Hunger is a good weapon

For the past few months in India, protest has been the name of various games. People want something, they protest; if they don't want something, they protest; if they think something is wrong, they protest; and, once in a strange while, if they think something is right, they do a little bit of a protest too. And one very Indian way of protesting is to stop eating, the practice known as a 'hunger strike'.

Many years ago, when I was a student doing a kind of internship at a high-level research facility, the worker's union at the institute decided to go on a mass hunger strike to protest, among other issues, the fact that I wore a sweatshirt with the official logo emblazoned on it. Why that should have been a point of contention I do not know, since the shirt had been made for me by my father and had nothing to do with any official permissions or commercial transaction.

Any which way, the union members gathered outside the cafeteria at about 10:30 in the morning, nicely fortified with sweet tea, snacks and slogans shouted under a big banner. They sat there reading magazines, gossiping, listening to music and got slowly more and more hungry. Crowds walked in and out, stopped to stare, chat and sympathise, official security did a quick and regular check every now and then and I watched from the balcony overlooking the scene.

It was a long, slow, painful time, as hunger gradually crept upon the strikers, inch by tortuous inch until finally, unable to bear the suffering any longer, they unanimously declared the strike over, their cause, if not won, at least made clear to the management. It was time to stop the protest; it was time to regroup and re-strategise; most importantly, it was time for lunch.

This one left me – for one – in giggles, but not all hunger strikes lend themselves to levity. Take, for instance, Mahatma Gandhi, the Father of the Nation, as we Indians like to call him, the man who fought for freedom and won it by a shrewd mixture of politics, diplomacy and bargaining. He had many routes to getting what he wanted, the most effective, perhaps, being a foodless one. Not getting his way through logical and more devious means of argument, good sense and political discussion, he would take the emotional route and retreat into a shell, either not speaking – because of the intense sadness he felt, he has said – or, as a last resort, not eating.

Fasting was a non-violent way of communicating, of getting the message across, he believed, in keeping with the tenets of satyagraha, or civil resistance. And it worked, though it did occasionally cause the British, who were the opposing team, to dig in their colonial heels and stand firm against such blandishment – on at least one occasion, this brought Gandhi rather too close to death for comfort!

Hunger has been used to make the point not just in India, but all over the world. It was a favourite method of protesting injustice in pre-Christian Ireland, according to the Internet, but had all sorts of rules, caveats and codes by which it could be done. In 1909 suffragette Marion Dunlop decided to go on a hunger strike while she was in jail for wanting the right to vote. She was quickly released, because the authorities did not want her to die in their jurisdiction – unfortunately, many women died after being force-fed, a process that was painful and injurious.

In the US, too, women demanding rights went on hunger strikes and had to undergo force-feeding while in prison. Other such horror stories have come out of Tibet, Cuba, Turkey, Canada and Iran, Japan, Venezuela and Palestine – anywhere that ordinary people have a point to make and no other way to deal with it. This is peaceful, non-intrusive and very personal. And, as history shows again and again, it works.

Why this topic at this time? Various reasons, actually. At the moment, a glorified yoga teacher called Baba Ramdev has been holding my country to ransom as he threatens to go on a hunger strike to protest the government's inaction against the evils of black money and corruption. Just a few weeks ago well-known social activist Anna Hazare did the same, staying off food for 96 hours – a significant time period considering the gentleman's age (71) and state of health (needs medication and care) – but at the end of it convincing a recalcitrant government to think about his demands and start the wheels of investigation and change turning, albeit excruciatingly slowly.

But for me, personally, all this makes little sense. Apart from the fact that I like food and I think eating is one of the pleasures of everyday living, it does not make sense to starve to win a battle – where do you get the strength to fight then? How does that work into making the protest, for whatever cause, powerful and convincing?

If someone can answer that one for me, I will fast…at least until dinner time!

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Ramya Sarma is a Mumbai-based writer-editor.