Daily Mail: National: Sunday, August 06, 2017.
I still
remember the first time the poignancy of the lonely epic of whistleblowing
dawned on me.
It was not
because I met a Julian Assange or an Edward Snowden.
A friend of
mine told me a story of a little niece of his, a precarious girl, barely five
years old, blowing an aluminum whistle, persistent in her sound effects and yet
sounding almost official in her behaviour.
Special role
He stopped
and asked her and she explained, 'I am not a referee, I am a whistleblower.'
She realised
that hers was a special role. Though she could not cite any names, all she
conveyed in her happy way was that she had captured and internalised a moment
of history.
Suddenly, a
whistleblower, even in his or her anonymity, seemed a larger than life, a
Cassandra-like figure, a prophet cast into the wilderness of his own truth.
For me, a
whistleblower is a 20th century character.
He has to be
differentiated from a dissenter.
A dissenter
can range like most intellectuals do over a range of issues, waxing eloquent
over dams, rights and nuclear energy.
A dissenter is often more like a general
practitioner while the whistle blower is a radical truth teller of a special
kind.
He is
associated with one epic event with which his name gets imprinted.
One thinks of
Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers, Karen Silkwood on the nuclear plants,
or Assange over the WikiLeaks.
It is a
revelation so historical that it threatens the very framework of trust and
governance.
There is an
immediacy to the event, a 'now' of history different from the loneliness of the
prophet predicting a dismal future.
The
whistleblower in fact is often for years a devoted, even committed, part of the
establishment.
The dawning
of truth can be a slow process of realisation, a shattering revelation to be
exposed like a scandal.
The moment of
truth is only the beginning of the new history.
What you talk
about is the years of loneliness, silence and witch hunting that follows that
one moment of history.
The
whistleblower in that sense is a special kind of creature who could only have
been invented in the age of security and bureaucratisation.
The
whistleblower usually remains an anomalous figure unable to return to normalcy
and routine.
He is the new
martyr, the epic moment of sacrifice and revelation that threatens today's
corporations and the national security state.
Such a
creature and his act of heroism and sacrifice require a special set of rights
guaranteeing against victimisation and witch-hunting by the establishment.
The
whistleblower's vulnerability needs a special kind of protection. No Right to
Information Act can be or is complete without this set of provisions.
In fact,
there can be a sense of irony even in these provisions. For example, a new
provision in the RTI Act allows for the closure of a case in the event of the
death of the applicant.
Such a
provision virtually cynically says that the elimination of an RTI activist
closes the case.
The irony
becomes more obvious when one reads that in 2017 alone, there have been 375
cases of recorded attacks against whistle-blowers; and of these, 56 have been
murders.
The recent
murder of Bhupendra Vira for exposing shady land deals in Mumbai raises a
simple issue.
The
vulnerability and the role of the whistleblower need to be recognised and
protected. He is an activist who cannot be made into a martyr.
His exposure
of scandal requires his continued existence as a reminder, a symbolic statement
of what ordinary people can do through simple acts of conscience.
Information
One has to
understand that the whistleblower can only obtain that special kind of
information she has by spending years mastering the rules and proceedings of an
organisation.
She has to
master the intricacies of the bureaucracy, compile a huge data bank of
information, before she exposes the scandal.
Her
vulnerability as an individual is huge as she stands alone against a
bureaucracy which can be vengeful.
All one needs
is a trail of suspicion, a minor suspicion, a departmental enquiry to turn a
person's life and career into shreds.
One has to also
realise the mix of everydayness and heroism and even banality that might haunt
a whistle-blower after the trauma of revelation.
The
resignation, the abandoning a space, of a way of life has to be understood.
Many
whistleblowers have their moment of publicity before they fade into years of
anonymity.
It is the
later years that must be sustained and appreciated. The aura of vulnerability
and suspicion is difficult to exorcise.
The
whistleblower as informant is subject to every act of humiliation labelled as
anti-national, even a terrorist, for this one great act of citizenship.
Observations
I am reminded
here of the story of Daniel Ellsberg, the man who released the Pentagon Papers,
exposing the hollowness and scandal of the Vietnam War, putting an end to such
legends of security like defence secretary Robert McNamara.
Daniel
Ellsberg was oddly a hawk, a creature happy in the policymaking of think-tanks
before he decided that truth telling was important.
Ellsberg, in
fact, has made an interesting set of observations recently.
He shows that
he was subject to the same rituals of humiliation, assault, accusation, such
that Assange was subject to.
The nation
state can never forget or forgive a citizen with a conscience.
Security
officials, Ellsberg warns, can make threats, which are thinly disguised as
extrajudicial steps.
Here again
one has to realise the critical role of media in protecting the whistleblower.
The media as
rumour-monger can destroy his hard fought attempt to sustain his integrity that
is the only blue chip guarantee against a state determined to malign
dissenters.
I hope this
piece is a small salute to an epic figure who has defined the contours of
democracy in today's era.
(The writer
is Professor, Jindal Global Law School and Director, Centre for the Study of
Knowledge Systems, OP Jindal Global University.)