What’s Keeping Congress From Employing New Satyagraha in JNU Row?

The violence unleashed on students must push our leaders to take to Satyagraha to revive the political discourse.

A winter of simmering discontent has given way to largescale violence – physical as well as verbal – in India’s political discourse. Less than 100 km from the heart of Lutyens’ Delhi, which houses our policymaking elite, Jats are agitating violently in Haryana.

Rohtak and Jhajjar are seething as Jats – an otherwise propertied and upwardly mobile caste – demand reservations in government jobs and education. Around a dozen people have already died. The military has been deployed.

New Low in Politics

Earlier this month, after police arrested JNUSU president Kanhaiya Kumar from the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), for alleged ‘sedition,’ we saw unprecedented sight of people, dressed in black lawyers’ robes, as well as one BJP MLA from Delhi, thrashing academics, students and threatening senior advocates – in the premises of a courthouse.

One politician in Tamil Nadu has demanded that CPI leader D Raja ‘shoot’ his daughter dead for having dared to participate in student protests in JNU. Another has said that Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi be ‘hanged’ for allegedly not being ‘nationalistic’ enough.

The name-calling and abuse is intolerable; surpassed only by the outbreak of lumpen violence. Is India’s politics headed irrevocably down a slippery slope? Or do alternatives still exist to bring some sanity and civility back into political discourse?

Reviving Political Discourse

There is a way, and it is called satyagraha. The term – and the form of political mobilisation that would take root around it – was drawn up by Mohandas Gandhi, in South Africa, sometime around 1906. A compound word, satyagraha means, literally, the quest for and practice of ‘satya’ – the truth.

Gandhi maintained that unlike civil disobedience, which could descend to violence and anarchy, satyagraha would not permit any violence, even in the face of force. He called satyagraha ‘a weapon of the strong’ – strong in will and in purpose. It is this form of agitation, not mindless slogan shouting or trading of insults that can revive our political discourse today.

For satyagraha to be effective, it has to be visible and centred around a positive cause that its practitioners believe in. If opposition parties, seething at the perceived rise in ‘intolerance’ in public life today, come together on a common platform of satyagraha, they can offer a far more constructive critique of intolerance, abuse and violence.

Experimenting With Truth

• As JNU row rages on, it’s worth introspecting on the unfortunate name-calling as well as violence being used as a usual course of action.
  
• Satyagraha, Gandhi’s non-violent form of protest, assumes significance like never before as a means to revive political discourse.
  
• On a common platform of Satyagraha, the opposition parties can offer a far more constructive critique of intolerance, abuse and violence.
  
• A New Satyagraha, adapted for our times and customised for modern concerns may help deal with the cynicism of our times.
  

Common Ground For Dialogue

Thousands of young people have taken to India’s streets to demand justice for Kanhaiya. Hundreds of superannuated military personnel have countered this with a march of their own, claiming their first right on patriotism. Along the way, it has become impossible to determine what each side is trying to tell the other – or even if there’s any common ground open for dialogue anymore.

People with conscience, patience and imagination to step out of this gridlock should pick up Gandhi’s political playbook today. In a media-saturated era, a peaceful demonstration, simply by several dozen people squatting peaceably in a public space, demanding reason and civility in public discourse, will attract millions of eyeballs.

Anna Hazare, admittedly no satyagrahi, attracted pan-India attention in 2011, on his first campaign in Delhi to oppose widespread graft. The movement lacked cohesion – perhaps also conviction – which is why it imploded spectacularly on itself. But it created a politician – and chief minister – in Arvind Kejriwal. It also birthed the experiment called Aam Aadmi Party (AAP).

The Congress and other opposition parties – as well as individuals anguished by the hooliganism of the day – should dust out the satyagraha playbook. Leaders of the New Satyagraha should campaign peacefully, exercising moral and physical restraint. But they must pursue their goals doggedly.

Taking Cue From Gandhi

History shows that satyagraha can triumph against the worst odds, against the most heavy-handed state crackdown, and beat powers that are apparently many times stronger than a motley crew of satyagrahis. Gandhi humbled the mighty British Empire with satyagraha; Nelson Mandela practiced satyagraha to liberate South Africa from the brute force of apartheid.

Gandhi had to do much to invent and propagate his ideas over time, to turn satyagraha into a potent tool against oppression. His successors do not have to retrace all his footsteps and experiments with truth. They have the luxury of having the finished product – in writing and practice – to guide them.

If any force can outmanoeuvre brute intolerance and mob violence, it is satyagraha. A New Satyagraha, adapted for our times and customised for modern concerns. India needs the politics of satyagraha today, probably more than it ever needed after the departure of the British.

We shall wait and see who the modern satyagrahis are. And how they put Gandhi’s ideas to work today.

(The writer is a Delhi-based senior journalist)

Also read:

Why Shrill Nationalism Rhetoric Will Be Counterproductive

BJP Plays Patriotism Card in JNU Issue, Backfires