Selling Peace, one protester at a time

On Monday, a small group of young people laid a mat on the road in front of the governor’s house and sat down with nothing except resolve. By noon the next day, the government had sent a representative to talk to them. By afternoon they were called in to the DIG’s office. By nightfall their demand for peace and justice in the country had been met, at least on paper.

While the power of a few is remarkable, so is the silence of the many. After a massacre in this country burgeoning with people, you can see more people at the mall, at the beach, a festival or a cinema than at a protest against the killings. There are more people at violent, tire-burning protests and funerals of terrorists than there are at rallies for their victims.

Although all of us want peace, not many of us stand up for it. Some of the reasons for this could be:

• Nobody else does it so we don’t feel comfortable doing it either
• We don’t believe that we would be effective
• We don’t believe in this cause
• We are too busy
• We are too scared
• We can’t get away from work
• We are sick and tired of it all
• It doesn’t concern us
• It doesn’t affect our lives
• We don’t know about these protests
• We don’t have transport to get there
• We don’t get permission to go from our family
• We believe in deferred responsibility: let someone else handle it
• We have been taught to bear injustice in all walks of life quietly (abuse by employers, domestic abuse, family disputes, altercations on the street, harassment, etc)
• It is actually a nuisance and the traffic jams and shutdowns bother us

What’s your reason for not going?

A Few Good Men

A handful of protestors at another venue

Some posts, comments and tweets that say it all:

  

*All images are from Facebook