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As Egyptian masses replayed our freedom struggle on Tahrir Square, we in India seem to have forgotten the exceptional national narrative of our history, which has been replaced instead by a theology of greed and boundless corruption, writes Kiran Nagarkar

A young jobless Tunisian graduate who is the sole support of his family of eight sells fruit and vegetables without a permit. Three inspectors ask him to pay a bribe if he wishes to continue his trade. He refuses to oblige and all his produce is confiscated. His next move is to try and see the governor but he does not succeed in meeting the man. In desperation he sets himself on fire and dies but in the process he starts what has come to be known as the Arab Spring. A medical term is adopted by the media and an accidental revolutionary impulse goes ‘viral’.

Dictators, ayatollahs, majors, colonels and even corporals; juntas, kings, emperors, usurpers over the ages, and even as this article goes to press, rule with an iron fist for decades and commit the most heinous crimes, including genocides and holocausts, with impunity and utter disregard for world opinion. Then one day out of the blue, the invincible become vincible, their omnipresent statues are tarred and toppled and they are history. (Not often enough though; Mugabe is still in power and so is the Burmese junta and the King of Saudi Arabia to mention only a few.) The names of the autocrats keep changing but the template is timeless and remains the same. Rigged elections, flagrant violation of human rights, a reign of terror and brutal repression are par for the course. All dissent is anathema while monumental corruption and rapacious greed are mandatory.

The irony is that many of these tyrants and despots come to power because a superpower like the US decides that a democratically elected leader of an insignificant country like Jean Aristide in Haiti, Ho Chi Minh in Viet Nam or Allende in Chile are seen as a threat to the American polity and people and had to be either bumped off or replaced with an American stooge. Both stooges and allies, however, come with an unwritten expiry date. When they are no longer useful, they are unceremoniously dropped. Saddam Hussein, Hosni Mubarak, the Shah of Iran, Gaddafi and so many others learnt the hard way that the very American leaders who made them all-powerful would abandon them without so much as a goodbye.

The combustion point
The question is when or how does a revolution start? What is the combustion point? When and why does the populace decide that what they had suffered without a murmur or demurral for decades can no longer be borne? When does the yoke become intolerable? When is the critical mass reached? When is enough, enough? Ah, if only we could tell….

The Tunisian spring moved to Egypt, Yemen, and onto Libya and Syria and even to the States in the form of the Occupy Wall Street movement and its cousins in other cities. Perhaps Americans and the whole world will follow the example of Howard Beale (played by Peter Finch in a Hollywood movie called Network) who gets the whole country to scream the line, “I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!”

Hosni Mubarak, the former president of Egypt, is currently in prison while the non-titular Gaddafi has met with the kind of cruelty and death that his own regime had embraced whole-heartedly.

The Syrian revolution is a work that’s still in progress, and while it’s too early to declare the winner, it seems as if the writing’s on the wall for President Assad’s regime. Time alone will tell.

Fight like an Egyptian
The most interesting case, however, is that of Egypt. Tahrir Square is where the Egyptian people displayed a rare kind of courage. (In the face of the gravest provocation and violent torture, the people have evinced enormous courage and fortitude.) Their weapon of choice in the first phase was non-violent resistance to the extreme measures to which the government had resorted. Facebook and Twitter may have spread the word but what the Egyptians —- and now the Syrians —- displayed was an iron will to eschew all forms of violence in the face of indiscriminate force. What we saw on the ‘Democracy Now’ channel was a reverse version of the Charge of the Light Brigade. Rank upon rank of unarmed Egyptians held their ground and the police felled them with deadly tear gas and physical assaults; police trucks deliberately mowed down the protesters; and sprayed bullets into them and yet more and more people kept swelling the numbers of the demonstrators. Even the Muslim Brotherhood was shamed into joining. Or more likely they realised that if they did not participate, they would be left out in the cold. Soon the Egyptian military, the almost private preserve of Mubarak, had ditched the President.

Had the agitators gone out of their minds? What kind of foolhardiness had possessed them? How could a hundred thousand people turn into warriors of peace? What we were witnessing was one of the most inspiring moments in contemporary history. After much shilly-shallying, the Americans, to the horror of Netanyahu and the supra-bellicose variety of Israelis, not to mention other dictators, sided with the people of Egypt. The brave men and women of Egypt had won.