Samhita Barooah In this linear one dimensional world of pseudo-democracy, any form of queering breeds opposition. We are jeopardising our own existence by being a fence-sitter in this high voltage drama of demonstration and defamation. Just a few weeks ago, Medha Patkar was arrested in Narmada valley for protesting the big dam, Teesta Setalvad was detained for raising critical concerns in Gujarat, Arvind Kejriwal was charged with defamation for raising critical concerns in Delhi. Most recently Gauri Lankesh was killed brutally in Karnataka for keeping the conscientious pen alive. Queering in any form is a serious violation of national security and integrity of the country. In Assam, Akhil Gogoi is the voice of dissent be it any pre-dominant political force. His association with the common people of Assam has given them both trauma and triggered their strength in making their voices heard. I remember Akhil Gogoi saying, “I am a noise-maker, I will make noise. You all do projects.” Today I realise, he knew his role of being a noise-maker so well. In fact it is because of his critical voice, the current Government in power received so many votes in the state of Assam. Queering the consensus and critiquing the obvious is what Akhil Gogoi has been doing for the last two decades. His interests are rooted in the hopes, aspirations, blood, sweat and toil of the conscious masses whose voices are unheard under the veil of vigil and power. Akhil Gogoi being dragged into controversies, defamations, confrontations with the police is not a novelty. But this time he is dragged from his home in the middle of the night in his underwear is indeed a novelty. It is a commonplace practice of interrogation for suspects of insurgency and terrorism in North East India. Such practices are common during the hay days of Assam movement. In Manipur such instances shook the human rights parameters of the protectionist regime with encounters, secret killings, extra-judicial killings, forced defamation and false accusations which are a commonplace practice in the garb of AFSPA in North East India. Such practices are both an ingredient and controller of conflict. Queering the queue is what makes leaders bring the tragedies and harsh truths into the public domain. We are living in an era of artificial intelligence where we have linear models of management, resource distribution and representation. We are engineered in such a way that we cannot share our disgust, differences and dissent of the mainstream and majority. All those who have queered such practices, they have faced severe consequences like disownment, social boycott, discrimination, defamation and death. Intellectuals, community leaders, common people and even state officials have faced the brunt of dissenting. Public speeches have been used to influence public opinion. Akhil Gogoi’s public speech was in response to public apathy which can be referred to an analogy similar to Salwa Judum movement propagated by the same Government in power in Chhattisgarh in central India. He has used every democratic means to influence public through media, movement, court and social action. If he was instigating terror elements then the process would have been very different. Akhil Gogoi has used public discourse to express what the community experiences as a collective. Such community conscientisation cannot be crushed through high-handed police action. As Gramsci had said earlier, ‘seeds of resistance lies within domination,’ today’s digitised India needs many such dissents to resist the use of undue force within its own people. Queering the mainstream has always been considered as anti-national in the history of this nation. Whether it was Shri Aurobino Ghosh or Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose, Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar or Mahatma Gandhi, Subramanya Bharati or Bhagat Singh, in the context of Assam, Piyoli Phukan or Kanaklata, all of them were anti-nationals at some point of history. India is a nation to each one within a contextual reality, good, bad or the ugly. Every part of India is equal to its whole and every whole is in its parts. If Assam is running a race to be included then it has to curb the social exclusion of dissenting commons. We cannot remain in the queue forever to collect the crumbs of trickle-down theory. Queering the queue will define diverse formations which could be much more beneficial for the people, place and perspectives.
