The following article is based on my own interpretation of the said events and/ or publicly available information. Any material borrowed from published and unpublished sources has been appropriately referenced. I will bear the sole responsibility for anything that is found to have been copied or misappropriated or misrepresented in the following post.
Yaswanth Kumar P, MBA 2016-18, Vinod Gupta School of Management, IIT Kharagpur.
Is history repeating itself? Yes, It all started with Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. He is the one who started nonviolence movement with his Salt satyagraha protest in 1930. This was a silent protest against the British government regarding the taxation of salt. Later in the same year another silent protest, Vedaranyam march which was also a civil disobedience movement took place. These silent protests though did not have immediate results, the inspiration of the silent and nonviolent protests led to India’s Independence in 1947.
Now recently the silent protest in Chennai regarding the ban of Jallikattu became successful as the jallikattu bill was passed on 23rd January. The way the people had handled the silent protest is really commendable. There were lakhs of people protesting silently on roads though power and cellphone signals were blocked. There was no single incident of violence or damage to public property. Even they had set an example to all kind of protests and party meetings, by collecting all the littered waste.
With the inspiration given by the jallikattu movement, its neighbouring state Andhra Pradesh is also planning a silent protest in Visakhapatnam, Vijayawada and Tirupathi areas regarding the special status to their state on January 26th. It is very good to see people choosing silent protest rather than complicating the situations and causing damage to the property.