Popular Revolutions

"As a shepherd is of a nature superior to that of his flock, the shepherds of men, i.e., their rulers, are of a nature superior to that of the peoples under them. Thus, Philo tells us, the Emperor Caligula reasoned, concluding equally well either that kings were gods, or that men were beasts."

--The Social Contract

The story of revolutions is of profound significance in the historical narrative. The evolution of man started a million years ago. Man has adapted to changing surrounding unlike most other living organisms. He survived adverse climate changes. In his quest for survival, he gradually acquired capacity to outmatch the pace at which nature is changing. Indeed, the story of man is the most interesting story in the world. It is the same story which we study as history. In this story, there are moments, which defined the course of humanity in the subsequent times. These are the moments, when man has undergone far reaching changes. These changes more often were a necessity and were not voluntary. Some of these moments are the moments of revolution.

A revolution is a change which is perceptible, often spanning a time less than the average life span of a human being. Thus unlike slow changes like growth of settled agriculture, or cities, or modern democracy, the changes brought by revolutions can be perceived by a contemporary observer. That makes them special, since the changes are essentially brought about by contemporary society with due knowledge of consequences. Ideas form the basis of any revolution. As said by a great revolutionary, the sword of revolution is sharpened on the whetting stone of ideas. Unlike slow changes, which are mostly caused by natural evolution, revolutions are brought about by people’s deliberate actions to change the way they face the nature. Things like invention of wheel, discovery of rice, invention of iron tipped plough, smelting of iron, printing press, first computer all are moments of revolution. Revolution is often the beginning of a change than the change itself.

The new type of revolution that is being observed in the last few centuries was the so called popular revolution, which is basically a sudden change in the way people organize themselves.  For long the discourse on how people should organize themselves was monopolized by a few elite sections of the society. But, with the spread of literacy and education after the invention of printing press, when people started looking beyond their earlier confined boundaries, the magic and mysticism surrounding the kings and ruling classes disappeared.

A popular revolution always involves a conflict. A conflict between the old order and the new envisioned order. The beneficiaries of old order put up a fierce fight to preserve the status quo. They become part of what is called as a counter revolution. A popular revolution cannot succeed unless the people who are part of it have an alternative vision for organizing the society. Without an alternative vision, if the struggle is for just restoring a more justified version of the old order or for meeting few immediate grievances of its participants, the revolution will easily get crushed by the spectre of counter revolution. Also important is an organization to lead the revolution, to sustain the revolution in its infant stages and to spread the ideas among vast number of people who desire change but are not yet ready to accept it. The people leading the counter revolution exhibit astonishing unity when trying to suppress the revolution. It is the organizations like that of Jacobins, sans culottes, that made the French revolution possible. Even the way of organizing a revolution has to be new. It has to be unforeseen to the existing ruling elite. It is because of this new way of organizing a revolution that the peasant revolution in China in the mid 20^th century succeeded. One cannot imitate a revolution, for the force of counter revolution can easily suppress known phenomena. It was the new model army that defeated the English king and not the traditional army.

The advent of modern democracy had in a way made the popular revolution rare. At the same time it is the democracy which legitimized that change is not only natural but also necessary in any society. Democracies have an amazing accommodative power. This removes the possibilities of a sudden change. The changes always happen over a period of time, at such a slow pace that they no longer symbolize a revolution. It is the democracy because of which, most of the western European countries never become truly socialist nations even though there was every reason for them to be so during the first half of the 20^th century. In a representative democracy the balance between political liberty and economic equality is always in favor of the former, but is never so distorted that there is a possibility of a major upheaval and then a revolution. A democratic system no matter how corrupt it is, may never give rise to so much instability in the society so that a new order that is more justified can replace the old order. The present form of representative democracy is designed to kill the revolutionary enthusiasm. The democracy always creates an atmosphere that most people feel that a little change in the existing system is enough to attain a more just society. More importantly it makes the majority of people feel that it is the best possible solution for a just society. Another important aspect of democracy is that it always evolves. What were the fallacies of democracy a 10 years ago are not the same of today's democracy. A, representative Democracy, though at a very slow pace, always tries to correct its defects. So, to expose the fallacies of a democracy one had to think ahead of his/her time and the reasoning has to evolve at a much faster speed than the speed at which democracy tries to correct itself. Otherwise, it just becomes an exercise of raising serious problem with the system, only to be found that the problem had disappeared in an year and which makes it hard to convince the people.

So, it takes lot of effort to overthrow a democracy than a dictatorship. Our Maoist friends can never succeed in overthrowing the Indian state with techniques which are mere imitations of what happened elsewhere. Moreover a popular revolution has to be popular; they cannot expect to conquer Delhi with the help of few discontented individuals living in the forest whose vision of a better society is limited to what was existing since centuries or what has failed elsewhere. If they want to succeed they have to invent new ways of organizing the Revolution. Armed struggle is counterproductive in an accommodative democracy. Independent Indian state had amazingly managed to suppress all the armed struggles against it with increasing precision and popularity among the masses. If they want to succeed they have to reach out to the newly emerging classes of the society who are not part of the elite in the society and can feel the unjust nature of this system and also have time to think and dream of a better society. If they do so, change, in this corrupt system is inevitable.