The Teestas, the Medha Patkars keep our society alive, vibrant. They are tuning forks telling us we have not lost our sense of music. Of course, they are not all likeable creatures.

Protest has its quirkiness. You have the one-point person, who will talk about Bhopal in every seminar about disasters. They remind you of the radicals of the earlier decades who asked ‘What about class?’ in every seminar regardless of whether it was about Beethoven, Gandhi or Globalisation. I admit they do distract and irritate in demanding their redundant pound of flesh. But we need them, in fact we have to invent them.

There is also the jumper. For them, last week it was Narmada, this week it is farmer suicides. You realise there is a trail of fashion in disasters as in dress. Yet the jumper is a reminder that we fail to connect. Try talking about the disaster in Bhopal today. People feel you are recommending a quaint tourist destination or merely respond by asking you to read Dominic Lapierre on Bhopal.

Dissent is doubly difficult today. Every act of protest is questioned as to its authenticity. It is argued that each voice needs the right form of representation. No one asks why one citizen can’t represent the other. As citizens, we share a common membership and humanity.

There is a political correctness here we must challenge. Protest too demands civility but it does not have to be the civility of the drawing room. A scream is not just a cry of pain but an act of witness. It does not have to follow the codes of the drawing room. Being correct and being true are two different registers. Setalvad’s protest shows that correctness might hide an evasion of truth.

... contd.