No one could contend that a Teesta Setalvad is easy in public. She often sounds like an official mourner, reminding one of the grief we should have felt. She does not sound like a finishing school product. She stuns, she appalls, she rants, she raves and she repeats it all over again. Listening to her, one should realise whistle-blowing is not a symphony.

But societies like ours that are routinely conformist or banally indifferent to the violence around us should thank these obsessives. When you want to discuss the latest film, they intrude to remind you about Human Rights. When you talk of Ekta Kapoor, she repeats the litany of Gujarat. It is a form of bad behaviour that society needs. Setalvad has to work overtime to remind us of the ideals we have forgotten.

Let us be clear that dissent is not easy. A letter to the editor hardly causes a ripple. A procession is seen by the middle class as a mere brake on traffic. Trade unions are passé. Civil rights reports don’t have a page 3 rating.

When she or Cedric Prakash protest, people immediately attribute lesser ambitions to them. There is a malicious hint that such behaviour is a search for a Magsaysay or some European Human Rights award. More banally, it is seen as grant and attention seeking.

Protest about anything around you and sense the loneliness and ostracism you feel. People will drop in to enquire about your distress as if it is a personal ailment. Then they will imply that you are not mature enough, not strategic enough. If you persist, advice becomes threat, threat becomes ostracism and ostracism graduates into other forms of social deterrence. Idealism is seen as a disease you should have lost years ago like acne or measles. Only then does one realise how tiring it is. Dissent is not one scream. It demands an epic chain of protests. The stamina for it demands that you understand the loneliness of political long-distance runners.

... contd.