Poetry of Protest - 1

I am remembering the scene in the movie "Dead Poet's Society" where Prof. John Keating was inspiring his student with the beauty of poetry : We don't read and write poetry because it's cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for. To quote from Whitman, "O me! O life!... of the questions of these recurring; of the endless trains of the faithless... of cities filled with the foolish; what good amid these, O me, O life?" Answer: that you are here; that life exists, and identity; that the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse; that the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse. What will your verse be?

While most prefer to be didactic and dry in order to make a large statement at the expense of beauty, it is only one side of the coin. There is a passion, emotions, connectivity and power contained in the poems and songs of the people. Poems are sometimes frivolous and pretentious but are written with the Streams of the subconsciousness. The personal turmoil with the experience and observation of grimed reality make poems full of universal appeal. Free versus with the words flowed create a typhoon in the minds of freedom loving people.

Poetry is to create awareness, to create the desire for dreams, social justice, gender equality and to stand up for the downtrodden. To be a poet is dare to give voice to the silent victims witnessing endless suppression, discrimination and violence. To people like Neruda and Faiz, art is for the life and not just for art’s sake. Poems were never meant to be retained but often they end up to recited and remembered without even the efforts of the academia. As they are sing and enjoyed by the people, they created meanings more than if they can do on the paper.

Men are agents of self interest with a will to do good for others. No doubt people always began in good faith against power but insensibly, commitment by commitment, when not aware of dangers of owning power, individuals will become entangled in a web of lies, falsehoods, deceits and perjuries, until they lost their souls to the power. It is necessary to understand the larger ways that discourse supports power and also the larger movements for/against power in the reference of the culture. In the next part of this essay, we will move towards examples of protest and poetry in the real word.

Culture of resistance

While illusions of reform is creating a ground for revolutionary environment, one needs to see the relation between establishment and the unprivileged ones. Everywhere in the world, people are not suffering from an excess of civil disobedience, infact suffering from an excess of civil obedience of few elites. The case of protest and violence are heavily related.  As Johann Hari mentioned about effects of protest in the UK that has far reaching effect and it is true for all over the world : -

"There is a cost to this chilling of protest. Every British citizen is the beneficiary of a long line of protesters stretching back through the centuries. Every woman reading this can vote and open her own bank account and choose her own husband and have a career because protesters demanded it. Every worker gets at least £5.93 an hour, and paid holidays, and paid sick leave, because protesters demanded it. Every pensioner gets enough to survive because protesters demand it. What what your life would be like if all those protesters through all those years had been frightened into inactivity? If you block the right to protest, you block the path to progress. You are left instead at the whim of an elite, whose priority is tax cuts for themselves, paid for with spending cuts for the poor."

In a recent address Akbar Ganji, a representative of the Green Movement in Iran, characterized history thus: “Human history has been interpreted in many ways. I read this history as a sustained course of struggle for liberty—the struggle of slaves, women, people of color, the poor, the disenfranchised, of religious minorities and dissidents of various sorts, to rid themselves of the tyranny they have endured.” In a history of the revolutions in Paris, there is a provocative phrase: “The time of the oppressed is by nature discontinuous” – apparently there is more truth in it than any statement made about victims of power

Often war/violence is assumed as the last resort of the problem, but the first approach that the establishment prefers. The authority of state lies in the allowance of violence given to the state by the people. When the state tend to use violence against its own people, it loses that sanction and trust of masses. The opposite violence born due to the protest catch society between two poles. History has shown us that US authorities have started to talk with Martin Luther King, Jr. because Dr. King’s alternative appear moderate by comparison across all the political spectrum, stretching from Malcolm X and the Black Panthers.
 
Violence is not some abstract or theoretical question to be puzzled through. It’s simply part of life and protest also. And that doesn’t mean you participate or don’t participate. It just means that you deal with it.  A decision to resort to violence is not something to be undertaken without great care—and stated in terms that were addressed to reasonable people. Great  leaders like Nehru and Mandela have felt the historic obligation to make a stand and to define it. That is why once an independence  or prime aim of revolution was achieved, most of the sensible leaders elope with the peaceful democratic movements. Arundhuti Roy recently quote an apt statement about nature of violence  : It would be immoral of me to preach violence unless I’m prepared to pick up arms myself. It is equally immoral for me to preach nonviolence when I’m not bearing the brunt of the attack.  

Bohemian Rhapsody

The ones who do speak up in mainstream are irrelevant and noisy and the ones who could be relevant are quiet, unheard or ignored. It feels so good when you support and promote a project from the heart and later mainstream adopt and accept as its own. Same feeling is coming for the film 'Udaan'. I always have a gutsy feeling that big dreams of marginalized individual will bring monumental changes in India one day. There is a cynicism and lethargy attached in learning and doing of mainstream traditional institutions and people. Only few with passion are free from TBTC (Too Busy To Care) syndrome. The only difference between a professional and an enthusiast is that an enthusiast is willing to take risk and accepts deferred gratifications whereas a professional does not want to take the risk, and wants to be rewarded immediately. Leave apart these talks of others and come to the hotchpotch walk of my life;

As, the famous poet Al-Bayati moved between his homeland and the rest of the world. "I've always searched for the sun's springs," he said, "When a human being stays in one place, he's likely to die. People too stagnate like water and air. Therefore the death of nature, of words, of the spirit has prompted me to keep traveling, so as to encounter new suns, new springs, new horizons. A whole new world being born."

I don't travel much and has a monotonous work schedule in the life. While returning from office, I always watch the dusk. The sunset ignites the idea of mundane life, transient time and a deep urge for existence. I go deep inside and many questions are born in these vague moments of thoughtlessness. I transcend into an awkward reality with an invented illusion of abstract values. I always feel amazed that these moments shape up with/without purpose.

Life is somehow unfathomable by common mind. Each set of idea is countered by equally forceful reason and evidences. I observe the past from a deterministic point of view, where causes lead to effects. While world is more probabilistic in nature here outcomes are driven by invisible or chance events. So, how analysing the past can help me in documentation and drafting theories and making hypothetical narration about tomorrow. While the other part of brain argues that present is not entirely a random walk in the contingent—culture renders some steps more probable than others. Thinking of an individual is shaped by its surrounding. Inseparable from all narratives is a particular instantiation of politics, identity, and culture.The dilemma of split thinking continues...

In the time when everybody is in quest of high salaries, why I am tending towards some decent job with relaxation ? And in place of adventure and fun, why I am busy in learning about culture and development ? I make writing and reading as much a part of my life as I do eating or listening to music. Amid infinite space, no echo is heard and the questions of soul remain unanswered.

The Road to Democracy - 2

People around the world are blogging, podcasting, and uploading photos, videos, and information across the globe, but unless in this ocean of data you know where to look, it can be difficult to find respected and credible voices. Global Voices is an international community of bloggers who report on blogs and citizen media from around the world.

The idea that is lost for most mainstream media and press is that their views must reflect public demand for reform and enforces government for the correction measure. Reality must not be dictated by the state censors or corporate media but by the people who are the lowest racks of power structure.

With the release of more than thousand cables so far, no nation is immune to the WikiLeaks phenomenon. There is a WikiLeaks now, that sort of journalism and institution we should built on. It has given an insight into the world politics and the interplay of power between different states.Most of these secrecy laws are being used to keep the public ignorant of gross dishonesty practised by their own government. When the risks of embarrassment and discovery increase, the tables are turned against conspiracy, corruption, exploitation and oppression. As Saul Bellow says at the opening of Augie March: "Everybody knows there is no fineness or accuracy of suppression; if you hold down one thing you hold down the adjoining."

In a democracy the functioning of a country should not be a mystery to its citizens; the government, indeed, answers directly to the people to whom it serves and owes its powers. Publishing document for public improves transparency, and this transparency creates a better society where people can demand accountability from the power holders. Better scrutiny leads to reduced corruption and stronger democracies in all society’s institutions, including government, corporations and other organisations. Open government is bounded to answers injustice rather than causing it.

Reason appears to keep order in control when public is well informed about the developments and various acts of government. Practice of the reason and debate is cultivated by years of practice in the civil society through . Without substantial free discourse in the public, the state loses its trust of the people. A strong hold on reality is necessary for the society to come to a meaningful democratic norms. History of revolutions shows their birth is due to rage. Reason and peace comes quite later.

Censoring the voice of the people and killing opposition voice leads to suppression where only probability of violence and revolution grows is self defeating for the whole society itself. Blasphemy, Sedition, Honour Killing, Vigilante Justice, Caste Panchayats, Book Burning, Culture Policing, Moral Police and all such tendencies are tools to crush the democratic aspirations of different sections of people. As Orwell wrote in his essay "The prevention of literature": "Even a single taboo can have an all-round crippling effect upon the mind, because there is always the danger that any thought which is freely followed up may lead to the forbidden thought."

It's People, Stupid

Long before internet, Samizdat was a key form of dissident activity across the Soviet bloc in which individuals reproduced censored publications by hand and passed the documents from reader to reader. Times are changing now with the tools of information, it's a revolution of facebook generation.

So was it Wikileaks, Facebook, or Twitter that is toppling dictators in Middle East? The people's revolution for liberty is spreading like a domino effect in the Arab world with the help of 1,000 satellite channels. The tools to report the struggle on internet like social networks, blogs, text messaging and mobile phone video clips that can be swiftly uploaded to YouTube are triggering the voice of people.

Those of us far from these upheavals face a powerful responsibility of making these voice heard on the global stage. The inspiration for next popular protest can come from anywhere in the world and people will not only aspire for liberty and freedom but will also know through TV, radio, press and Internet.

Theocracy has arrived in the Iran through popular tapes of Ayotullah Khomeni and so was the protest of Green revolution was sparked through Internet connection. What has started from eastern European countries have come to Islamic countries in thirty years.

In a society that does not tolerate social and cultural views that challenge the status and authority, the Internet presents Anonymity and Security ; Internet provides a platform for the exchange of views with like-minded individuals and for the establishment of local, national or international networks of the people.

By the time the dust settles and the smoke clears, plenty more incriminating pictures and videos will appear, chronicling a popular revolution in the making with all its glorious moments and its dark phases. For documenting everything from the colorful protests in Tahrir Square as well as Tunis, the huge marches of millions in Alexandria and Cairo, the awful scenes of cars running over pedestrians, we owe our thanks to many people whose names we will never know.

Leaders get power from the people that they lead on trust. If the people lose trust in the leader, no power can put the ruler on the throne forever. We have to be cautious that it is not a social change, but a step towards political democracy. It's not only the victory of the technology over censor , it is the victory of the people and liberal values.  I will quote here two paragraphs written by Linda Herrera about the use of technology in the revolution :

"Many have since asked: Is this a “Facebook Revolution?” It is high time to put this question to rest and insist that political and social movements belong to people and not to communication tools and technologies. Facebook, like cell phones, the internet, and twitter, do not have agency, a moral universe, and are not predisposed to any particular ideological or political orientation. They are what people make of them.

Facebook is no more responsible for Egypt’s revolution than Gutenberg’s printing press with movable type was responsible for the Protestant Reformation in the fifteenth century. But it is valid to say that neither the Reformation nor the pro-democracy rights’ movements sweeping Tunisia, Egypt, Iran, and much of the region would have come about at this juncture without these new tools. Digital communications media have revolutionized learning, cognition, and sociability and facilitated the development of a new generational behavior and consciousness. And the old guard simply do not get it."

What is happening in Egypt is not a Facebook Revolution. But it could not have come about without the Facebook generation, generation 2.0, who are taking, and with their fellow citizens, making history.The revolution is here to stay and more power will flow towards people only. The way ahead lies through peaceful protest against extremism and opportunism in democracy. Iran, Kashmir, Tunisia and now Egypt.... Protests are here to stay. Winds of change have start blowing in Yemen, Algeria, Gabon :-)