Protests are history’s heralds of heresy. They demolish old gods and bring tidings of great changes — through bloodshed, fire, music and non-violence — that alters the destiny of nations and people. Regimes react to opposition in different ways. Some, like Assad in Syria, use brutal violence. Putin simply imprisons dissenters; even if they are young members of anti-government rock bands like Pussy Riot. Some governments attempt to discredit and sabotage civil society movements, like the UPA tried with Team Anna. Other protests continue without a sell-by date, finding their own rhythm. Last week, two unique agitations captured popular imagination and photographers’ viewfinders — in the north, India Against Corruption Jedi Arvind Kejriwal clambered up an electricity pole and restored a severed power connection at a labourer’s hut with a pair of blue and yellow pliers. In the south, hundreds of fishermen from Tirunelveli and Kanyakumari joined anti-nuclear protestors agitating against the Koodankulam nuclear power plant by laying siege to it, blocking the Tuticorin harbor with fibreglass boats and buoys. When fuel was loaded in the plant in September, hundreds of these fishermen and their families had buried themselves neck deep in sand. With the Arab Spring, the anti-Fukushima protests and the Anna movement, the 21st century may well be known as the century of protest. Perhaps none other has seen so much of rebellion so early and for so long. As American writer Elie Weisel famously said, “There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest.” Grabbing attention is the protestor’s fundamental right — from being iconoclastic to the downright outrageous. Iraqi protestor Muntazer al-Zaidi passed into popular legend by throwing a shoe at George Bush, and calling him a dog. Both Rupert Murdoch and Bill Gates faced pie attacks. A Peruvian woman washed the national flag in public to “clean” it of government corruption. Queen Elizabeth was pelted with eggs in New Zealand by Maori women, after which she quipped, “New Zealand has long been renowned for its dairy produce, though I should say that I myself prefer my New Zealand eggs for breakfast.” MARTYRS AND SYMBOLS
The language of popular heterodoxy is symbolism. In Khandwa, Madhya Pradesh, farmers stood in knee-deep water for days, protesting dams that threaten to submerge their fields; this ‘jal satyagraha’ is symbolic of the desperation felt by rural India where poverty forces thousands of farmers to commit suicide. The government buckled eventually, and the activist Alok Agarwal called it a “a victorious movement in terms of immediate needs.” When the bare-chested Mahatma walked to Dandi to manufacture salt, he became the symbol of a unique protest that dominates universal imagination. Few understood the decalcomania of protest like Gandhi did: the charkha was transferred from being a mundane object to a weapon that forced the might of the world’s most powerful empire to give India its independence. “It is impossible for every government to be right all the time , and dissent is one of the more important ways of providing alternative views for consideration by the larger public,” says Nandini Sundar, professor, Sociology, Department of Sociology, University of Delhi
Mahatma Gandhi symbolised one man’s protest against the system, eventually multiplying into a crowd. The individual protestor against the backdrop of history has authored some of history’s most poignant images — the tiny, solitary figure of an unknown man standing in the way of the relentless advance of a gigantic tank in Tiananmen Square dwarfed the power of the state in that moment frozen in time. The 1960s photograph of the young hippie placing a flower in the barrel of a policeman’s rifle during an anti-Vietnam war protest captured the innocent power of the Hippie generation that went on to change music and mores of the twentieth century. Arab children facing bullets showed that a generation that grew up in totalitarian times was growing out of them. The thousand slogans in a thousand dialects of hundreds of languages that have reverberated through the ages said the same thing: enough is enough. Protest is also the factory of martyrs. India’s own pictography of protest is haunting: centuries ago, Rajput women leapt into funeral pyres in Chittor as the Mughal armies advanced. No form of dissent has influenced the world’s imagination like non-violence; in 1932, when the Mahatma began his hunger fast in Yerawada Jail, Bombay — in retaliation against the British government’s decision to divide India’s electoral system by caste — the government gave in after six days. Nearly six decades after Gandhi fasted, Anna Hazare’s fast until death against corruption early this year brought the government down to its knees temporarily, until cracks of ambition within weakened the movement. Leaders like Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King used Gandhi’s ideology successfully in their own struggles against racism in their countries. Says veteran Communist A B Bardhan. “In a democracy, people have a right to protest. That is the only way they can draw attention of the powerful to the plight and struggles and to force the government of the day to change track.”
DEFINING THE TYRANT
The purity of the protestor’s purpose also defines the character of the tyrant; Aurangazeb walled in Hindus who protested conversion to Islam; he boiled Guru Tegh Bahadur alive for the same reason. General Dyer massacred peaceful protestors at Jalianwallah Bagh. Protest can also mean literally playing with fire. Images of students turning themselves into human torches, agitating against Mandal marked the 20th century’s last gasp. Self-immolation has been practiced by Buddhist monks as well as film buffs for decades. Candlelight vigils first appeared in Poland, when Lech Walesa challenged the Communist rulers. Millions of candles lit the windows of houses throughout Poland in solidarity with Solidarity. The cult film Rang De Basanti immortalised candlelight vigils to show the power of the Indian middle class developing a conscience. Both in India and the West, the popular villains are governments and big business. Says social scientist Ashish Nandy. “Mobilisation is crucial in a democracy; to win the elections or to demand action from the ruling dispensation which is otherwise unwilling to act. Therefore, one can see a desperation in what is taking place now.” Slogans are the patois of that desperation. When thousands lost homes in the US recession, a slogan read ‘Who Would Jesus Foreclose On?’ When Lehman Brothers collapsed, “We are the 99%” became possibly one of the most popular catchphrases of this decade, which came out of the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement when protestors against the perceived control of governments by big business laid seige to New York’s financial district. The slogan “I am an immigrant, I came to take your job but you don’t have one,” is both a parody and a comment on the xenophobia in the US. Anna Hazare made the Gandhi caps inscribed ‘I Am Anna’ iconic. Protests are sweeping India over economic, territorial and administrative issues. The Telangana movement has cost the government billions of rupees. The Cauvery water dispute has paralysed Karnataka. Mass demonstrations and bandhs against FDI in retail across the country are polarising public opinion. Says Congress leader Janardhan Dwivedi, “Protest and dissent are necessary ingredients of a democracy. They must be based on an ideology and a value system and not for self aggrandisement and publicity.”
NOVEL FORMS OF PROTEST
Publicity is the means to end for the ever-obliging media, always hungry for newer images to keep the flickering interest of a modern audience. Especially when protesters adopt bizarre means: in Brussels, farmers agitated against falling milk prices by spraying milk at the police from the udders of cows.
A British group named Fathers 4 Justice who support the right of estranged fathers and uniform Family Laws have their own signature idiosyncracy — climbing rooftops; on 21 October 2003, two campaigners climbed the Royal Courts of Justice, dressed as Batman and Robin. Another scampered up a 120-foot crane near the London Tower Bridge dressed as Spiderman. The then Prime Minister Tony Blair was the recipient of condoms filled with purple flour in the House of Commons. Muntazer al-Zaidi started the shoe missile trend; discontented Indians followed suit, throwing shoes at various ministers at various places.
PROTESTING CURSOR Social media’s awesome reach across borders, however, has made it difficult for governments to control dissidence. Humour is a powerful weapon to reach out to people. Facebook and Twitter are the new munitions of dissent. Last year, at the height of the civil society movement against corruption, the Indian government reacted angrily to images and short films lampooning the government and public figures. Links posted on Twitter led users to websites that hosted hilarious videos and photo-toons: one video showed Manmohan Singh as the Terminator quelling corruption and inflation. The government’s intent to pass censorship laws caused widespread anger among the neteratti — a new, unavoidable constituency. Says Bardhan, “With the arrival of the social media, the common man’s voice can no longer be suppressed, drowned or controlled by a small group of vested interests, lobbyists who’ve cornered power and worked only for the benefit of a few, their friends
and families.”
In June, supporters of Anonymous — a group of hackers who expose corruption in government and create anarchy — held demonstrations across 16 cities from Mumbai to Bangalore against the ‘growing censorship of internet by the government’. They wore Guy Fawkes masks, popularised by the comic book and film V for Vendetta. A popular symbol against government repression, politicians, banks and alleged control of government by financial institutions, the masks appeared at Occupy Wall Street protests. Julian Assange wore one during the Occupy London Stock Exchange protest. It is the top selling mask on Amazon.com. The anti-Putin rock band Pussy Riot’s twelve members wore colorful balaclavas that hid their faces. Their novel form of dissent involved unauthorised flash concerts that criticised Russian politicians, especially Putin; which are then posted on the Internet. Putin imprisioned three members of the band for ‘premeditated hooliganism’ showing that country hasn’t shed its KGB legacy — even Aung San Suu Kyi protested against their incarceration. The power of the Internet makes global coordination between like-minded groups organising public demonstrations easy. The Iraq War protest in Rome on February 15, 2003 — listed in The Guinness Book of World Records as the largest antiwar rally ever — saw over 3 million protesting against the US invasion, while simultaneously, coordinated protests broke out in nearly 600 cities — 1.3 million in Barcelona, and around 2 million in London.
A SUBJECTIVE MORALITY
The power of the worldwide web also brought out the power of women in the Arab Spring. For the first time, girls and boys sat down together to protest against President Mubarak in Tahrir Square. A year after the president’s arrest, the quota which allowed for 64 women MPs was revoked by the new government. “Women went out to the demonstrations in order to obtain a better future. We have been surprised to discover that after the revolution we have regressed by decades if not by centuries,” Dr Nihad Abu al-Komsan, chairperson of the Council for Women established by the Supreme Military Council, told the website Elaph. In Iran, the women who fiercely participated in the Islamic Revolution that deposed the Shah are now protesting the clergy that limited their freedom. Women have dominated the face of protest for ages. The Lady of the French Revolution in the painting by Eugene Delacroix depicting Liberty Leading the People, in turn inspired the Statue of Liberty. As one of the four representatives of women’s suffrage movement in America, ‘The Lady in White’, dressed in virginal white robes and riding a horse, was the outrider at the head of the Suffrage Parade on March 3, 1913. In India, the ambivalent morality of protest has also invited criticism from the burgeoning middle class — in the name of protecting Indian culture, hardliners routinely attack shops that sell Valentine’s Day cards. In 2009, retaliation against moral policing took the form of the ‘Pink Chaddi Campaign’ — Pink Underwear Campaign — by the ‘Consortium of Pub-Going, Loose and Forward Women’. Items of pink underwear were sent to Pramod Muthalik, after members of his group — the Sri Ram Sene in Mangalore — attacked women in a Mangalore pub. Says Nandy, “Protests can become subversive and be turned against women or marginal groups. How to handle such activities depends on the political and administrative skills of those in power.”
Saudi Arabia shocked the world when cops arrested a woman for driving. There were global protests, including from Princess Ameerah Al-Taweel of the House of Saud. She told an interviewer, “No matter how many great things we do, we’ll always be judged as a country that suppresses women because we’re the only country in the world where women can’t drive. If we want the world to look at us differently, this symbolic issue must change.” Semi-naked Ukranian women wearing veils and little else protested at the Saudi Arabian embassy in Kieve. The Slutwalk — women protesting rape as an excuse for provocative dressing — became a global feminist movement with thousands of women parading. Reminiscent of days when feminists burnt their bras in public, the Slutwalk became the new feminist statement. Despite censure from American feminist such as Jessica Valenti who called it “pornification of protest”, thousands of Slutwalkers “stripped down to their skivvies” to march through the cities of the world.
THE NAKED TRUTH
To capture attention by shocking people to think or act is the fundamental philosophy of protest. Nudity plays an important role in its chronology. Animal rights activists have used bare flesh to put their point across; crouched like tigers in cages and covered in nothing but body paint, lying naked in large groups on steps covered in make-believe blood. Brazilian carnival queen Viviane Castro took part in the annual parade in Sao Paulo with an image of Obama painted on her left leg and the slogan Vendese (Meaning for Sale in Portuguese) across her stomach, protesting the sale of Amazon to America. Playboy models Victoria Eisermann and Monica Harris posed in a bathtub on Trafalgar Square to protest the UK’s excess water consumption, which were straining natural resources. Naked models wearing masks in Bogota to protest pollution, South Korean prostitutes in the buff protesting police crackdown on brothels and women in El Salvador on protest marches in their birthday suits are guaranteed to bring immediate focus on their complaints. It also affords many a publicity seeker public exposure.
Protests define the times. The essential nature of every generation is parlayed through dissent, from Savonarola’s ‘Bonfire of the Vanities’ to the stone-pelters of Srinagar. It is the bridge between the need for change and the bulwark of power. Crossing them, amid the tumult of slogans, is part of mankind’s journey.