How to win the war

The protesters need to see how they can agree on a path to success so that their efforts are more specific, more potent and ultimately more effective

In 1971, The Anarchist Cookbook (also known as Jolly Roger’s Cookbook) was published. It was written by an American protesting his government’s war in Vietnam. It had details for his fellow protesters on how to make bombs and drugs. It was a pretty ordinary effort (the author was a teenager at the time he wrote it, and in fact later regretted writing it) but it sold two million copies. The most interesting thing about the work is the fact that it offers those who seek to participate in revolution a guide on how to go about doing this.

Many civil society bodies, known as NGOs, have a route map on how to effect change on the issue they are working on. Of course, their methods are peaceful and lawful. But they seek also to influence and alter the actions of government. Many of these groups have been in the field for decades and so have developed sophisticated systems that can conjure up a strategy for how to tackle an issue. Some of the great victories in the field of rights in the West, for example gay marriage, can be attributed to the development and application of a route map to change.

In India rights victories, especially those that have come from mass movements, have been few. For the most part this has been because of a lack of public participation at any meaningful level. This is the critical ingredient for change, especially in democratic polities which are presumably more susceptible to public pressure. We can attribute the Indian government’s reluctance to address rights issues, say in Kashmir and the Northeast, or on the issues of health and education, to the absence of meaningful public pressure.

Student protests against CAA-NRC have helped create public pressure. Francis Mascarenhas / Reuters

The thing is that such public pressure actually exists in India today on the issue of the various citizenship laws that this government is executing. There are hundreds of thousands of people on the street across India regularly standing up against the laws. There is no sense that the protests are about to go away. Indeed, as the government begins executing the laws, and starts knocking on doors seeking information for the population register, the protests will intensify.

What is missing from the protests is a route map to victory. These are protests that have been spontaneous and not organised by political parties, which makes them even more authentic. The protestors need to see how they can agree on a path to success so that their efforts are more specific, more potent and ultimately more effective.

Where can they start? Obviously the first thing is to agree on what the goal is and what victory looks like. Here the answer is clear: Rolling back the Citizenship Amendment Act, scrapping the National Register of Citizens and the changes in the National Population Register. The next step is also simple: a power-mapping analysis. This is a graph that maps all the actors who can influence the change that is being sought, and how powerful they are, and whether they are positively or negatively inclined towards the change being sought.

Some of the meaningful actors here are: the government, political parties, the courts, foreign countries, Bollywood, corporate India and so on. The government itself is not monolithic and contains individuals and groups who might differ. And it must function through an apparatus containing the higher bureaucracy that also can be influenced by the protesters.

We have already observed that India’s external affairs minister ducked a meeting with US Congressmen and women because he was afraid of being grilled by one Congresswoman of Indian origin. We can speculate about what he was afraid of, personal embarrassment or just that the actions of his government are indefensible and he could not bring himself to defend them before the sceptics. The fact is that he felt pressure and this can be used productively. The more Congressmen and women are told by their constituents to ensure that India does not misbehave with its minorities, the more pressure there will be on the Indian government from a power centre it values and fears.

Similarly, we have observed that the prime minister ducked a visit to Guwahati because he’s afraid of facing street anger. Apparently it bruises his vanity. This is also useful and can be amplified where he goes. We may have witnessed a seminal moment when Deepika Padukone stood by the battered students of Jawaharlal Nehru University and their hero Kanhaiya Kumar. Bollywood has always sided with power over justice because it is beholden to authority and gets serious amounts of money because it stays on the right side of the government. Unlike in the United States, where the film and music industry is extremely liberal and willing to jump into all sorts of causes, in India this has not happened. Deepika’s stance opens up the space for the protesters to see if they can widen the coalition of famous people willing to stand up for them.

Industry is pragmatic and will look at self interest, and this is true. However, upholding rights for all and ensuring a modern rule-of-law state is also in the long term interests of business. Seeking out and briefing the corporate sector is something that the protesters may not think of doing, but the power-mapping analysis reveals that this group has very strong influence on the prime minister.

These are the kind of things that need to be thought up and followed through as the protesters seek to bring about the change they seek. There will be many people with the knowledge who will be willing to do this work with them. I am personally very excited about what is to come and do not think that we have seen such a moment in our lifetimes. It is not possible that we will allow the industrial-scale brutalisation of India’s minorities as is being contemplated. And I have a feeling that we will win this battle that is being led by the Muslims and the students of India.