In Kerala, hartal is a post-liberalization way of protest, usually initiated by political parties. All shops will be closed; all roads will be blocked; all that you need to do is sit in your room to watch TV or write blogs, like this. Keralites are so fond of hartalizing that they just need a short, one-sentence news item in a newspaper to self-declare a mental holiday. A month’s stay in Kerala is enough for a person to see a wonderful hartal. Hartal was initially intended to stop the normal functioning of the entire society. In Kerala, it has developed into a unique form of public art. Nowadays several variants of hartal are on display like medical hartal and educational hartal.
Last month, on the New Year ’s Eve, we had a lightening hartal, much like a twenty-twenty cricket match. It started at 3’o clock in the afternoon. It was in protest against the hanging of Saddam Hussein.
Some two years back, when Jayananda Saraswathy of Kanchi Kamakoty Mutt in Kanchipuram was arrested, life went normally in Kanchipuram and in Chennai, where I was working at that time, except for some peaceful protest marches. But Keralites couldn’t control the urge for having a hartal and promptly performed what can be called a ‘saffron’ hartal.
But the king of all hartals is the ones declared by CPM. It means H-A-R-T-A-L. You have to stay at home. When the art form of hartal was at its nascent state, it was CPM’s rank and file, braving both police and sleep in cold nights, who put immovable road blocks and placed threatening posters in front of shops. That hard work in the eighties and nineties is paying rich dividends now, for CPM can now act as the messiah of hartals and launch a hartal in Kerala by simply saying ‘let there be a hartal’.
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