Burning issues

PYROTECHNICS IN our streets are becoming increasingly common and annoyingly strident. When it takes the form of burning effigies of leaders as an expression of the democratic right of dissent and claiming constitutional protection, rival parties `cry foul'. Art. 19 protects protests and processions. And in prohibiting demonstrations courts often do not see eye to eye with the police and the establishment. "Some degree of abuse is inseparable from the proper use of everything and in no instance is this more true than in political demonstrations", words of Chief Justice Evans of the U.S. Supreme Court. He adds "it is better to leave a few of its noxious branches to their luxuriant growth, than by pruning them away, to injure the vigour of those yielding fruits." Black flags are also allergic to those in power. Ministerial tribes and their minions are hypersensitive when their political foes practise these ancient arts. Better ignore the hot air and flames that don't hurt.

India's first experience of this form of blazing belligerence was when Gandhiji exhorted all Indians to boycott foreign cloth and burn it ceremonially in public. Men and women gathered in numbers round such bonfires and were duly marched to jail. That was the law then, though the whole thing was so harmless except that it infused the "Swaraj and Swadeshi" spirit in an otherwise spiritless people. Even then there were some officers who saw the lawlessness of the police action and avoided any harsh action by devious means.

Not intolerant

Here are a few lines from a diary of an ICS officer then serving in Madras Presidency: "A band of them came to me at the Sub- collector's office and told me that they were going to burn foreign cloth that evening and that I might arrest them if I thought fit. I told them that they would not be arrested provided they burnt the foreign cloth belonging to them, and in a private place and they might do this after 5-30 p.m. so that my work in the office might not be disturbed by going to the place and watching the operations. They chose a big compound wall belonging to one of them and went through the burning. The Inspector of Police and his DSP were not at all pleased with what I said. Barring a minor exchange with the English Collector nothing happened." The British rule was not intolerant.

All the followers of Gandhiji were not votaries of Ahimsa. During the first Civil Disobedience Movement, in the wake of that horrible carnage at Jallianwala Bagh, a few constables who were needlessly brutal were locked up in their own police station and burnt alive. It shocked Gandhiji instantaneously, and what began as a promising freedom struggle was called off and the Mahatma entered on his `fast' as a penance. About 40 years later the anti-Hindi agitation took many police lives and left behind charred bodies and burnt-out buses, and nobody missed a meal!

Polite but effective

Of course historically, widowhood always turned out to be a `burning' issue. It still does. The poor girl mounts the funeral pyre with a large audience witnessing the show. Even then there was in the early colonial days Napier, who stopped this practice not by a posse of police opening fire on the assembled mourners but by simply telling them "If it is your custom to burn a widow alive, please go on. We have a custom in our country that whoever burns a person alive shall be hanged. While you prepare the funeral pyre, my carpenters will be making the gallows to hang all of you. Let us all act according to our customs." The girl's life was saved.

After Independence, all dissent is finally expressed in leaping blaze. From Andhra agitation and even earlier, to some policeman allegedly teasing a woman, public buildings, public transport and private cars are torched. Tamil Nadu had no history of such fascination for flames, but now we march in step with others if not actually lead them.

Looked at from any angle, effigy burning is a harmless sport. In the United States till the September 11 horror, even national flags were not spared. The First Amendment covered this right, privileged expression constitutionally protected. If we suppress effigy burning or for that matter, black flag demonstrations, the malcontents will resort to wanton violence. Regulate it as the old ICS officer did in Berhampur 75 years ago, and it will be fun.

Those in public life should have a thick skin. Some fun at their expense is permissible. Nehru welcomed Shankar's barbed cartoons aimed at him. He never thought of MISA and Goondas Act. Neither our PM nor his supporters should bay for the blood of the excited AIADMK men for their bloodless demonstrations. Prudence advises us to ignore it. Let me tell you, most of us don't like effigies. I don't like to burn an effigy. I will never burn one. But I won't agree to set the law on those who burn effigies without any other mischief. Art. 19 protects such acts. Incendiarism, howsoever innocent, should be amenable to regulation. Police can do that. Rajaji had this advice to critics of effigy burning and black flags: "Go and have a cold shower. All your excitement will be washed away".

V. R. LAKSHMINARAYANAN

Former DGP

Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Section  : Features
Previous : Follies of Americana