10 things to do in times of political upheaval

Spring, opening season for so many Indian calendars, should bring fresh energy and hope. This spring, too many of us are dispirited by the state of the world. Anger has drained us and anxiety leaves us hamstrung. Every morning, the newspaper reminds you of how much there is to do, but the overwhelming barrage of updates and commentary leave you reeling—how can you possibly change the world when you are too depressed to crawl out of bed? 

1. Pick your battles

There’s just too much news these days! A 24-hour barrage facilitated by technology brings you news every minute of the day. You can barely stop reading breaking news to live your own life. One version still comes to many of us via print newspapers (and many subscribe to more than one), but the smartphone, the computer and the television bring headlines to us all day. Moreover, #ICYMI (In Case You Missed It), social media #replugs news and views incessantly, and as each wave of your friends and connections discover an issue, you get to see links over and over again. All of this would be overwhelming enough without the peer pressure to engage with each piece of news. 

But this is both impossible and unnecessary. So pick your battles.
What do you care most about? Put your resources there. Read about the rest.
What do you know about? Speak only about that. Learn from others on the rest.
What affects you most? Make sure to stay informed and to participate.

Everything is important, but believing that I am important to every debate and struggle fritters away my energy and leaves nothing for the one place where I can be truly useful. Be strategic about where you engage and how much. Everything is important so go where you are needed and can be useful. 

2. Work below the radar

Discretion is the better part of valour. Know your strength and know your limitations. Take your skills to where your contribution will be most effective. But even more important, understand what will put not just you but also the efforts of thousands before you at risk. 

Do not pick a fight just to be a hero. Your fifteen minutes of fame can jeopardise decades of progress and place human rights defenders at greater risk. 

Find the velvet glove, the inoffensive tagline, for your work. This is the moment that euphemisms and clichés were made for. Under their cover, say and do what you want. But don’t draw attention until it is necessary and you are prepared for the consequences. Attention is not the only measure of success.

Not being seen, heard or noticed can be a wonderful thing. It allows you to do the foundational work of social change. It allows you to build solidarity networks. It allows you to support the people who are in the eye of the storm, quietly helping their struggle along. It allows you to provide back-up for the times that they need a break.    

3. Withdraw to build your inner sources    

For me personally, stories of change that is powered by personal transformation are more inspiring than stories of change that hinges solely on external action. So the idea that a person must become worthy of satyagraha, for instance, moves me immensely. I understand why many contemporary teachers use meditative and yogic routines around the world and label them as peace or conflict resolution techniques. The point is: times like these are also opportunities to prepare oneself for both the work at hand and the work to come.

Sometimes, the pace of change and the sheer force of those you want to push back exhaust you. This is why rules of engagement in the wars of Indian epics included schedules for fighting and rest. If you work on the periphery of the big battles, or even if you are in their vanguard, this could be a good time to withdraw, regroup and recharge.   

This is the time for self-care, physical and mental. This is the time to put in place a more sustainable fundraising strategy so that no one can switch off your funding on a political whim. This is the time to re-order your group’s administrative processes, to make them more transparent and accountable so that you leave no chance for anyone to point a finger at you. This is the time to build a second and third tier of leadership so your campaign has depth. 

4. Read history

In this world of breaking news, instant opinion and overnight action, history is a neglected resource. We have forgotten anything we managed to learn in school and remember virtually nothing that happened more than a week ago. 

A really important use of moments like this, when it seems like some forces are irresistible and unstoppable and that we are just doomed to ‘go to hell in a hand-basket,’ is to read history. People now write history in accessible and colourful ways. Even if you hated history in school, there is bound to be some writer or website that makes it interesting to you. 

It is an oversimplification to say nothing ever happens for the first time and yet it is not untrue. This moment reminds many of the days of the Emergency (1975-77) and others of the rise of Nazism and Fascism in Europe in the 1920s and 1930s. The more you read history, the more instances you will find of moments and experiences that resemble ours today. The good news is that we survived all those moments and we will survive this one too. Moreover, history includes the stories of how humans resisted, adapted and innovated in order to recover from the hand dealt to them. There are lessons for us in those stories that we might adapt and re-use.  

Reading history will also remind you of why we made certain choices and why, given where we were and what we knew, we thought those were the best options available to us. Pro-Brexit voters, for instance, might be reminded of why the European Union seemed like such a good idea at the time of its founding. Indian market advocates might be reminded of the state of the Indian economy at the moment of decolonisation. We might all remember how hard earlier generations fought to win the freedoms we so lackadaisically barter away in return for higher Internet speed (or other such inducements!).  

Most important, reading history reminds us that situations like this are not normal and are not meant to be normal. Strong leaders, a bigoted political discourse, erosion of our rights, unilateral and arbitrary decision-making, a view of the media and civil society as enemies of the state, a complete disregard for human suffering, an ability to conjure up the reality of one’s choice and a citizenry that will buy anything out of ignorance and apathy—these are symptoms of a diseased polity. Reading history will remind us that our forebears took to the streets and flooded jails to fight for the opposite—democratic leadership, an inclusive polity, fundamental rights, cooperative decision-making, a lively media and civil society as partners in development and democracy, a state oriented towards equity before growth and the freedom to choose a national motto that valorises truth (Satyameva Jayate).

Moreover, reading history will tell you that moments of strong leadership, centralised polity and cultural hegemony have been brief and bloody. The worst features of our society are those that systematise hierarchy—caste, in particular. The best moments in our history have been the ones where Indians tried to break these hierarchies and get rid of rigidity and ritualism. India has always defaulted to decentralisation, regional power-centres and a plurality of cultural and religious paths that have competed but rarely conclusively. We are like this only—unwieldy in our individuality, unyielding in our diversity, uncompromising on autonomy and insubordinate by temperament. Democracy is our historical normal. Read history to remember this.

5. Learn new skills

Don’t feel helpless. There is always something you can learn. 

Learn a new skill and share it with someone in need. Learn a new skill so you can find a back-up job if you work in the social sector where funding is getting scarce. Teach someone a skill you have so that their NGO does not have to pay for that service. Better yet, volunteer to do the work for them.

There are skills that are always in short supply in the social sector. They include accounts and book-keeping (even, how to read a financial statement!); communications (from public speaking to making good power-point presentations to writing a grammatically correct page of text); design (web and graphic); public relations and fundraising; and technical skills related to the organisation’s work. Brushing up—or arranging for your team to brush up—on these skills is a good use of a political moment that leaves you little room for manoeuvre.  

If you are good at languages, learn another language. If you think you have something important to say, you will probably need to say it in more than one language in a diverse country like India. Immerse yourself in the literature of another language to absorb its unique malleability. Be enriched by the writing on your cause in that language.   

6. Find strength in the arts

Sometimes, when you write or speak about the same basket of issues day after day, your words feel lifeless to you. Music, art, poetry, theatre, dance and good literature breathe life into your expression, revive your sagging energy. They are healing at the sensory level but they are also alternative forms of expression that are sometimes far more powerful than yet another speech or article.  

Spending time with the arts is part of that process of developing your own inner resources, but they also expand your own vocabulary of action. What you absorb about rhythm allows you to think more clearly about timing. What you observe about pitch helps to tune your own messaging more precisely. Poetry teaches you that less can be more when you speak or write. Artistic expression can be direct and it can be subtle. When it is subtle, the message is clear and at the same time, hard to pinpoint and target. 

But the arts are more than a resource. Attacks on cultural freedom and freedom of expression and the self-censorship that follows when people fear such attacks are democratic failures. A strong democracy and a resilient society should be able to enjoy or ignore works of art without anxiety or anger. When these attacks happen—through official censors, unofficial mobs, funding withdrawals or self-censorship—the arts are an arena where you are not helpless. Sign on to those petitions. Make sure you buy tickets to that film. Share the link. Buy the book. Practise your politics and defend artists and the arts. 

7. Make friends

According to our social media profiles, we are all visionary, path-breaking pioneers. In the real world, we are but drops in a large, rapidly flowing river called Change. We make the river what it is, but together. To know one’s place in this history—unique, irreplaceable, inheritor and baton-passer—is to understand the importance of networks. 

If you sit alone at your computer and feel overwhelmed by the things you cannot change, reach out and make friends. If you are an individual, find the organisations that do the work you want done—they are surely out there. Support them in the way you can—read their newsletters and share them, donate, sign their petitions. One of these may be local—volunteer or at least, attend their public programmes. Attendance boosts morale and tells social activists that there are others for whom a given issue is important. Join or start a reading or discussion group on a given issue. Now joining online groups (or liking and following people or organisations) is also an option. Do those things. Connect with others in any way you can. 

At times like this, when it seems like everything that should not happen is happening, it is important to make friends. It is a time for forming simple connections to each other, for learning about each other’s work and finding common ground. Solidarity is about more than slogans, rallies and petitions. It is also about everyday support—chipping in for each other’s programmes, being a resource person when asked, sharing materials and skills and talking about each other’s work to others. Make friends today and stand in solidarity tomorrow. 

8. Celebrate every win

We live in an age when everyone asks what we have achieved—as organisations, in our lives. It’s all about achievements and over a lifetime, survival depends on talking up our efforts as accomplishments, standing the idea of affirmation on its head. 

There are things we achieve and what they are depend on our starting point. If I am a toddler starting school, finding my classroom or figuring out which shoe goes on which foot are huge achievements. They can’t be judged from the point of view of a Prime Minister or an astronaut. 

For an individual who juggles other responsibilities with a social conscience, reading the newspaper faithfully and working their way through a reading list is an achievement. For a small women’s group, holding a monthly meeting to discuss issues of concern is an achievement—just holding the meeting, without regard to how many show up, talk or follow up. For a small NGO, keeping up with their blog or doing a workshop somewhere once in two months or one big programme a year, may each be unexpected achievements. In these fraught times, for human rights NGOs working in conflict zones in the line of fire of both police and insurgents, survival is the biggest achievement. Every little bit counts. And all of it should be celebrated.

You achieve by doing what you can, by doing it as well as you can and by persisting. That is something to celebrate. 

9. Keep faith that it will add up

It will add up; it always does. There is no task that is too insignificant or marginal, no contribution too small. That is the lesson of the squirrel that helped build Rama’s bridge to Lanka! And this is an important lesson which is why it is a theme repeated in children’s stories.

It is not the size of the work or its impact that matters but the quality of your effort. As old-fashioned as it sounds, in social change and politics, ultimately it really is the means that determine the end. The end—well, what is the end anyway?—is a shifting goalpost. That leaves you only the quality of your intention, the sincerity of your effort and the ethics of your process to worry about. They will matter. 

What does not add up is what you do not do. When you are derisive in your apathy or fashionably cynical, all of us lose. If someone is doing something less well than they might, help them do better. If someone stumbles and uses the wrong word with the best intentions, don’t jump into the calling out competition. Gently let them know how better to phrase what they are saying. Equally, don’t turn a blind eye to the truly horrible things our politicians are now fond of saying—casteist, communal, misogynistic and violent statements trip off their tongues as if they were requesting a hot cup of tea. Call those people out, and if you steadily reaffirm that this is not acceptable—it will add up. 

Build, one pebble at a time. It will add up. 

10. Laugh

Throughout history, humour has helped humanity survive horrible moments. Can we find humour in our own frailties and inconsistencies? Can we laugh at ourselves or have a sense of humour when someone mocks us? 

Humour has the ability to speak truth to power in ways that no one can deny. Talented and insightful cartoonists, graphic artists, stand-up comics and satirists are easy targets for those who want to assert their ability to control what the public reads or hears. Those who make us laugh when they speak the truth deserve both our appreciation and our support when they are targeted. They speak our truth. 

More broadly, I want us not to lose a sense of joy in the world. That is so easy at times like this when it seems like you could point with a blindfold and find political (ergo social) disaster anywhere in the world. It is still a world of beauty—mists hanging on hill-tops, an unexpected little clump of flowers near a garbage bin, the perfect dessert or the sea at night, to just give you a short list of images. It is a world of great joy—toothy smiles bestowed by a baby on strangers, a gift that you did not expect, a rare WhatsApp message of PG Wodehouse lines or a perfect game of the sport you love. To laugh at silly thing and to take pleasure in life, in whatever gives you pleasure—this is resistance too. You tell those who would control every part of your life in the name of regulation or security—you cannot tell me when to be happy and you cannot regulate joy. If you cannot remember joy, you cannot remember why you want to resist and what there is to fight for. 

In sum, if these political times depress you, fill you with fear and dread and leave you feeling helpless, do not worry. Bide your time, take care of yourself, empower yourself by learning and do the work of your choice with joy—it is your resistance and it will add up. 

Swarna Rajagopalan is a political scientist by training and owes some of the points in this article to her friend, including the reminder to laugh. She is also the founder of Prajnya.