Lucknow protest brings Gandhi back!!
The way movies affect us Indians is phenomenal and that can be gauged by incidents like these:
Lucknow citizens go Gandhian on liquor merchant
Not only did the group of about three dozen young men donned Gandhi caps and marched silently through the city streets, but also offered flowers to the liquor shop-owner whom they have been urging to shift his business to some other place.
This is much better than the last movies' (Munnabhai MBBS) impact on the students:
After docs, engineers do a Munnabhai
There were other films too like 'Rang De Basanti' which impacted the masses in a big way. While RDB suggested a violent way, none of us could really implement that in our daily lives. In this sense, 'Lage Raho Munnabhai' has emerged a perfect winner, where its 'flower protest' has found real meaning and is being actually implemented here.
The way officials reacted to these people's flower protest:
Liquor shop owner Gurnam Singh tried to cover up his embarrassment by saying, "Let them send flowers, we will send them a bouquet." His son Daljit Singh claimed, "We keep funding the temple; and if the temple priest has no objection, why should anyone else? We will not get browbeaten like this." He told reporters, "We are already contesting the case in court and will abide by whatever the court orders."
When contacted, even additional district magistrate J P Singh looked sheepish on the count. "This is the first time I have come across this kind of protest and a unique memorandum like this; it has really surprised me." He however denied having seen the film.
Interestingly, even some of the policemen who arrested the protestors felt awkward. "The protest was unusual and has made us wonder what to do", confessed one of them.
The results are exactly what Gandhi would have aimed for. He advised this form of protest just to expose the evil conscience of the wrong-doer and to embarrass him. Gandhi knew when people get embarrassed they realise their mistake and their defence naturally gets weaker.
But what next?
Hope! I have a belief in the power of this concept. Its power lies not in the effect it has on the aggressor, but in the impact it has on the observers standing on the sidelines and just watching the show. This concept gives them a chance to express their support to the just cause. This support is what helped Gandhi. He knew not every man in the country is powerful enough to take to violence. But each and every man, woman and child has a 'natural' courage to express their support to what they believe in. He knew they are even willing to die fighting, but not willing to kill anyone. Very much like he himself used to say:
"I am willing to die, but there is no cause for which I am willing to kill."
I have heard this many times, that we need another Gandhi. What we fail to understand is that there is a Gandhi in each and every one of us. And the Lucknow protest can be said to be a gentle reminder to us to look within and not without.
2 comments:
Gandhijis success could be partly attributed to the innate sense of justice and equality present in the British ruling class. The British and many European races had conquered the world, created the industrial revolution and was at the pinnacle of success in all spheres. They belived in their superiority which made the ruling class subservient to the LAW. This gave all accused the right to a fair trial. This must have given the upper class British, ruling India through the ICS, a sense of decency and justice, thus disarming them against Gandhijis chosen weapon of non violence.
Any similar attempts to protest with the present system of Government run by unaccountable Public servants is less likely to succeed, and may indeed culminate in an violent end. Encounters, custodial deaths are a fact of life today.
Gandhijis legacy has taught us a right to protest anything and evrything that is not in our self interest, thus making a mockery of the constitution and the Law of the land. Delhi sealing drive is one example of this.
We now have a system of governance which responds to either vote bank politics, money or violence. Governance to do the job well was an alien concept that left with the British.
Kirti,
You are right in saying that we Indians have learnt about using/abusing 'satyagrah' in almost every protest. Yet, I wont call Delhi sealing a non-violent protest. You could easily see them pelting stones on the policemen. And this is why, they have lost any sympathies that could have come their way from the public. They turned it into a street war which is not at all a 'Gandhi legacy'. And this is exactly my point. Lucknow protest may not work in the end. But that would be just because, they don't have a larger support. This is what ails India. We don't have public unity. There is a union for labour, bus-driver, autowallahs, but rarely a general union of public opinion. What happens in our neighbourhood doesn't concern us at all, until it starts affecting us.
Gandhiji's biggest contribution wasn't that he frustrated the Britishers with his calm resistance, but the way he brought the entire country together for a common cause. There would have been no India, like we have today, without those mass movements.
To apply his tools in modern India, we need to evolve our own methods, to encourage more public participation. It doesn't have to be flowers, or dharnas, just anything that can trigger our collective conscience. Not easy, but Gandhi 'did' that.
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