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The knack of protest
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The question to be asked is not if we have the right to protest, but how well we do it, says PRAKASH BELAWADI
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We must devise innovative means of protest than merely take the amateur route of jamming traffic for hours.
IN OUR Bangalore of helpless outrage, when students and parents storm counselling rooms, film stars materialise out of their 2-D realities onto to the streets, truckers go off the streets, legislators jump into the wells of legislating houses, sundry associations sit in sullen relay hunger strikes, and farmers and students kills themselves, the key question to ask is not about the right to protest. We may well protest because it is our right, but do we protest well?
The real problem that trade unions, associations, and other protesting entities could be encountering is not that of successive governments progressing to the Right. It is true that the courts of the land are beginning to assert that the right to protest should not interfere with the lives of those that are not part of the protest. The suffering citizenry that is prepared to put up with it all anyway should not be made to suffer more by the protesters blocking the polluted and already congested roads. The Left says that is subverting the basic right to protest.
Perhaps. But the real problem is ennui. People are bored of most forms of protest. If you will pardon the suggestion, even suicide by a farmer ("another one bites the dust") is not sharp news.
The moral
The moral is that winner takes all, damn the cause. The late J.H. Patel, when he was chief minister, had to once face protest from the then Opposition Congress over some issue. The protest started with stalled sessions in the legislative houses and spilled into the streets.
The Opposition called for a bandh, a trick full of risks unless the bandh is sponsored by the ruling party itself. The bandh laid an egg. The Opposition then decided to "storm the Vidhana Soudha... " The protesters, stalwarts of the ruling dispensation today, were all "arrested" and duly released. Chief minister Patel laughed at them: "It is all so archaic," he said. Who cares what issue?
In a successful protest, there will be murder, plunder, mayhem, arson, and police firing. If the protest is "unofficially sponsored" by the ruling powers, protesters will be allowed to target some communities, typically minority. Their shops and establishments will be looted, ravaged or set on fire. Some of them will be beaten up or worse.
There will be satisfying action, photo opportunities and lasting tension. But the protest of the naοve and the innocent, the amateurs, the truly outraged, fails for want of good form. Without powerful backing, the protesters can cry themselves hoarse, but it only gets to be all whimper and no bang.
Key element
If one may dare suggest a dramatic structure for public protest, the key elements of form are scale, intensity, and expression ("entertainment.") For instance, one could have expected that professionals of the entertainment industry will devise innovative means of protest than merely take the amateur route of jamming traffic for hours. But stars may be forgiven if they believe that their mere presence will compensate for everything else the protest lacks in terms of, not just form, but even cause and content.
Scale should be manifested in the numbers of the affected, not by those impacted by traffic jams, but in those demonstrating for or against a change in the status quo. Intensity will show in the protesters stamina to shout, sustain, and survive adversity.
Expression delivers the engagement of public interest, media attention, and adds to the morale of the protesters. But, ultimately, in purely psychological terms, the protesters must earn public and media sympathy, and put the adversary on the defensive.
The bottom line is that not to yield has to become a more expensive option for the adversary than to stall, hold out, or refuse.
Scale, intensity, and expression. Any one element, when it is substantial enough, could make up for the other two. If movie fans across Karnataka decided to merely boycott all theatres screening non-Kannada films for a week, in support of the demands of the local film industry, it could say it louder than any street protest. But where there are no real numbers to help the protest, style, and expression could become very important.
Even a minority of one, if he or she made a product that shone brighter than all the others and lured the numbers into the halls? That's style. Right?
Brilliant inventiveness
A French dignitary in Bangalore, who needs to be anonymous, once said that a protest form devised by farmers in Karnataka was adopted by protesting farmers of his own country, who admired it for its "brilliant inventiveness".
In the aftermath of a vital era that died out, when farmers held their own "courts" to try public officials and threatened governments by rallying into a sea of green, a rally of farmers decided to make up for the lack of numbers with expression. They gathered in front of the Vidhana Soudha, when the Houses were in session, and laughed loudly. "I think it is one of the most innovative forms of protest I have ever come across," he said.
Innovative, may be, but was it effective? When the powerful become more powerful and benign indifference turns to callous neglect and the hurt have lost the ability and means to hurt in return, lampooning is not such a bad idea. It could be very gratifying. Make fun of them. They don't like it. Ha, ha.
Feedback may be mailed to prakash@cfdbangalore.ac.in.
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