King Kong!

02 July 19

While Indian liberals mull over what they describe as a ‘state of undeclared emergency’ where admittedly they had a faustian bargain with the UPA and feel abandoned in the NDA, they can take a leaf out of Hong Kong as a civil resistance that shows what ordinary people are capable of, if they actually perceived their existential threat on ground!
For some time now, we have been looking at the issue of cow vigilantism, about the prosecuting atmosphere of Dalit grooms being targeted for horse riding, for processions, for sitting on elaborate decorated chairs on stage, and the manner in which local policemen are acting with inconsiderate and insensitive attitude toward victims if they were women, children, Dalit and Muslims, and if the perpetrators of abuse were predominantly a Hindu mob, as an issue of BJP led transformation of India’s much politicised law and order apparatus. Actually if you look at the data managed on IndiaSpend website, you can see that the trend started upwards as early as 2010, only now over the period of accumulated offences, the reactions have slid, arrests have petered out and legal action is not pursued with any distinct fervour. Part of the confusion was sown by the SC order about the law that prosecuted offenders who infringed on SC/ST victims and its subsequent reversal by the Parliament, and part of it is due to international movements like the #MeToo and ISIS, which definitely have coloured the view of local law enforcement. A significant part has been the change in the character of the post Economic Liberation Generation, a generation that has seen relatively less scarcity or denial, which has unchecked access to goods and commodities from the world of consumerism! They have become more brusque and brash, and are willing to bash on regardless, and in the face of their employability are actually capable of transforming into hoodlums for hire!

There is on ground no indication of a conspiracy against the citizen,by the faceless state, even if there are arrests of dissenters and whistleblowers on seemingly trumped up charges, or continued un-chargesheeted detention of leading civil rights activists, lawyers, nor even in the lack of urgency in prosecuting cases of terror either of suspected Islamists or suspected Hindutva elements. India’s penchant for a ‘law unto itself’ prosecution process continues at its glacial pace.
Now compare this with Hong Kong where apparently China reneged on its promise of One Nation Two Systems, by promoting a legislation that would allow prosecution of residents by way of deportation to the mainland and this fundamental shift in the Chinese approach to Hong Kong has been rightly perceived by the islands residents as a betrayal of the guarantees given by China when the administration was handed over from UK to Beijing! The bill per se is rather innocuously worded, as it suggests that under its provision a Hong Kong resident accused of crime in the mainland could be deported to face trial there, under the laws obtained for the mainland. Yet this triggered what is now several weeks of protests, with first the Islands administrator Ms Lam accepting to hold the legislation in abeyance, and now promising to drop it all together. Protestors have used ingenious means to escape detection by HK law enforcement, including purchasing of tickets by cash, using special face masks and eye covers to avoid both digital trace and prevent facial recognition by CCTV footage! Such extreme suspicion is quite unfounded for Hong Kong, but something fundamental seems to have shifted, and the raising of flags of the colonial era including the Union Jack ( Flag of UK) by protestors in the Hong Kong Legislative Assembly after storming the building and spraying the walls with slogans which was within minutes of Ms Carrie Lam’s speech commemorating the 22nd anniversary of the hand over of the Islands, and which was a departure from the past, full of contrition and conciliation, promising the HK residents that her administration would be more open and would listen expressly to the wishes of her people. Now President Xi is under a quandary because if he allowed this to pass without retribution, he might be seem as a accommodative leader in the international Chinese diaspora and the global order, at a time when Taiwan is going through a critical Presidential poll, and voices of reconciliation there with the Chinese would be more difficult airing, considering the tumult in Hong Kong, but within the Chinese PLA and the Communist Party, it could be seen as evidence of his fallibility and could make a case for a coup since President Xi is now leader for life! President Xi’s real power comes from PLA having faith that he will resolve the Taiwan issue in favour of China in the foreseeable future, a decisive position for which China has been converting reefs and shoals into airfields and bases in the South China Sea!
In which ever form of Government, however unrepresentative it has been, history from Imperial times has shown the people whether as voters or as subjects have remained the ultimate arbiter of power! Revolutions need not always be brutal like the French one forever associated with the guillotine, they could be peaceful like the ones we saw in Poland, Czechoslovakia and Georgia after the collapse of Berlin Wall, with names like velvet, orange used to describe them! Civil Disobedience may no longer be civil and Gandhian in accepting punishment from the law to win a moral upper hand, but it remains fully potent to take on the omnipotent regime! The bottomline is the masses, the bourgeois, the proletariat or what ever you christen the commons.
In Hong Kong the citizen King Kong has thrown the gauntlet at the mighty ruler in Beijing by treating with contempt the entreaties of the local puppet! One can expect either a crack down, Tiananmen Square style, or a grand gesture of direct connect by President Xi with the people of Hong Kong. Either way, the people have shown their power, they have shown themselves capable of upsetting the agenda of the rulers and setting one entirely of their own! Now that is an emergent situation, if you ask me, not scattered dots on the data map, however crowded they may appear, of events sparked by hate and prejudice of majoritarianism, even when actively aided by law enforcing policemen!(https://www.economist.com/asia/2019/07/01/hong-kong-protesters-storm-the-legislative-council?cid1=cust/dailypicks/n/bl/n/2019071n/owned/n/n/dailypicks/n/n/AP/265169/n)