S1-Day 27: God in Dirty Places: The Right to Dissent

God is often believed to be found in law and order and discipline for God is said to honor obedience and allegiance to authorities, civic and religious. Biblical texts such as Romans 13:1-5, 1 Peter 2:13-15, Colossians 3:22, and 1 Samuel 15:22 have been used to instill in people the need to abide by the divine command to obey and conform. The act of conforming to an earthly authority is equated to being patriotic or religious. There is a sense of comfort derived from practicing the ethics of conformity even at the risk of compromising life in all its fulness. 

The disapproval of dissent stems from the fear of the loss of privilege. Dissent leaves the one in power powerless, unable to control multiple voices, and unable to polarize peoples and communities. It challenges the dominant’s normative impulse to make conformists of people. It is no surprise that endangered leaders who pride on separationist and exclusionary politics do everything in their power to quell dissenting voices. But if history has taught us anything, it is that dissent, in just about any form or practice, has been the catalyst for rewriting and creating alternate histories, and the spark lighting up a fire that burns down the altars of fascism and dictatorship.

Dissent is not just a right; it is an ethical duty of all peoples. Yet, the only ones who dutifully exercise this right are those from the margins, right? This should tell us a lot about what dissent does to (the) privilege(d). The recent arrest of Dalit and Civil Rights activist Anand Teltumbde is an example of the state diffusing a dissenting voice. Prior to his arrest last month, Teltumbde is known to have said, “The jingoist nation and nationalism have got weaponized by the political class to destroy dissent and polarize people.”[i] Likewise, the jailing of Safoora Zargar, during her pregnancy, for dissenting against the controversial citizenship law aimed at Muslims is another example of the threatened silencing dissent.[ii]

The criminalizing of dissent by those in power is a great disservice to the democratic ideals of our Constitution, for the Constitution of India does recognize dissent as a right under Article 19(1) (a). The right to dissent allows common people to hold those in positions of privilege accountable for their use of power. The fear of having to be accountable to the public, more importantly to the dissenters who arise from the margins, is why elites criminalize dissent in the hope of eliminating it altogether. The criminalizing of dissent needs to stop and the act of criminalizing dissent must be criminalized.

Does the Bible advocate dissent? Absolutely! Jesus was a dissenter himself. One can even identify a dissenter in the prophets of the Hebrew scripture. These people were hardcore critics, never hesitating to hold different opinions on matters important to community living and to call out injustice in public spaces even at the risk of their own lives (and no, I’m not advocating for heroism or martyrdom of any kind). Dissenters refuse to sacralize power; they instead speak truth to power, and speak powerfully do they.

Jesus, to me, was a dissenter not just for making a habit of pointing out the hypocrisy of religious elite and confronting the rulers of his time, but also for vouching for the very principles that the powers that be distanced from. In other words, creating alternate “imaginations” of what a community must look like and what a leader ought to be as against the prevailing normative understandings of community and rulership largely bent on polarizing people and silencing voices. To dissent does not just involve questioning and critiquing the work of the dominant system, but importantly it involves, as noted above, the scripting of new possibilities and alternatives. Jesus did it. Today, communities from the underside of societies are doing it.

In her article identifying Korah as a religious dissenter (Numbers 16), Michal Raucher says that dissent is not a dirty word.[iii] When you understand dissent from a particular standpoint, dissent, and rightly so, is not dirty. Yet, I am also compelled to view dissent as dirty as it administers ‘purity tests’ on ideologies, morals, philosophies, beliefs and values of those in power. Perhaps, the religious and political elites are not wrong in assuming purity to themselves, their words and deeds, as they lack, evidently, any connection with those who dissent and rebel, the dirty and the filthy.[iv]

As citizens who love our country it is our bounded duty to be a voice of dissent calling out injustice, ensuring that wrongs are righted. As Christians who follow Jesus the dissenter, dissent becomes our responsibility, an ethical imperative.

Prayer: Giver of life and wisdom, we pray that you grant us the grace and the moral courage to stand up for what is right and question what is wrong. Give us the assurance that we are doing what we are doing for the sake of peace and justice. Empower us that we may empower others, humble us that we may in turn be empowered. May love be our guide and courage be our strength. Amen.

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Name: Arvind Theodore

Profile: Arvind Theodore is an alumnus of the United Theological College, Bangalore. Prior to moving to the U.S. for his S.T.M. studies at Union Theological Seminary, New York, he worked as an Adjunct Faculty in the Department of Theology and Ethics in his alma mater for little over a year. Currently, he works as the Communications Coordinator for the Trinity Union Fellowship Program, and will begin his Ph.D. in the field of Social Ethics at Union Theological Seminary in the Fall of 2020. 

References:

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[i] “India: Activists Detained for Peaceful Dissent,” Humans Rights Watch

https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/04/15/india-activists-detained-peaceful-dissent

[ii] Betwa Sharma, “’Jamia’s Daughter’: Inside Safoora Zargar’s World of Love, Friendship and Dissent,” Huffpost,

https://www.huffingtonpost.in/entry/safoora-zargar-caa-jamia-delhi-riots_in_5ede695ec5b660b690dddcc3 (accessed June 8, 2020).

[iii] Michal Rauchar, “Dissent Is Not a Dirty Word,” JTS

http://www.jtsa.edu/dissent-is-not-a-dirty-word (accessed June 10, 2020).

[iv] In calling those who dissent “dirty” and “filthy,” I do not refer to any inherently dirtiness as the dominant would claim existence for, but instead referring to how derogatory labels are imposed by the dominant on those at the margins.