I have been watching with much interest the debate over the feasibility of protests in the US, as the one planned in New York on Sunday. I am in every way an outsider to this debate – I grew up in India and live and work in Canada. Increasingly though, I feel I am not only an insider, but also a hostage, a hostage to rich and middle-class America. For it is this America that can return Bush to power and endow him with the formal political means to continue colonizing the world.

The debate, as I understand it, concerns the question as to whether the protests will in fact aid Bush Inc., or take us a step closer to an end to his regime. If the protests turn violent and anarchic, and if by any chance, a single Muslim American can be shown doing something mildly disruptive, this would be the Bush campaign’s dream come true. Is the prescription then not to protest? Perhaps, according to those who see protest merely as destabilization.

Let me state my own position for whatever it is worth.

I have to, as always, begin with India. I revere protest. It has been, if I may say so, the single most determining factor in my social formation. I think it is ironic that we often have to think of the “strategic” outcomes of social protest, because it really should be a celebration of human spontaneity at its best. More importantly, it is often the only tool people have, especially when institutional options are non-existent. No substantive social change has ever come about without protest. To dismiss protest, is therefore to dismiss human agency.

Nonetheless, it is useful to distinguish between two types of protests. The first are necessitated by systematic institutional failure and naked forms of oppression. The second are motivated by the need to challenge and alter existing institutions, and forms of oppression that are legitimated by structural and institutional mechanisms. The first combats direct forms of power; the second has to combat structural and institutionalized forms of power.

The first type of protest (or more broadly political action) is typified by the Palestinian struggle, the current resistance in Iraq, as well all the anti-colonial struggles. The forms of protest here are marked by the contradictions and frustrations of people denied the very right of protest.

The second type of protest is best exemplified by the recent elections in Venezuela and India. In Venezuela, the problem was to ensure that Chavez returned to power, and that his return was validated by every democratic means possible. That is precisely why, in my understanding, Chavez ensured a robust, unimpeachable and peaceful process of elections, which have indeed done exactly the needful. It has validated a space which contemporary imperialism has been unable to conquer, despite its many efforts.

In India – a government confident enough to call an election early – suffered a dramatic defeat. India’s rural poor, with little opportunity to launch a protest New York-style, protested through the ballot box. Their choice was a not whole lot wider than that represented by Kerry and Bush – but they widened it as best as they could. In many parts of India, the Left was returned to power often in combination with centrist parties. But everywhere the BJP was thrown out of power. Of the many consequences of this political action was that the new government was forced to decide against sending troops to Iraq, and is quite likely to rethink the relationship with Israel that was being pursued by the former regime. Similarly, the reckless disinvestment and privatization policies that were being pursued by the former regime have been put on hold. Of course, this was not the first time that the ballot box became a weapon of the Indian electorate. Indira Gandhi, with her great stronghold on power was voted out of office in 1977.

These electoral outcomes are not isolated events. They come out of long processes of political mobilization involving myriad forms of protest. The point to note however that in places such as India and Venezuela, civil societies have shown a maturity of political behaviour that has prevented protests from jeopardizing the institutional options available to them. At different times, in different crises, they have taken recourse to different forms of protest.

It is this maturity that I wish to argue for. The first criteria for that is to vote Bush out of power (since I see no serious possibility of impeachment) and then to use all forms of protest available to force Kerry into a full military withdrawal. For the latter, a very important political opportunity arises from Kerry’s fallacious thinking he can “internationalize” the war. Or even worse, that he can organize a UN peacekeeping mission in Iraq. Think for a moment: who contributes the greatest number of peacekeeping troops to the UN? India, Pakistan and Bangladesh are three of the top four contributors – none of these governments are ready to send troops unless the UN assumes military command, which is extremely unlikely to happen. And if it does, then by its very definition, it has to be “noncombat military operations, with the consent of all major belligerent parties and designed to monitor and facilitate the implementation of an existing truce agreement in support of diplomatic efforts to reach a political settlement”. If we can get that far, we might have already gotten closer to an end to this unacceptable slaughter of Iraqis and their nation.

Of course, the overriding image of political protest in the US is of Vietnam: the impossible victory, as Zinn has called it. Can we hope for such a victory again? It is not automatically clear that we can. That victory was not an isolated event - Third world nationalisms, contradictions of the Cold War regime and the substantive presence of a left politics outside of the US also played a role. What is clear is that we have an imperialist – if not fascist - regime in power; and like all other similar regimes in history - it is waiting to manipulate all forms of protest, invoke Islamophobia, racism and fear that deeply permeate the consciousness of rich and middle class America.

Let us deny them every opportunity to do that. Let that also be our protest.

Ananya Mukherjee Reed is Associate Professor, Dept of Political Science at York University in Toronto, Canada. Her address is: ananya@yorku.ca

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