Trumpets have been blown, shots have been fired, gloves have been taken off and down goes Freedom of Express… wait, am I allowed to say that?
Believe it or not, Modi 2.0 might just be the end of dissent. In this new phase of India, anything that goes against the government might backfire as potential defamation, sedition and what not. Politicians are believed to be thick-skinned (at least when you are capable of issuing hate speeches and still get away with it, it is reasonable to imagine that you are too big to be defamed by a little joke), but no, in our country, this isn’t the case. A tiny bit of dissent and god forbid if you decide to tweet it out and you might end up in jail, unconstitutionally, of course.
Media, the fourth pillar of democracy has already been compromised, it has been a long time since one might have seen a good piece of hard-hitting journalism against the people in power (that’s a bit too much to ask for from the TV media), but yes, one can’t ignore their contribution in destroying all the voices of dissent on the other hand. Media has grown so hostile to the potentially non-existing opposition that one of the biggest national party (or should I say former?) has given up on their hopes to come on prime time debate for at least a month (debate huh? more like a trash talk against the opposition… they might as well introduce yo mama jokes in my opinion…).
This systematic squeezing of opinions and the unfortunate enforcement of singularity of thought on the television debates has naturally reduced the space for people to put up a strong dissenting voice, which has evidently diverted that traffic to social media—a platform where anyone can voice their dissent without any fear (well, at least that’s what people used to believe). But the current regime clearly is not a very big fan of dissent.
They have been pushing hard to make social media also their “Godi media”, but hey, how do you control something as complex and vast as the social media? It’s not that hard actually; all you have to do is insight fear in the hearts of citizens who even think about articulating their dissent. Unleash a troll army, which might cause sufficient damage and to push it up the notch, maybe start arresting people occasionally to set “an example”, which might insight enough fear in the hearts of people.
Priyanka Sharma’s tweet (which I thought was hilarious) landed her in judicial custody, and now five people have been arrested for sharing “objectionable” content against Yogi Adityanath. This “moral policing” (a spectrum of morality that our leaders and their blind followers choose to subscribe to), is not a 2019 phenomenon, this unfortunate action against the freedom of expression (at least on social media) has become the new normal in our country. Many such cases have been reported where people got arrested—just because they shared something “objectionable” about a political leader.
When a young person, unaware of the coming storm, tweets out something about a political leader, which lands him in judicial custody—where he is faced with a world unknown to him—surrounded by real criminals, what must run through his/her innocent mind? Staying in a place like this might naturally induce a feeling of guilt, of doing something wrong (which might not be the case), will that same person, after getting released from the jail (at least we have an institution like Supreme Court which is still capable of protecting the constitution from the very people who swore to uphold it), dare to voice his dissent ever again?
Imagine a bunch of policemen coming into your house dressed as civilians, arresting you in front of your family without showing an arrest warrant, and put you behind bars in a legally non-bailable offence—which you didn’t even commit! What’s more left to see now, a camera at our homes, big banners of political leaders around our cities, a thought police!?
We were warned!