Sadanand Menon - Reverse Swing: Imagining a Democracy of Designated Dissent

By Dilip -

सहज मिले सो दूध सम, मांगा मिले सो पानि  // कह कबीर वह रक्त सम, जामें एंचातानि   - Dissent from designated spaces. In keeping with the line and length being maintained by it for some time now, the Supreme Court bowled one more ‘doosara’ on October 7, while ruling on the Shaheen Bagh protests. Justices Sanjay Kishen Kaul, Aniruddha Bose and Krishna Murari pronounced, “Democracy and dissent go hand in hand, but then the demonstrations expressing dissent have to be in designated places alone”.

This has turned out to be a philosophical contortion of tortuous proportions which has left many a commentator puzzled. It is like ruling that any batter hitting a sixer can perforce do it only from standing within the crease. Or like drawing the good old patriarchal ‘Lakshman rekha’ that sought to restrain Sita within her designated space. The sheer banality of it has the feel of currency from ATMs or milk from automated dispensers. But, like with currency, there are other sources for milk too. And a subversive like Kabir pointed it out 500 years ago in his conundrum:

Sahaj mila so dudh sam, maanga mila so paani | Kah Kabir woh rakt sam, jaame aencha-taani --- What is free in nature is milk, what needs transaction is water / Kabir says it’s like the blood that flows from argument and conflict

You can suck milk directly from the teats of wandering goats and cows. But access to water depends on your caste and who you ask. This is part of the designated order of our social circumstance. Any transgression of these assigned boundaries leads to violence and bloodshed. Kabir was clear that dissent can happen only outside ‘designated’ spaces and paradigms and values – and that its consequences are brutal. Otherwise, demarcated, designated dissent is actually like consent and merely contributes to reinforce the existing regimes of conformity…

https://www.asiavillenews.com/article/reverse-swing-imagining-a-democracy-of-designated-dissent-61489

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