Pub Bharo Ya Bus Bharo, Minister Renuka Chowdhury?

On the winter’s day of December 1st, 1955, Rosa Parks, a 42 year old seamstress and civil liberties worker boarded a bus to head home from work. Parks, secretary of the Montgomery chapter of the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People) had recently familiarized herself with Gandhian non-violence at a workshop for racial equality at the Highlander Folk School.

“Tired of giving in”, Rosa Parks refused to obey the bus driver and offer her seat to a white passenger. This individual act of civil disobedience began the Montgomery Bus Boycott that lasted 381 days, crippling the economy of the local public transport system, eventually leading to the Supreme Court declaring segregation on buses as unconstitutional.ci

On December 5th, 1955, a young churchman named Martin Luther King Jr. assumed leadership of the campaign to defend Rosa Parks. Four years later, he visited India to imbibe Gandhi’s principles. February 19th 2009, will make 50 years since Martin Luther King Jr. spent two days in a sparsely furnished room on the second floor of Mani Bhavan in Mumbai. Thereafter, he felt sufficiently empowered to motivate the Black Civil Rights movement with Gandhian principles of non-violence.

Marking the arrival of King Jr’s son in India, to commemorate the 50th anniversary of his father’s pilgrimage, to the land of Mahatma Gandhi, on February 6th, 2009, Shruthi KS a student of St Aloysius College, Mangalore, was abducted from a bus along with her male companion Shabeeb; five hoodlums assaulted them to enforce their diktat of segregation of communities and faith.

Meanwhile, the Shree Ram Sena’s orchestrated efforts to ‘save’ the Indian woman from the evils of pub culture shall culminate in the following by Valentine’s Day; Mangalore’s Amnesia Lounge shall be endowed with Renuka Chowdhury’s defiant ministerial presence endorsing pub culture; the ‘pub bharo’ (fill the pubs) call will ensure roaring business in times of recession, pleasing pub owners and liquor barons; the sorority of ‘pub-going, loose and forward women’ marinated into the media establishment would have delighted their media bosses, with their sensational strategy selling more newspapers and Muthalik will contemplate an advantageous purpose for his knickers jackpot.

Within a week of its occurrence, the bus incident involving Shruthi and Shabeeb remains the concern of her parents, the police and the Human Rights Commission.

In a sinister refrain of events, on February 10th, fifteen year old Ashwini Moolya‘s bus was waylaid by a gang of youth. She was accused of “illegal activities” with Saleem a Muslim youth travelling on the same bus who was later arrested. Unable to bear the humiliation, Ashwini - a ninth standard student - committed suicide the next day.

Both incidents involve a woman and moral policing but ‘pub bharo’ remains the Valentine’s Day priority before the ogre of communal segregation can be addressed.

Though the incident involved a woman and moral policing, communalism is inconvenient with Valentine’s Day around the corner.

Amidst the thousands of accomplished pub-going women is there not a handful like seamstress Rosa Parks, ready to board a bus wearing ‘bindi’ or ‘burkha’ - with their male friends of other faiths - to defy the cultural and communal segregation of India?

On February 19th, when Martin Luther King Jr. III renews his conviction in Satyagraha at Mani Bhavan in Mumbai, would Minister Renuka Chowdhury lead a ‘Bus Bharo’ campaign in Mangalore, with the pub-going consortium and college students of various communities for company?

Would King Jr. III be able to take a message back to the United States of America that Gandhian strategies of civil disobedience still work on a bus decades later or, would he have to inform the world that in the India of 2009, “Gandhi’s non-violence is exported as parcels of packaged pink knickers?”

Madame Minister and the Consortium… your answer is awaited. February 19th is nigh

Designing Protests For The Apathethic

On February 12^th, Bengaluru is expected to unite in protest. Citizens of Bangalore have been asked to “Step Out” of their offices, “Stand Up” for their rights and “Stamp Out” Fundamentalism.

A fellow citizen of Bangalore justifies his initiative saying “My father and his brothers went to jail to secure freedoms. I can't sit back and watch these freedoms be taken away.

“The usually apathetic urban citizen regards "politics" as something unclean to kept safely away from” says Prof. Gowda commenting on his ‘Bengaluru Unites’ protest. Aware of the insecurities and constraints facing the urban citizens’ “shyness” to protest, Prof. Rajeev Gowda has devised a protest with a difference as a citizen, for fellow citizens.

While there is evidently much consternation against moral policing, with people “angry and disgusted” as Gowda says, “upset at hooligans telling us what we can or cannot do”, outpourings of protest on the streets sending a clear message “we have had enough” are virtually non-existent.

Rajeev Gowda has factored in the myriad excuses citizens’ make while organising this initiative that takes "protest to the people". He says “Protest is designed to eliminate people's usual excuses ... too far away to go ... too busy at work. Protests come to the people, where they are. People are empowered to come out and be leaders themselves“

At precisely 1330 hours - which is everybody's lunch hour – Gowda is exhorting people to gather outside their workplaces “as free citizens to express our anguish about the attacks on our fundamental rights”. Explaining the timing Gowda says “Lunchtime on a working day--that is not Valentine's Day, which would cause other tangential discussions on culture--is ideal. People do not even need to seek the permission of their colleges or offices to step out and join hands to demonstrate their feelings”

On his blog ‘bengaluru-unites.blogspot.com’ Prof. Gowda beseeches fellow citizens of free India to: “Join hands in protest, Raise slogans: Against Moral Policing; Against Attacks On Women; For Our Freedom”

26/11 propelled the great urban Indian middle class from the comforts of their armchairs onto the streets of Mumbai. For a very brief while, Mercedes owners rubbed shoulders with Maruti owners during candlelight commemorations and vociferous protests demanding resignations, sackings, inquiries and military government. And then there was quiet...

A short while later no one protected bookshops against the diktat of the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena demanding the removal of Pakistani books from their shelves; no one protested the humiliation of Pakistani artistes; no one protested the demand to rename a confectionary store.

Protests had once again retired to the confines of drawing rooms, mushrooming into numerous groups on social networking sites with membership of thousands.

Two months later, Pramod Muthalik's Shree Ram Sena humiliates a group of women in Mangalore causing ‘canned’ outrage. Once again anger is confined to protests of convenience, including raving and ranting on social networking sites, and parcels of pink underwear to be dispatched in bulk to Mr Muthalik.

‘Moral Police – India’s Shame’ a group on Facebook with a membership of over 5800 and increasing exponentially cannot rise above and beyond hurling expletives in English at a non-existent audience of Shree Ram Sena with Kannada as their native tongue.

On February 12^th Prof Rajeev Gowda hopes to make the difference. Bengaluru will put to the test a protest designed to cause minimal disruption; for the convenience of the urban citizen to express his anguish by ‘Stepping Out, Standing Up and Stamping Out’ infringements on his fundamental rights – post lunch ofcourse.