On the last Thursday of the year 2019, few points which are troubling me and one of them I would like to share with you all.
Recently I have heard this statement so many times that I started thinking about the same, and the statement in general term is “ We are democratic country, and Constitution give us the right to protest , right to dissent and freedom of speech”. In general I agree with the statement, but what is happening in our country is totally different. Following are the few points on this issue, which any politician or protestor or activist will not dare to clarify :
- Constitution gives you right to protest but it does not give you any right to destroy public property. The constitution allows you to stage a peaceful protest, it does not allow any one to throw stones at police and other forces or to burn buses & other transport vehicles or indulge in violence. All these activities are criminal and if authorities take action against these wrong doers, then why these protestors and activists start shouting that we are living in Hitler Raj or there is emergency like situation in this country. In my opinion the protestors who are damaging public property should be dealt according to criminal law and then only this type of incidences will reduced. I appreciate the action taken by the UP govt, in recently happened protest against the CAA, the UP govt identified about 150 protestors who damaged the public property and they have started the proceedings for recovering Rs 50 Lakhs from them, as the cost of damage. I hope the other state govt should also follow this step then only these type of protests will come down.
- Yes constitution gives you right to show your dissent. Yes, showing dissent is part of democracy but indulging in violence in the name of dissent is not part of democracy. Even in Parliament or Assembly, some members while showing dissent start yelling and coming to well of the house and start threatening the other members or the speaker, this type of behaviour is not showing dissent but showing person’s nature who does not want to agree with other person. In a democracy a people can have different views but it does not give right to any one to behave in a uncivilised manner.
- Yes our constitution has given us right for free speech but this right does not permit you to malign the reputation of other person/organisation/political party etc. In our country this right of freedom of speech is so much misused that is difficult to describe here, but few types of incidences are like this: a media person always take the shelter of this right and wants to get away from any responsibility of proving his/her statement. Even politicians all the time uses this excuse for saying anything against their opponent and say they that freedom of speech is part of their democratic right. During election campaigning this is more prevalent and politician are saying anything which a normal person will not speak against someone in open forum. Classical examples of such utterances “ Chowkidar Chor Hai”, after PM had said he is Desh Ka Chowkidar, or “ Pappu” for Rahul Gandhi etc etc. There have been so many defamation suits in the court of law, where someone has said some thing bad about the other person or malign his in a public platform, where the person is sued and asked for cost of damaged reputation. Sometimes the sufferer in this cases have won the damages . There are some politicians who do not think before speaking, and often lands in trouble and they take the benefit of freedom of speech, and in this category classical examples are Rahul Gandhi, Digvijay Singh and Arvind Kejriwal.
Above are the few constitutions rights which are constantly misused by the NGOs, Activists, Politicians and Protestors. In my opinion the rights are always come with responsibilities ,in our country no one bothers about the responsibility but everyone is particular about rights and no one is bother about the others. The worst in this category are media people, they feel they are above the constitution and wants to get away with every thing, and most of them are forgotten their responsibilities. One thing is for sure that unless all of us feel our responsibility then only we should talk about our rights, after following this we should say that we are democracy.
What you say my friends.
Waiting for your views/feed backs/comments.
Anil Malik
Mumbai, India
26th Dec 2019.