Fear Isn’t the Enemy: Crucial Lessons from Ravish Kumar’s ‘The Free Voice’
In India, this isn’t just a gripping book; it’s a tool kit.
By Stuti S.:
Fear is a complex and paralyzing emotion.
It overwhelms us especially while living under a fascist regime. It becomes imperative to try to understand fear, its origin and how far it can travel when one lives in it, day in and day out.
Ravish Kumar’s book, The Free Voice, is a chronicle of the present socio-political climate in India, where speaking truth to power is severely punishable. And yet, he advocates for us to do just that. This book has a chapter which talks in great detail about fear and its relationship with speaking out. Ravish’s journey of understanding his fear is one of my biggest takeaways from the book.
‘His fear’ is not his alone to be fair. It is something many journalists and anyone who speaks out against authority and the current government in India faces. But at the same time, it is also uniquely his because each of us lives this feeling differently. What Ravish does for us is give us a tour of his landscape of fear — his wonderings, musings and insights as he goes about navigating it.
The common fears that journalists and people who dare to question the state of affairs in the country are not limited to sedition-related arrests, online trolling, and media trials of being ‘anti-national’. These fears also materialise as disturbing threats to their personal safety, and that of their families. Who wouldn’t be afraid if our phone numbers were circulated amongst an army of trolls being paid to harass us with messages and calls all day? Being verbally abused takes its own time to recover from, but how does one recover from incessant calls and messages from a mob which threaten to end your life?
Ravish also talks about the different ways in which this mob creates fear. When we speak out, will we be maligned, amputated, lynched? How are we to step out of the ‘circle of fear’ when asking simple questions about the economy, employment, and hate-crimes invite vitriolic comments online, or outcries of ‘anti-national’ in family gatherings? When this is our everyday reality, one needs a book such as this one to lean on for support.
The Free Voice would’ve been a gripping read for me if I were reading it from a truly free and democratic country, and not in present day India. Here, it isn’t just a gripping book; it’s a tool kit… for there are many of us who are struggling to face similar fears in big and small ways in our own lives.
“‘The Free Voice’ would’ve been a gripping read for me if I were reading it from a truly free and democratic country, and not in present day India. Here, it isn’t just a gripping book, it’s a tool kit.”
Ravish’s everyday battle with fear has given him insights which he generously shares. He speaks of the origins of fear and how it is ‘created and sustained in our homes, where we are taught to keep silent’. He mentions how this forbidding of speaking out soon spreads to the outside world. Conditioned to being silenced in our own homes, we become mute spectators to the world around us. But he also adds that if we can’t speak up in front of those closest to us, how are we ever going to stand up to institutions such as the government?
The journey to questioning the government or institution of power is fraught with fear, and Ravish offers a powerful perspective on this. He ascertains that perhaps we have no faith left in any of our institutions, and that is why we are scared to even begin our process of challenging them. To understand this, one only has to take a look at the arbitrary sedition cases slapped on students, scholars, activists, and journalists by the same government that is supposed to represent us.
Ravish ascertains that perhaps we have no faith left in any of our institutions, and that is why we are scared to even begin our process of challenging them.
Despite this, Ravish makes a case for speaking up. He explains why we may still choose to speak out and not be terrified by the possible punishments. He mulls over the psychological unease that comes with giving in to fear and what that does to us as a human being. Do we want to walk around like dead bodies? Terrified of the institutions we are surrounded with? Or, do we want to risk speaking up ‘even when there may be no one to stand with us’?
Each one of us will have different answers for these questions. Our locations such as caste, class, gender, etc., will also contribute to how we respond to our fears. However, those who can and want to build speaking up and facing fear as a skill, will find some interesting anecdotes in this book.
One of my favourite anecdotes is where Ravish proposes a way of learning to challenge and question any authority. He says that if you are afraid of asking questions to, say the current state government, you can begin by questioning the state government from 20 years ago. Your questions will not impact that government since it may not exist anymore, but it will teach you how to stand up to an authority and investigate the truth.
Elaborating on how to flex our speaking truth to power muscle, he talks about the ethics of questioning and speaking out. “Just make sure that your questions are correct when you do ask them. Check your facts. Don’t allow hatred towards the person to seep into your questions… Stick to ethics at all times. Keep your life clean and uncluttered. And keep speaking out.” He also adds, “Fear does not end after you’ve spoken out. Even after you’ve spoken, fear lies in wait for you with its nets and snares.” It isn’t one day, one revelation, but an ongoing process. We must familiarise ourselves with it, in order to claim ourselves back from it.
Fear isn’t the enemy. In fact, fear is not always a bad thing, and Ravish himself talks about how it can save us from rashness. Fear is real and can often be crippling. But, we owe ourselves an examination of its structure that keeps us trapped in it. This probe will not only support our mental health, but also help us live and speak freely.
About the author: Stuti S is poetry-loving, feminist, queer-affirmative therapist.
