A poem that fascinated me in my school days was Alfred Lord Tennyson’s The Charge of the Light Brigade.
“Forward, the Light Brigade!” came the command, and six hundred British soldiers galloped courageously into a valley surrounded by Russian cannons.
There was only one small problem.
The order was wrong.
“Surely someone will correct it?” I asked my teacher.
“No,” she said. “They obeyed.”
“But they knew it was a mistake?”
“Perhaps.”
“And they still rode into the cannons?”
“Yes.”
I stared at the poem and wondered whether bravery sometimes wore stupidity as its uniform.
Years later, I look around our country and realise that the Light Brigade has not disappeared. It has merely exchanged horses for WhatsApp, swords for slogans, and military uniforms for political scarves.
“Forward!” shouts some leader.
“Where?” asks nobody.
“Into the valley!”
“But there are cannons on both sides!”
“Do not ask questions. Asking questions is antinational!”
And off they gallop, forwarding messages, defending blunders, abusing critics and cheering decisions that may eventually injure them and their own children.
Tennyson wrote, “Theirs not to reason why, theirs but to do and die.”
In the army, instant obedience may sometimes be necessary. But democracy is not an army camp, citizens are not sepoys, and elected leaders are not commanding officers. They are servants of the people, however uncomfortable that description may make them feel.
Yet I see decent, educated men and women refusing to reason. They know an order is wrong. They can see constitutional principles being weakened. They recognise that democratic rules are being ignored. Still, they lower their heads and charge forward.
“Why are you supporting this?” I ask.
“Because our leader said so.”
“But what does your conscience say?”
“My conscience is awaiting party instructions.”
Perhaps our education system is partly responsible. It was designed by colonial rulers who wanted obedient clerks, compliant officials and loyal sepoys. They needed people who could follow orders efficiently, not citizens who would question authority courageously.
More than seventy years after Independence, that conditioning remains. We teach children to memorise answers, not challenge them. We reward silence, punish questions and call obedience discipline. Then we are surprised when adults follow leaders into disaster without asking where they are going.
Courage is admirable, but courage without thought is dangerous. Loyalty is valuable, but loyalty without conscience becomes slavery.
The six hundred soldiers rode into the valley of death because they believed theirs was not to reason why.
But ours is.
Ours is to question, ours is to reason, and ours is to prevent our country from being marched into the valley of death!
Or, are we waiting for another Tennyson, later, to write another tragic poem, on a country called India?
The Author conducts an online, eight session Writers and Speakers Course. If you’d like to join, do send a thumbs-up to WhatsApp number 9892572883 or send a message to bobsbanter@gmail.com
