A Religion Of Consent

Decades ago, I spent a week or two with a bunch of guys and girls on a beach and, during that time, through dialogue, we established a "religion" amongst ourselves, whose chief tenet went thus:

There must not be any must-to-do. There must also not be any must-not-to-do.

A "religion of consent."

Scene II: The village pub this morning, and I am on a feni-soda. Guy comes around asking for water. I tell him, "This is a booze joint, dude. Want water, go to Gandhi's shop."

Everybody laughed - but this is Goa, where alcohol prohibition is unthinkable.

Not so in Gandhi's Gujarat - where "consent" is not the religion, but "force" is. This is not "non-violence." Indeed, this is nothing but State Violence. The inmates of Sabarmati Ashram are using State Violence to bring about their peculiar and warped vision of a "perfect society."

There can never be a "perfect society" if force and power are used to bring it about. These ideas lie at the root of all tyrannies - including religious tyrannies. Socialism, Communism, Central Planning - these are all based on conceptions of some "perfect society" or the other. All that such ideas have yielded is arbitrary power. Tyranny!

Liberty is something else - it is for each Individual to "pursue happiness" his own way. To find his own "perfect high." To find his "personal Utopia." Liberty is not the Utopia of One Mind. Rather, it is the utopianism of all.

The real problem with our country is that "consent" does not rule. Instead, we are ruled by arbitrary rules and diktats. By guns and bullets. By the danda.

The latest evidence on this comes from close by here - Jaitapur, further up the Konkan, where land is being forcibly "acquired" by our The State to build a massive nuclear power plant. This, while civil liability in case of an accident has been "limited" by Parliament in order to benefit foreign equipment suppliers. The news says:

Although the government has issued notices to acquire the 968 hectares of land needed for the project in five villages, most of the villagers have refused to accept the compensation and surrender their land. 

The news adds that the chief minister of Mahrashtra visited the area and blamed "foreign powers" for the trouble!

Methinks the real problem is our "domestic power" - The State - which violates Property. As long as this continues, there can never be a "religion of consent." There can never be any Liberty either. We in India must choose - and the time is now.

There is everything to fear in arbitrary power - which is never government, but always Tyranny.

On the other hand, there is nothing to fear in Liberty, for the religion of consent will prevail, and there will be order - the "natural order."

How do we spread the religion of consent?

Well, how else, but by consent. Each one convince another.