Civil disobedience

Jul 30, 2023 Editorial

Kaieteur News – It was Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi who came with the profound and powerful in civil disobedience. He brought the big, strong British Empire to its knees, the only genuine World Power at the time to bow to his will. Set the people free, or face the wrath of the masses. It was across in the West, and before the new World Power, America, that a nonentity of a preacher named Rev. Martin Luther King made nonviolent civil disobedience a plank of his people’s perseverance against crippling adversity. He, too, overcame the mighty assault of hoses and dogs and jails filled to overflowing. The oppressed, exploited, and plundered in civilized America finally got to see some rays of light, and were able to participate in the richness that was their country, their birthright. Guyanese wherever they are must take note.

Before the many guns and the might of the State, civil disobedience rendered powerful men impotent. Civil disobedience erected a wall of overpowering silence, and it succeeded in its aims: freedom for the people, real freedom that meant sharing in the true substances of citizenship. Civil disobedience created a condition of passive resistance that muzzled all the guns, and neutralized the many combat strategies of those who had all the power in their hands. When governments declare war against their own peoples, and a breaking point is reached, then the people are left with no choice.

They still their feet, and stay their hands. But they unfreeze their minds to take direct aim against injustice, against unfairness, against slavery. No matter how sophisticatedly camouflaged by the State, no matter how prettily packaged by those in charge, slavery is slavery, notwithstanding the purity of its lines and forms. Slavery can never be pure. Slavery is rank with the worst, most dreadful, odors. It is what causes the stomach to recoil, the gut to twist into knots, and the mind to rebel. Civil disobedience is what it took in India for the taste of long-awaited freedom to arrive, and civil disobedience was what opened small pathways for Americans of color to claim their place as equal citizens. Civil disobedience is government by the people, when all the other avenues of citizenship have been weakened, blocked, or eliminated.

In oil rich Guyana, the once broad, and well-used avenues at the people’s disposal have been narrowed, cutoff, or shutdown. The strike tool has been blunted, even twisted and turned against the people, when their rights have been violated. The media estate, the ears and nostrils, and microphone, of the people, has been backed into many an ineffective corner, and then picked off one by one, like fish in a net. The institutions that should be standing for the people, to be vigilant in protecting their interests, securing their riches, have been remade into pawns to be pushed around at will, or parrots to speak one kind of language only. It is what circles sturdy defensive wagons around the practices and visions of foreign enslavers, and works at the behest of compromised local political aiders and abettors.

In India, Gandhi was undermined by his own, and in America King was seen as too soft in his non-violent approach by some form of his people. But both leaders stood by their convictions through thick and thin, and they prevailed. It was never easy, never simple nor straightforward, but triumph they did. “We shall overcome” did come to pass, became Indian and American reality. Civil disobedience handled right, and managed well, made the success of the Indian and African possible against overwhelming odds.

It can happen in Guyana, it simply must. If Guyanese are going to know what it is to be free, to be emancipated from economic slavery, to actually partake of the table of their patrimony, of their God-given rights, then there must be a start on the road of civil disobedience, no matter how small. There just has to be a commitment of concerned, conscientious, and courageous citizens to civil disobedience.

The bigoted British did not want to yield, but did. The racist and demagogic American South wanted to maintain their enslaving culture, but was forced to surrender. It is now Guyana’s time for civil disobedience.

Editorial, Guyanese, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, Rev. Martin Luther King, world

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Civil disobedience

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Civil disobedience

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