The Noise of Power and the Voice of Dissent

“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 Liberty:

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: “Willoughby is me.” Meredith soothed him with “Willoughby is all of us.” And it is the veriest truth. Power is sweet as honey; the exercise of it is sweeter still–from the y. d. e. to a minister. Power imagines itself as the great dispenser of favours. Diogenes’ tart remark to Alexander: “Stand out of the sun” when ask to beg a favour of the great conqueror shows imposing power its unimposing place. Of like import is the story of the Indian sages who questioned Alexander if the world conqueror conquered his self.

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.