What with the SOPA blackouts, the Occupy Wall Street protests and the Tea Party movement (hey where are those guys now?), it reminds me of Martin Niemöller’s famous statement:

First they came for the communists,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a communist.

Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a Jew.

Then they came for the Catholics,
and I didn’t speak out because I was Protestant.

Then they came for me
and there was no one left to speak out for me.

See also the poem Hangman by Maurice Ogden.

Much as the fable of the camel who worms his way into the Arab’s tent, the state always attempts to encroach on individual rights. Under kings and dictators, this is to be expected. And indeed there usually comes a breaking point when the populace rises in a revolution. The despot is deposed. A new ruler is installed. Rinse and repeat.

But how does this play out in a liberal democracy? When a parliament usurps our rights in our name, how do we stand up for ourselves. After all we have elected the representatives who now act against us. Is our consent not implicit in their actions? The erosion of freedoms in the name of security is one of the easiest to spot. Giving up civil rights in the name of security is like going to war for the sake of peace. For, the fundamental objective of security should be the protection of civil (or individual) rights.

So liberal democracies do not trust their parliaments to do the right thing and they have constitutions to protect individual rights. Sadly even this does not seem to be sufficient. The world’s two largest democracies have seen governments expand at the cost of citizen’s rights. The erosion of fundamental rights in the United States was probably obvious enough sixty years ago that the Indian Constituent Assembly chose to already limit rights of citizens when it drafted the Constitution of India. Note that this link is the amended version.

The original constitution granted six fundamental rights, each in a restricted format; these being the rights to equality, freedom, religion, culture and education, right against exploitation and right to constitutional remedies. The rights to freedom included the freedoms of speech and expression, assembly, form associations, move freely, reside in any part of the country, own property, and practice any profession.

Today, though many of these rights have been gutted. This is especially true of the right to property, which is no longer a fundamental right in India! The right to free speech is being gutted through the many censorship laws in the country (including the current government push to censor the internet). The destruction of the right to property is discussed in great detail in this paper by Sushanth Salian of the think-tank Centre for Civil Society.

The only new right created has been the right to education but given the government’s treatment of existing rights, probably means that private education will be over a period of time be eliminated in an attempt to indoctrinate the public. It is probably the route to a Ministry of Truth. Welcome to 1984.

As this post is getting over long already, I will get back to the right to freedoms in another post.