A Lesson From The Protests In Shaheen Bagh And The Borders — Self Organise

From the anti-CAA protest in Shaheen Bagh to the farmers’ protest, the oppressed classes have managed to come together in a manner that has seen community organising flourish.

تو شاہیں ہے پرواز ہے کام تیرا ترے سامنے آسماں اور بھی ہیں – اقبال

तू शाहीन है, परवाज़ है काम तेरा, तेरे सामने आसमां और भी है – इकबाल

“You are a falcon, your purpose is to fly, there are still more skies for you to transcend.” – Iqbal.

India witnessed two large scale protests in the last 2 years which saw millions taking to the streets against the oppressive laws passed by the government. These were the anti-CAA protests and the farmers’ protests.

During the anti-CAA protests, the loudest voices of dissent have been the women, from homemakers to grandmothers, lawyers to students, women across India have been at the forefront of this struggle.

This female-driven political awakening has been most jubilantly epitomised by the sit-in protest at Shaheen Bagh, drawing a cross-generational, largely female crowd never seen in India before.

Then came the farmers’ protests, where millions of farmers took to the streets to force the government to repeal the farm laws and highlight the issues of the agrarian crisis, which has been growing in India for the last few decades. In these protests, there was unprecedented solidarity being displayed in the daily rallies that draw out thousands of people all over Indian cities crossing caste and gender boundaries.

There are no visible leaders calling out to people to protest in one mode or another, yet the country has found a way to speak the truth to power.

Most of the women who came to the Shaheen Bagh protest were first-time protesters, mostly Muslim homemakers, who were standing up to the government. Armed with thick blankets, warm cups of tea and songs of resistance, these women braved one of the coldest winters Delhi faced in the last 118 years.

They broke down the historically prevailing gender binary of patriarchy and took control. They also destroyed the popular imagination claiming Muslim women as powerless and lacking agency. The farmers’ protest also saw the participation of women coming out to protest in large numbers.

Women, who constitute one-fifth of the protestors, were seen riding tractors from their villages and rallying to the protest sites. In a highly patriarchal society, this upsurge of women participation has great significance.

The protests have also brought landowners, predominantly Jats, and agricultural labourers, predominantly Dalits, together in an unprecedented show of unity. The coming together of these groups is an event of immense significance, made possible by the mass movement against the laws.

Autonomous self-organisation is non-hierarchical, i.e. there is no institutional or permanent leadership or authority. While people with some knowledge can act as advisors to the struggle and will be given the attention they deserve for their knowledge, they won’t be allowed to become leaders.

That would undermine the essential trait of self-organisation which is horizontal communication and relationships, where we have people talking with each other, expressing needs and desires openly, discussing the problems they face together, finding solutions and developing strategies, without any leadership to conform this expression to a set line.

This aspect of self-organisation is visible in both Shaheen Bagh and Farmers protests.

No political party or organisation could claim to be leading these protests. Instead, the Shaheen Bagh protest was fueled primarily by women who were residents of working-class neighbourhoods. Since it was a leaderless protest, it could not be terminated by a few prominent organisers.

When they tried to “call off” the protest citing interference of political parties and security threats, the women of Shaheen Bagh rejected it and decided to continue the protests. The movement had no formal organisers and thrived on a roving group of volunteers and the local women’s tenacity alone.

This lack of leadership also confused the police, who were clueless on whom to approach to make these women vacate the site. Similarly, the farmers’ protest was a decentralised leaderless protest by hundreds of farmer unions.

Even though the negotiations with the government were being attended by representatives of 32 farmer unions, they acted as mere spokespersons who presented the collective demand of all farmers.

Whenever the government introduced a new proposal, the representatives came back to the unions, where they sat together to discuss, debate and decide the future course of action together in a democratic way, an example of participatory democracy. In a representative democracy, the few representatives decide what is good for all.

Farmers also conduct Kisan Mahapanchayats (public meetings), which are attended by thousands of people in villages around Delhi, UP, Punjab, Rajasthan and Haryana to discuss strategies and ways to put pressure on the government.

This decentralisation made the protest robust and able to overcome the condemnation around violence during Republic Day Truck Rally. Even though many farm union leaders called for ending the protest, the farmers remained steadfast in their decision not to go back till the laws were repelled.

Mutual aid is another core anarchist principle that involves the voluntary reciprocal exchange of resources and services for mutual benefit. Mutual aid participants work together to figure out strategies and resources to meet each other’s needs, such as food, housing, medical care and disaster relief, etc., while organising themselves against the unjust and oppressive system that created these shortages in the first place.

Mutual-aid groups are structured as non-hierarchical, non-bureaucratic, with all individuals controlling resources equally. They are egalitarian in nature and designed to support participatory democracy, equality and consensus-based decision-making.

Since these protests were against the government and the government actively tried to defame, attack and repress these protests, self-organisation and mutual aid automatically emerged in them.

Solidarity, Not Charity

The protesters of Shaheen Bagh were supported and coordinated by a diverse group of more than a hundred volunteers, including local residents, students and professionals.

These volunteers organised themselves around different tasks such as setting up makeshift stages, shelters and bedding; providing food, water, medicine, and access to toilet facilities; installing CCTV cameras, bringing in electric heaters, outside speakers and collecting donations.

Collection drives for blankets and other essentials were organised through social media. Doctors and nurses, along with medical students from different medical institutes and hospitals, voluntarily joined to provide medical aid.

The government barricaded the capital roads with cemented nails and trenches to stop farmers and cut off electricity, Internet and water supply from the protest sites. But farmers created a network of mutual aid to overcome this scarcity imposed by the government.

Scores of langars, i.e. free community kitchens, were set up to meet the food demand of the hundreds of thousands of farmers in the camps that sprung up on the borders of Delhi.

The farmers came fully equipped to prepare mass meals in these community kitchens, with supplies coming from their villages daily. These langars worked round the clock and provided free food without distinction of caste, class or religion.

Social media was used to collect blankets and other essentials for the protesters braving the harsh winter and coming summer. Volunteers set up solar-powered mobile charging points, laundry stalls with washing machines, medical stalls for medicines, arranged doctors and nurses, dental camps and brought foot massage chairs for elderly protesters.

If protests are a “public display” of different political and cultural values, then protest art is significant in articulating those alternative views. Protest art encourages the use of public spaces to address socio-political issues and encourages community participation as a means of bringing social change.

Art was used extensively as a voice of resistance in both protest sites, which were decorated with paintings, murals, graffiti posters, banners and installations. Public participation activates individuals and communities to become catalysts for change as participation becomes an act of self-expression by the entire community.

Creative expression empowers individuals by creating a space in which their voices can be heard and they can engage in a dialogue with one another about the issues that matter to them.

Educate, Agitate, Organise

Libraries and reading areas were set up with hundreds of crowd-sourced books as well as writing materials. A nearby bus stop was converted into the Fatima Sheikh-Savitribai Phule library, which provided material on the country’s constitution, revolution, casteism, fascism, oppression and various social issues.

A makeshift school was set up for children from underprivileged families who are unable to attend school due to financial issues and the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic. Farmers also installed CCTV cameras to keep a watch on the protest site, keep a record of what was happening and ensure the safety of the protestors.

Speeches, lectures, rap, DJ and Shayari readings were held every day. Activists, artists and social workers came and gave talks on various issues faced by farmers, Muslims, Dalits, Adivasis, the disabled, LGBTQ people, minorities and all those who are oppressed. Musical and cultural events were also conducted in solidarity with anti-CAA protests.

These occupy protests provided an example of how to create a community without government support by voluntary association and mutual aid, make decisions in a democratic way where everyone takes part and decentralise power by having no organisers or leaders who control everything.

Anarchism tries to create institutions of a new society “within the shell of the old”, to expose, subvert and undermine structures of domination, but always, while doing so, proceeding in a democratic fashion, a manner which itself demonstrates those structures are unnecessary (Graeber, 2004).

Anarchists observe what people are already doing in their communities and then try to tease out the hidden symbolic, moral or pragmatic logics that underlie their actions and try to make sense of it in ways that they are not themselves completely aware of.

They look at those who are creating viable alternatives, try to figure out what might be the larger implications of what they are already doing, and then offer those ideas back, not as prescriptions, but as contributions (Graeber, 2004).

They understand that people are already forming self-organised communities when the state has failed them and we can learn a lot about direct action and mutual aid from these communities.

The core principles of anarchist organising are direct democratic decision making, decentralisation of power, solidarity, mutual aid, and voluntary association.

Anarchists employ direct action, disrupting and protesting against unjust hierarchies and self-managing their lives through the creation of counter-institutions such as communes and non-hierarchical collectives. Decision-making is handled in an anti-authoritarian way, with everyone having an equal say in each decision.

They participate in all discussions to build a rough consensus among group members without the need of a leader or a leading group.

Anarchists organise themselves to occupy and reclaim public spaces where art, poetry and music are blended to display anarchist ideals. Squatting is a way to regain public space from the capitalist market or an authoritarian state and also being an example of direct action.

We can find elements of these in the two protests, which is the reason for their robustness and success. It bursts the myth that you need a centralised chain of command with a small group of leaders on top who decide the strategies and a very large group of followers who blindly obey those decisions for the sustenance and success of large scale organising.

All these protests were leaderless protests where people themselves decided and came to a consensus on the course of action to be followed in a democratic way.

When people decide to take decisions themselves and coordinate with each other in small communities by providing aid to each other, it creates the strongest form of democracy and solidarity.

The fact that these protests happened, with so many thousands of people collectively organising and cooperating, for such a long duration, shows us that we can self-organise and create communities without external institutions. It can be civilised and more democratic than the autocratic bureaucracy and authoritarian governments which concentrate all power and oppress people.

These protests were driven mostly by uneducated women, poor farmers and people from other marginalised communities, who show that they can create communities that are more moral and egalitarian than those that exist in hierarchical societies with the affluent and highly educated.

They show that oppressed and underprivileged people can organise themselves into communities of mutual aid and direct democracy, eliminating a need for coercive hierarchical systems of governance that exist only to exploit them.

What these occupy protests show us is that we can form communities and collectively organise various forms of democratic decision-making, simultaneously providing everyone their basic needs. These protests show us models of community organising on a large scale, comprising of thousands of people.

Even though they are not perfect, we can learn the ideas these protests emulate — of solidarity, mutual aid, direct democracy, decentralisation of power — and try to recreate these in our lives and communities.

“We anarchists do not want to emancipate the people; we want the people to emancipate themselves.” – Errico Malatesta.

This article draws heavily from (Jeevan, 2021) which introduced anti-CAA and farmers protests to an international audience.

References

Graeber, D (2004). Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology.

Jeevan, P (2021, 5 March). Anarchism, Mutual Aid, And Self-Organization: From The George Floyd Uprising To India’s Farmer Rebellion.

This article was first published in Round Table India