It has been more than one month since this blog has been updated as this writer has been busy with some personal preoccupations. However the recent hartals in Kerala (one in his city of Thiruvananthapuram and the other all over the state) and the subsequent violence have left this writer with no other option but to hit the online world with an essay damning hartals and the violence associated with it. The essay wants to put a question to all those who support violent hartals on what they have achieved from it.
Contrary to those supporters of violent hartals who claim that those who criticise hartals are chamchas of the UPA government and are in support of the petrol price rise, this writer wants to say that it is not so and we, those who damn violent hartals, are equally outraged as the supporters of hartals at the anti-people stand of the UPA government in increasing the price of petrol which is intended to help the private fuel distributors. We are also for protesting against this injustice to the people of India but we don’t believe in violence in any such protests. As this writer had already pointed out in another essay, hartals were used during India’s independence struggle by the non-violent freedom fighters as a successful form of protest as in those days the produce of various economic activities in India used to go to the United Kingdom. Therefore when you protest using hartals, by not working on that day and by closing down your shops, you were preventing the United Kingdom from getting the benefits of the economic activity. So that made sense. But when you use the same form of protest now against our own Indian government, you should know that you are hampering your own prosperity as the produce of economic activities doesn’t go to any other country but to your own country.
Statistics has shown that the state lost around 200 crores as a result of the hartals including 5.5 crore loss for KSRTC. Hartal supporters damaged many state vehicles and other state properties and it must be remembered that the state would use tax payers’ money to purchase new vehicles and rebuild those damaged state properties. As if the burden of increased petrol prices is not enough, these hartals have put an additional monetary load on the millions of poor people of our state. In the mindless violence that the hartal supporters unleash, there have often been occasions of individuals getting hurt. A poor man who drives KSRTC buses to make both ends meet was severely hurt during one of the stone pelting incidents that happened in the recent hartal at Thiruvananthapuram. Private vehicles are not left alone by hartal supporters either and they often threaten those who venture outside for urgent errands. It is a general rule in the political circle of the state that a hartal could be considered successful only if people are blocked from travelling freely in the state and therefore the hartal supporters will do whatever is possible to make sure that it happens. They will create blockades on the road, threaten people and even attack them to achieve this and after the hartal ends the political leaders would make tall claims in the media that the hartal had been a success and people had acquiesced with their hartal which was evident from the fact that there had been no significant traffic on the road. Quite laughable indeed!
Now the question that needs to be re-asked is what have we achieved from the hartals? The petrol price remains as high as it was earlier and the central government has no intention to reduce it. The state government of Kerala decided to forego the additional revenue which it would have got from the price rise. And how much that is? 70 paise, which means you would save only Rs. 7 on filling 10 litres of petrol; a savings of Rs. 7 in Rs. 690 (Kochi price). So when you are sure that hartals won’t result in any concrete change and you are protesting for the sake of protest, is it not sensible to find a less violent form of protest than hartal? If your intention is just to show your protest, you could have sit in for a fast for a day, you could have gone for a peaceful demonstration in front of the Secretariat or district headquarters or conducted a seminar against petrol price hike. Whenever people speak against hartals those who support it challenge them to come up with a more effective alternative to hartal (as if hartal is a very effective one). That is for the politicians to discover and promote, that is their responsibility and that is for what we Indians elect them and call them leaders. However this much is true, contrary to what a leftist leader in the state said, many things can be achieved by peaceful protest as was shown by Anna Hazare’s peaceful protest for Janlokpal bill. For the many flaws it had, Anna Hazare’s protest was a mass protest that got significant support from the different walks of life.
It is high time politicians understand that there is no place for violence in the Indian society. Being people who have seen and learnt how Mahatma Gandhi’s peaceful sathyagraha decimated the arrogance of mighty English and achieved independence for the country, we Indians can never be cajoled by the evanescent strength of violence. All those political ideologies that are based on the supremacy of armed struggle and violence would certainly sink into the oblivion of Indian history sooner rather than later.
What we need is a new law that would put all the responsibility of monetary loss to the state and personal attacks on the people on a hartal day to the party and its leaders who call for it. As of now no one can be held responsible for the damages and this encourages political parties to call for hartals as and when they fancy. Politicians who oppose such a law often come up with the argument that the opposition parties may commit a crime on a hartal day to defame them and put the blame on the party that has called for the hartal. But that is the risk that they take on calling for a hartal and a party should call for a hartal only after taking into consideration such a turn of event. Having said this much, this writer holds no such hopes for a law of that kind to come up in our Parliament, for laws are created by these politicians only (rightists, leftists and the centrists) who are still very much convinced about the possibility of gaining political points out of a hartal. We Indians are destined to such a poor fate of falling prey to the treacherous intentions of these unscrupulous politicians all our lives.
