy. Democracy and protests go hand in hand. India being the largest democracy is not untouched by them, despite we have a history of successful protests. We gained our independence through protests. Disagreement, complaint, and disapproval are the pillars on which a democracy stands. Protests are important, but there’s a small line between noise and voice. How protests nowadays have transformed from being people’s voice to Political noise? This is something to be bothered of. Something Indians and India need to ponder upon! In our 70 years of Independence we have seen great highs and lows, some great public movements and protests like The Nirbhaya Aandolan, Jan Lokpal Aandolan, the 1976 J.P. Andolan and the way they resulted for the benefit of the people and brought change in our society. But with time things have gone wrong, we have to think why modern-day protests don’t produce the desired result? Why a protest that rise being the people’s voice soon transforms into a political noise? Aren’t we moving against the culture of silent but effective protest that Gandhi left behind? 2017 was a year of protests too but let’s compare how far we degraded as a society through 2 protests. First, the Tamil Nadu Farmers protests at Jantar Mantar and second the Karni Sena Protest for Padmavati.

March 2017, A group of 100 farmers from Tamil Nadu marched to Delhi asking the government for aids and waving off their loans as Cauveri Delta was hit by the worst drought in last 140 years, 144 farmers committed suicide from October-December 2016 in Tamil Nadu. Over 100 farmers from Trichy, Karur and Thanjavur district of Tamil Nadu came to Jantar Mantar and protested silently and all they demanded was to meet the Prime Minister and The Finance Minister regarding their request, they protested silently and as expected were unheard. Though they suffered ignorance from government and their agencies they remained non-violent but they did harm themselves by beating them, marching naked in from of the PMO, drinking their urine and eating their own excreta. The National Human Rights Commission prescribed a compensation of ₹5000 per acre but only a total of ₹3000 was given by the Tamil Nadu government. According to the Indian Meteorological Department, Tamil Nadu had the worst rainfall since 1876. Later, all that was promised by the government was that the matter will be considered urgently, like other this too was just a ‘jumla’.

Why do our government ignore farmers? Just because they cannot create chaos, don’t harm or kill or ask to kill? So, they are unimportant and ignored. On the other side, we saw Karni Sena a group of goons who demanded to ban the movie ‘Padmavati’ and just for their demand they tortured the director of the movie, molested the actress and priced her head for 5 crores. The goons of Karni Sena destroyed public property, burnt buses and harmed children. Fighting for a useless topic, soon they were the talking topic of the Lutyens’ media. As expected all ministers took charge as the government was forced to bend as the result the name of the movie changed, from Padmavati to Padmaavat!

Why are we shaping our democracy as this? Why do we pay more attention to noise than voices? Why are we degrading as a society? Just because the Tamil Nadu farmers were unable to grab the attention of the media they are denied of what they deserve and just because Karni Sena grabbed our attention through violence they are provided what they demanded? Is this the India of our dreams? Aren’t we promoting violence through this? This is something we need to think now. If we don’t act soon, soon it will be too late! It’s time we get over our religious and caste identity and be an Indian in true sense.


Jai Hind.