Of shoes, protests and democracy

Everybody is doing an al Zaidi these days. First, it was Jarnail Singh doing it on PC, then it was Ram Kumar doing it on Naveen Jindal. On both cases, political leaders were at the receiving end. Now, what do we make out of this novel mode of protest, throwing your shoes at someone you are not happy with? To me, it is not so new, after all. Throwing eggs or rotten tomatoes have been around for many many years. These days, partcularly with heightened perception of security threat, it is unlikely that you would be allowed to carry eggs or tomatoes (however inocuous they may be) to a press conference of none other than the Home Minister of India. Also, it may not always be that you have such a protest preplanned. Things may happen at the spur of the moment, as it happened between Jarnail Singh and PC. In any case, you are still allowed to go in with your shoes or chappals on. I do not know if you are asked to remove your shoes for a security check as in the US airports, but finally you are allowed in with them on your feet. So they come as handy tool to throw.

But the moot question is, is it a justified way of protest? That is a tricky question to address. The answer depends on how you view things happening around you, what type of society you want to build an so on. If we believe in a law-governed society where rights of each individual is safeguarded and upheld, where anyone aggrieved gets a speedy and fair trial in courts of law, where even the powerful people are brought to book for their unlawful acts, this form of protest is not acceptable. In fact, once we allow these protests become acceptable, we will move away from the path of building law-governed society.

However, the unfortunate fact of the matter is, none or most of these conditions are not ture in the present global, or Indian setup. There is no one to even seriously question GW for his acts in Iraq, forget punishing him. After 25 years of the massacre, none has been punished for the anti-Sikh progrom in Delhi. So al Zaidis and Jarnail Singhs are legitimately aggrieved, frustrated and angry. Therefore, unless our political masters are able to give people the sense of security of a law-governed world, where more civilized forms of protests are not non-chalantly ignored by their class, where genuine emotional distress of communities are not brushed aside by labyrinthine legal-bureaucratic processes and speeches, these things are bond to happen.

Will our political masters wake up someday?