Creative Protest

Unpaid lady health workers, a slow investigation of a target killing, electricity breakdowns - regardless of the cause, the protests are usually all the same: burning  tyres or buses, pelting stones, closing main roads. The message is lost in the rioting and its management by the state.

How do the silenced speak when there is none to speak for them? It requires creative thought to ensure the message is communicated.

In the Bhutto era, when section 144 was imposed banning assembly of 5 or more people, the Lawyers took out an effective protest: 4 lawyers followed at a 20 ft distance by another 4  in a long procession along the road, not breaking any law, not stopping the traffic and yet having an impact. More recently the Fix It movement has been effective in getting the authorities to repair manholes.

The poet Shelly wrote  The Mask of Anarchy in 1832, that may be  the first manifesto  of peaceful resistance,  asking protestors to "Stand ye calm and resolute”  and “Look upon them as they slay, Till their rage has died away”

Peaceful resistance  in the form of  Satyagraha and  Civil Disobedience   was adopted by freedom movements in India,  the American Civil Rights Movement, Conscientious Objectors, Anti Vietnam war sit ins, Egyptian Independence from the British,   South Africa’s war against Apartheid,  Czechoslovakia's  Velvet Revolution and many more.

These strategies do however assume violent suppression by the state such as the Palestinian Intifada or the lone Chinese man who stood in front of tanks in Tiananmen Square. 

In a world stained red with war and violence, we no longer have the appetite for voluntary bloodshed.

There have been many effective ways of protest that gave little opportunity for violent suppression. While the individual initiating it may have been persecuted, the message was spread peacefully: the Avaaz signature campaigns, Green Peace activism, boycott of products, Banksy graffiti, Ben Shan posters, Maya Angelou Poems, Billie Holliday’s song “Strange Fruit” or Nina Simone’s song  “Mississippi Goddam” that became a key part of the civil rights movement, the poems of Faiz and Jalib , a poem on a rickshaw, Goya’s war paintings, Wilfred Owen’s poems, John Lennon’s song ‘Imagine’ to name a few. 

The work songs and “hollers” of slave chain gangs, the simple act by Rosa Parks of refusing to give up her seat on the bus to a white passenger after the white section was filled, the Toyi-toyi feet stomping and chanting dance of South Africa protesters, emboldened leaders to speak out.

The hurling of two shoes at President Bush  by Iraqi journalist Muntadhar al-Zaidi, one a farewell kiss from Iraqi people, the other for the widows and orphans, made something simple like a shoe an important symbol of indignation. One may even interpret  Qandeel Baloch’s infamous facebook  as a bid for personal freedom.  In our times, mass movement is easily achieved via the internet, Whatsapp or SMS. We should need no water canons or rubber bullets. A virtual call for a four day boycott of overpriced fruit in Karachi this Ramzan was  surprisingly effective.

There have been many creatively conceived protests: The women of Pinochet’s Chile quilted images of missing sons. Peruvians gathering  to wash the flag tarnished by dirty politics; women beating empty pots and pans in many countries from Venezuela to Faisalabad; thousands of pairs of shoes in Paris' Place de la Republique when French government banned large scale protests  at the Climate Change  Summit;  250 bottles of hand sanitizer given to Zuckerberg before he met Modi, meant to wash off blood stains of the 2002 Gujarat riot victims; the #Silence is Betrayal Sydney flash mob in which young Muslim men and hijab wearing girls symbolically re-enacted the war in Syria.

The power of the word strengthened with knowledge., by orators like Muhammad Ali Jauhar, Martin Luther King Jr., Mahdi Hasan or Shashi Tharoor compel people to re-think.

Even small gestures, such as a painting of a shocked Jinnah on the Pakistani 100 rupee note can transmit a powerful message: songs such as Awaz’s Mr. Fraudiye,  Shehzad Roy’s Lagay Reh, Arjumand Azhar Hussain’s video of Rahman Malik trying to get onto a plane delayed for him; Sabir Nazar’s political cartoons, the placing of hand fans on an electric pole  by university students to protest load shedding , endless SMS jokes. Andrew Stroud, the husband of Nina Simone re-directed  her anguish at the killing of four black children saying  “Nina, you know nothing about killing; the only thing you got is music”. We have to ask ourselves, what have we got?

Does protest change anything?  No, only legislation can. Protest is the first step in raising awareness. It requires listening ears of those in authority to act.

Perhaps Khwaja, interviewed by the BBC, who sits on a village charpai and rustles up customized mobs for hire with a few phone calls, can be replaced with a group of creative minds who can get messages across peacefully.

Durriya Kazi

19 June 2017