THE NOISE OF POWER AND THE VOICE OF DISSENT
PROF.
K. VISWANATHAM
“All
those who are interested in the preservation of our democratic system would
endorse the Press Council’s ringing verdict. The verdict has not only struck a
blow for the freedom of the Press but has also drawn attention to a disturbing
trend that has lately been developing in the country. It is the increasing
intolerance of people in authority of views expressed by newspapers or
individuals.”
–The Hindu
Lord
Acton did not say, as many misquote him, power corrupts. According to him power
tends to corrupt. There is the story of the Persian noble who kept in a
trunk the rags he wore when he was poor; the sight of it saved him from
corruption and all the ills that power is heir to. Noblesse oblige.
Power entails responsibility. As the great Indian poet puts it:
Raajyam svahastadhruta dandamiva aatapatram.
Rule
is like an umbrella carried in one’s own hands. The umbrella fatigues you
physically; rule fatigues you physically and spiritually. “Blinded by power” is
literally and metaphorically true. When blinded by power the political animal
becomes a mere animal. In the words of the poet:
“Lilies
that fester smell far worse than weeds.”
Weeds
are nobler than lilies that rot or fall from righteousness. At least weeds do
not walk on stilts or assume airs. But when flowers of light shed darkness, woe
unto the world! If gold rusts, so the saying goes, what shall iron do?
The
only way to save power from blindness is the voice of dissent. Very few speak
out what is good and fewer still listen it.
Apriyasya eha patthyasya vaktaa srotaa cha durlabhah.
Falstaff
tells the Prince that he owes him a thousand pounds as he saved him from the
monarch’s plague–flattery. Power is surrounded by ‘yes’ men, who are evil counsellors who, as Bacon puts it, “take the wind of him
and instead of giving free counsel, sing him a song of placebo.” King Canute was flattered that the waves would not touch the hem
of his garment. Hence the observation of a character in a play of Shakespeare:
“The better for my foes and the worse for my friends.” Friends (not real, of
course!) are silencers of criticism, darkeners of self. Hence perhaps the
remark of the Duke of Florence, Cosmus, that enemies can be forgiven but not friends. Friends like Leture on Coppee’s story The
Substitute are rare. Many are ductile like the great Instaurater
who told the Duke of Buckingham: “Howsoever let me know your will and I will go
your way,” and Queen Elizabeth: “I am bold to think it till you think
otherwise.” We bend our knee and then bend our mind.
A
Nathan to a David! The voice of dissent is more precious than the voice of
conformism. John Stuart Mill put it incontrovertibly in the great classic, On
He
who knows his own side of the case knows little of that.
The
usefulness of an opinion is itself a matter of opinion:
as disputable. as
open to discussion and requiring discussion
as much as the opinion itself....
But
the peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an
opinion is that it is robbing
the human race.
Power
is deaf to the voice of dissent. Mental rigidity, intellectual fanaticism,
postures of infallibility are the greatest maladies of
power. There is the great cry of Voltaire: “I do not agree with a word that you
say but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” If power is not
sensitive to the voice of criticism lit is but a forked animal with feet turned
the other way. It is the voice of poetry, the poetry of Shakespeare (it is sad
to hear teachers, even of English, foolishly say: Why read Shakespeare?) that
may save power from blindness:
But man, proud man.
Drest in a brief little authority
Most
ignorant of what he is most assured,
His glassy essence. like an angry ape
Plays
such fantastic tricks before high heaven
As
make the angels weep.
Men
in great places who should be thrice servants but pose as thrice masters
should have this passage inscribed on the four walls, on the
ceiling and on the floor in large characters so that, wheresoever
they turn, this passage meets their eyes blinded by infallibility.
The
prophets in the Bible execrate the sinning or erring rulers. But power is so
egoistic and hypersensitive to criticism that it misunderstands the voice of
dissent as criticism of itself. A reader of The Egoist rushed to
Meredith and complained: “
The
definitive verdict on power was pronounced by Bacon: “It is a strange desire to
seek power over others and lose it over a man’s self.” This is concerning self.
Concerning the world vis-a-vis power Eliot makes a
character say:
Half
of the harm that is done in this world
Is due to people who want to feel important.