When Wen Jiabao, the Chinese prime minister, visited Cambridge University some months ago, a German student threw a shoe at him, protesting against Chinese “dictatorship” — which survives. Nor did the ex-principal who threw a shoe at Naveen Jindal on Friday achieve anything. But Jarnail Singh in Delhi has managed to unseat two Congress candidates for the Lok Sabha polls. So what makes for effective protest?
One answer has to be that the protest should be about something that is self-evidently wrong, and therefore creates bad PR for the target. The Congress was acutely embarrassed by the focus on an issue that could boomerang on voting day, so it acted quickly. A second answer has to be that the protest must have a clear objective, with corrective action a realistic possibility. Unlike the Cambridge student, Jarnail Singh was protesting about something very specific, and the corrective was obvious, and not difficult to undertake. In the case of Muntadhar al-Zeidi, who started the shoe-throwing in Iraq, what was President Bush supposed to do? Announce the withdrawal of all US troops in Iraq? Similarly, the Tibetans protesting in Lhasa and elsewhere last year created bad PR for the People’s Republic, but no protesting Tibetan could seriously have expected that the Great Han takeover of Tibet would be undone.
It is the same with large street protests. The crowds in London at the time of the G-20 meeting, protesting against capitalism, could not and did not achieve anything. Who after all is supposed to end capitalism, and what is it to be replaced with? Similar (and more violent) protests at the time of the Seattle WTO meeting a decade ago had a more specific target: free trade. Martin Luther King’s march on Washington also had a specific objective in mind: racial equality. Both had impact, and forced politicians to respond. One question crops up, though: does being peaceful and disciplined (as King’s demonstration was) make protest less effective than the street rioting that took place in Seattle?
Gandhi, who mastered the art of protest, teaches us two or three other lessons. One is that it works sometimes to appeal to your opponent’s better instincts (like a sense of natural justice), and to expand your constituency. After burning British clothes in India, Gandhi on his next British visit went to the homes of British textile workers, who cheered him! It is also very effective if the chosen method of protest is such that, if ignored, could lead to catastrophic consequences — the fast unto death, for instance, carried with it the threat of the country rising in revolt if Gandhi did indeed die (only an irredeemable imperialist like Churchill would ask why Gandhi wasn’t dead if millions of people in famine-hit Bengal were said to be dying).
But doing harm to yourself may sometimes achieve nothing more than getting you the headlines. Rajeev Goswami burnt himself in Delhi to protest against the implementation of the Mandal report on reservations for Other Backward Classes (OBCs), and sparked off a wave of prolonged protests, but the reservation has stayed (was Goswami’s sense of grievance a political non-starter, since OBCs outnumber the “forward” castes?). Monks who burnt themselves in Vietnam in the 1960s were more effective in their protest against the persecution of Buddhists, and did eventually achieve regime change.
Sometimes, of course, a protestor can shoot himself in the foot. Did the protestors at Singur realise what response their actions would provoke? Some forms of protest, like the candle vigils in Mumbai last November-December were more cathartic than anything else. In comparison, candle marches in Delhi on the Jessica Lall murder case led to a fresh trial and a conviction. So, what forms of protest would work against Narendra Modi in Gujarat? Or corrupt tax officialdom everywhere?
