The Culture Of Resistance

The historical resistance that the Kolkata masses have been demonstrating every day for over one month, shows no signs of declining. People from all walks of life continue to join the protest.

Right to justice, is not a demand confined to the demand punishment for those who raped and brutally murdered the 31-year-old doctor at the R. G. Kar hospital on August 9, but also to demand safety and security for doctors on duty; free women from the fear of attack in the night; liberate all women.

The protest is also against the suppression of facts to protect the criminals by a group of corrupt and notorious, high-ranking doctors in public hospitals in the state.

As more and more women and men join this mass movement, they have unwittingly defined a beautiful ‘protest’ culture in the form of songs, dances, slogans, plays, floor decorations, and candle light marches.

The protests go on all through the night till dawn breaks. They take a short break for a few hours and return energised to join the movement for the next day, and night.

Culture has inevitably meant in our context, monuments of antiquity, the temple sculpture of a glorious past, the texts of ancient scriptures, “all the wonder that was.”

So, when we turn to look at present-day cultural practices, weighed down as we are by the golden past and therefore, by a certain notion of culture, we react with incomprehension, dismissal, embarrassment or shame. It is perhaps the modernity of our culture that prompts this reaction?

Cultural resistance is the practice of using arts, literature, and traditional practices to challenge, or fight unjust or oppressive systems and/or power holders. These are within the context of nonviolent actions, campaigns and movements.

But in this case, it is a bit different. The resistance itself has created space for the enlarging numbers of protestors, of which 60 per cent are women, through songs, dances, innovative skits and plays, music, and slogans.

In so doing, the ever-enlarging crowds, totally apolitical and entirely mass-driven, have resurrected strong compositions of revolutionary poets Rabindranath Tagore, Kaji Nazrul Islam, and Sukanta Bhattacharya. Compositions of Salil Choudhury, and other songs once composed and sung by revolutionary activists of the Indian People’s Theatre Association(IPTA) the Calcutta Youth Choir are being sung once more.

The marches are peaceful, and the only rule the protestors have laid down is that no one will carry a political party flag and no one will indulge in any kind of violence, irrespective of the huge guarding police force.

Cultural resistance is “a form of non-conformism that constructs a different vision of the world”. Some lyricists have written songs specially to suit the resistance. Such as the new song written and composed by Arijit Singh, who was roundly criticised by the protesting masses for not joining the protest initially. Now they are belting out his song.

Generally speaking, culture signifies the entire way of life of a people that is transmitted from one generation to the next. The concept of “culture” is often interchangeably used with “society.” But there is a wee bit of difference between the two because while culture is ‘created’ by society, society refers to the interactions of people who share a culture.

The interaction between culture as a concept and society as a social group/mass/collection of people has become one in this case. In India, there is a clear schism between the socio-cultural images, roles and identities of men and women.

But here, we find that this is a universal group that applies to men and women across the world. One needs to remember that in India, it is more sharply defined through the social roles, position and status between men and women.

But this R. G. Kar Hospital protest has eradicated all schisms of sex, age, status, cast, profession, affluence and everything that has created schisms between and among these groups of people. Human chains, crowds with flags with slogans like “Right to Justice”, long marches spreading out to different parts of the country and abroad, have become the symbols of the masses.

“Justice for Tilottama”, long processions led by food delivery boys, courier boys, on their two-wheelers, stars from television and cinema, have all come forward to join the mass movement. The hand-pulled rickshaw pullers joined the processions on one day.

Another day, the mothers of all ages, some holding their kids in their arms, and some more kids joined in with slogans and black flags, and held their own march.

There are many marches, beginning and ending at different points of the city and suburbs and even in the districts of the State. Traffic jams are many but the drivers do not complain because they are with the protestors in spirit.

Many elderly people arrive limping, or with walkers, and are given plastic chairs to sit on, while the youngsters at night have bed sheets to lie on. The air is thick with loud chants, songs, slogans while floor designs with demands for justice for “Tilottama” or “Abhaya”, as the victim has been named, create a new carpet of protest on the roads and streets.

One day, when a lady constable suddenly had breathing trouble and needed a nebulizer, a couple of junior doctors gave her first aid and then took her to the nearest hospital in an ambulance.

Even sex workers of Sonagachi have declared that if this protest march continues for some more time, they would not, repeat not allow the Durga Pooja organisations to collect the dust off their doors for the sculpting of the Durga idol.

While sculpting the Durga idol, the potters of Kumartuli ritually need the dust or earth from 108 different sources of which, the dust outside the door of the ‘Veshya’ is a must. It is ritually termed ‘Vesta Dwar Mrittika’, earth from the door of a prostitute.

Food, which was an issue with the protestors, is now so ample that it is being shared with street children. A news clip showed a Muslim tea vendor distributing tea and biscuits to the protestors who sit on plastic sheets. Protestors take cover under plastic tents when sudden rains arrive. This proves that all human conflicts are born out of the dirty politics generated by politicians.

The protesting masses have invented incredible symbols of protest such as plastic replicas of the human spinal cord as “gifts” to the spineless doctors who with their silence, allegedly helped to hush up the rape and murder case.

One day, the protectors arrived in the procession armed with floral garlands and rose bouquets while another day, they created replicas of the human brain to ‘donate’ it to the corrupt doctors who allegedly bribed and blackmailed medical students, and junior doctors.

Cultural resistance is the practice of using meanings and symbols, to contest and combat a dominant power, often constructing a different vision of the world in the process. The practice is as old as history.

In this Kolkata protest march, the masses are deeply involved. They do not need to rely on metaphors or symbols. Their presence, casual way of dress, slogans, strong and bold body language, the camaraderie they represent, personifies and exemplifies both metaphors as well as symbols. And this by itself creates “a different vision of the world.”

Cover Photograph PTI