There was a video of one of Dolly Parton’s live shows that I remember watching several times over forty years ago. She is one of my favourite musicians. Dolly was a great communicator too and would speak about aspects of growing up in the Appalachian Mountains, which inspired many of her songs. In this show, she spoke of the time when she coloured her hair and her horrified mother attributed Dolly’s decision to the Devil. Dolly’s repartee to her mother: “Let’s give credit to where it belongs. It was all me, not the Devil.”
When kids go astray, it is almost a reflex action for parents to blame their kids’ friends, never ever entertaining the thought that it could very well be their own kids who are the main culprits and gang leaders leading their friends astray.
For decades, national and state politicians and bureaucrats occupying seats of power labelled members of underground groups (now known as national workers) as “misled youth”. It wasn’t a sympathetic statement but a condescending one. While not drawing parallels, the same condescension implicit in the word “misled” was also used to describe young people who protested at Jantar Mantar and across the country last month. The word “misled” doesn’t just reduce individuals—of any age—and communities to an amoeba but is also a distraction and diversion from the issue(s) at hand.
Labelling, name-calling, othering and shaming, always and inevitably in derogatory terms, to disparage and negate the different, the disagreement, the dissent and the unlike-minded is a rampant societal epidemic. This epidemic is so entrenched that no one seriously thinks of calling it out and cancelling it as a crime against humanity. In fact, it is considered inherent in human nature, but is it so? Even a casual look will underscore that such disparaging is largely done by the dominant, the majoritarian and the powerful in society and the state. There have been, and there still are, powerful people who don’t resort to disparaging and demeaning.
So, clearly, it is basically resorted to and weaponised by people incapable of thinking, reasoning and empathy, lacking generosity of spirit, insecure because of the unstable and ephemeral nature of the ideological and other foundations of power on which they stand, their delusions of grandeur, and their lack of in-depth, quality education and such. We can see how their power is being consolidated by undermining and controlling democratic institutions, demolishing all forms of opposition, controlling the media, demonising and dehumanising “others”, and directing people’s attention towards the “others” as the “problem”, the “enemy”, who must be disenfranchised and dealt with in the harshest of manners.
For whatever reason(s), the loss of humanity is a personal choice. The Devil, or the “bad” influence of “bad” friends, or being “misled” is not the reason and/or the cause but the convenient excuse for bad behaviour and decisions, for bad ideologies and politics, for defaming, demonising and dehumanising people, and for labelling, name-calling, othering and shaming to serve very specific interests and agendas. Such excuses or justifications are merely manifestations of the biases, prejudices, bigotry and intolerance we have been nurtured with, which have been normalised. Racism, sexism, misogyny and such are indications of a lack of self-esteem and self-confidence, a sense of superiority and entitlement, and insecurity; hence, the need to find scapegoats and create enemies.
To divert attention from one’s failures, there is also that ubiquitous “foreign hand” that is cited as one of the factors behind disagreements and dissent. Then there are these labels such as “anti-national”, “urban naxals”, and “tukde-tukde gang”. What kind of thinking comes up with such terms? And what makes anyone think that they have the sole prerogative to use these terms with such impunity and finality? It must be a torturous life to live with so much hate and self-righteousness, but a choice has been made and the consequences must be faced.
Despite the strides India has made in all sectors, there still remains an absence of clarity on the difference between the state and the government. Therefore, it is easy to misinform the vast majority of the unread into believing that the state and the government are synonymous. Governments come and governments go, but the state remains. The people decide who will form the government to govern the state; therefore, the people have the right to point out the government’s non-performance, non-productivity and failures. It is for the government to course-correct, not to position itself through state machinery as the state, hence infallible and out of bounds for criticism.
People who critique the government and its non-productive policies are labelled as “anti-nationals”. The fact is, it is these people who are patriots and love the nation deeply and want to see it move forward and be in a better place. This is perceived as disagreement and dissent, which no government can stomach. And because governments are wont to run out of ideas that are productive and beneficial for the country, they resort to physical, mental, psychological, intellectual and unconstitutional attacks and violence.
Historian Ramachandra Guha (“Anti-national”, The Telegraph, August 8, 2026) writes that the nineteenth-century Liberal politician John Bright—whom the historian Asa Briggs called “the most important figure in mid-Victorian radicalism”—was a brilliant orator, some of whose speeches in the House of Commons took apart his country’s campaigns abroad, such as the war in Crimea in the 1850s. His criticisms of government policy angered Conservatives, who charged him with betraying the interests of the nation.
To these accusations, Bright combatively responded: “How indeed can I, any more than any of you, be un-English and anti-national? Was I not born upon the same soil? Do I not come of the same English stock? Are not my family committed irrevocably to the fortunes of this country? Is not whatever property I may have depending as much as yours is depending upon the good government of our common fatherland? Then say to one of his countrymen, because he happens to hold a different opinion on questions of great public policy, that therefore he is un-English, anti-national?”
This challenge, made in 1850 in the House of Commons, echoes today across India in accusations of “anti-national”. Unfortunately, governments here have appropriated nationalism and patriotism and have invested in themselves the power and the right to derogatorily label citizens, thus designating themselves as the masters, not the servants, of the people. Clearly, this political science syllabus called “Entire Political Science” needs a thorough overhaul—so also does our entire education system. Our youngsters are on the right path, in the right direction.
Albert Camus said: “The great citizens of a country are not those who bend the knee before authority but rather those who, against authority if need be, are adamant as to the honour and freedom of that country.” The choice to bend or not to bend our knees, like all the decisions we make in life, lies in us, not anyone else. Let’s not allow anyone to tell us otherwise, thereby ceding our intelligence, integrity and free will.
Monalisa Changkija is a Dimapur-based veteran journalist, poet, and former Proprietor, Publisher, and Editor of Nagaland Page.