Protests, cause and effect

Today, as the political leadership is using every trick in the book to douse the fires of protest, it may be a good time to brush up on the history and mythology of protests

Brute force, mockery, hurling abuse and ink at people with whom you disagree, offensive attacks on Twitter and Facebook — in recent months cacophonous crowds have resorted to all of the above and more. As artists, authors, film makers and academics, a community usually reluctant to wade into political controversy, have returned awards and opened up about their discomfort with the public discourse, a battery of seasoned political leaders have reacted in strange and even absurd ways.

No civilisation is a stranger to protests. In fact, when old gods became too powerful, a hero emerged (usually a son or a grandson) to bring them down. Sometimes it was a young god who donned the mantle of protester, the story of Krishna, Indra and the Govardhan hill being one example. Indra was the reigning god-king. He controlled the world of gods and men and the weather — everyone moved to his command. His power made him arrogant and blind to his people’s troubles and every year (around Diwali) he demanded a massive offering from his people. Most of Indra’s followers were farmers and could hardly afford their god’s growing demands but, wary of his mercurial temper, they did his bidding. Krishna was particularly moved by their plight. Growing up in Mathura in the home of Nanda and Yashoda, he saw his parents struggle to perform the sacrifices and rituals that Indra demanded. He asked them to stop and told them that no god can impose his will upon his people as long as they do their dharma (the right way of life).

Finally one year, the people of Mathura stopped the sacrifices at Krishna’s insistence and, as expected, incurred Indra’s wrath. An enraged Indra brought torrential rain upon the town, washed away their homes and forced them to flee. Krishna took them to the foothills of the Govardhan hill, which he lifted up with his finger like a giant cover over the town. The people were saved and Indra was forced to beg for forgiveness. Ever since, Krishna’s worship has grown while Indra’s has waned. Beastly behaviour never works, not even in the case of gods.

In myth, the cruelty of tyrants is often challenged by lone protesters. In Greek myth, Antigone, daughter (sister) of Oedipus and Jocasta, wanted a burial for her brother, Polynices, but Creon (king of Thebes) refused.  As a punishment for treason, Creon ordered that Polynices’s body be left to rot. Antigone defied him and Creon punished her by ordering her to be buried alive. But before he could get to the spot, Antigone managed to bury her brother and hanged herself. And Creon lost his son, who killed himself because he was in love with Antigone. Protesters have a way of engulfing the world in their storm and arrogant kings are particularly vulnerable.

Take the story of Amba and Bheeshma in the Mahabharata. Bheeshma abducted Amba and her sisters from their swayamvara as brides for his step brother. But Amba was in love with another king, Salva, and she accused Bheeshma of denying her the right to choose her husband. When Bheeshma finally relented, Salva refused to take her back because, he said, Amba belonged to another man. Amba went back to Bheeshma and asked him to marry her, but he refused because he was sworn to celibacy. Amba sat in protest for years, inflicting the most severe austerities upon herself, until finally jumping into her own funeral pyre but not before she had wrested a boon from the gods that she would be reborn as a transgender and kill Bheeshma.  As Shikhandi, it was Amba’s arrow that finally brought down Bheeshma, who had been granted the boon that he could be killed by neither man nor woman.  

Interestingly, as Amba did in the epic, many ancients used fire as a vehicle of protest. Sati did, when as Shiva’s wife she felt that her husband was slighted in her father’s house, and even history is replete with examples of self-immolating protesters — think the Mandal protests and Rajiv Goswami who set fire to himself and more recently a Tunisian vegetable seller, Mohammed Bouazizi, whose death sparked the Arab spring. Today, as the political leadership uses every trick in the book to douse the fires of protest, it may be a good time to brush up on the history and mythology of protests.