The first LSE India Summit took place in Goa 28-30 January 2016, and featured a wide range of panellists exploring topics from civil society to infrastructure challenges in India. During a pause in the conference, speakers Srdja Popović and Yogendra Yadav met to discuss political theory and the practicalities of fostering non-violent mass movements in the 21st Century

Popović, Srdja

Yadav, Yogendra

LSE Research Online

2016-3-14Srdja Popović in conversation with Yogendra Yadav: “Everynon-violent struggle supports the same principle – itbecomes efficient the moment people take it personally”blogs.lse.ac.uk /southasia/2016/03/14/srdja-popovic-in-conversation-with-yogendra-yadav-every-non-violent-struggle-supports-the-same-principle-it-becomes-efficient-the-moment-people-take-it-personally/The first LSE India Summit took place in Goa 28-30 January 2016, and featured a wide range of panellistsexploring topics from civil society to infrastructure challenges in India. During a pause in the conference, speakersSrdja Popović and Yogendra Yadav met to discuss political theory and the practicalities of fostering non-violentmass movements in the 21st Century.YY: Srjda we’ve had almost the opposite trajectory: you started as a student political activist, and have becomesomething of a political theorist. I started as a as a political theorist, and am today seen to be a political activist. Onething we’ve both agreed is that political science doesn’t make sense. Why don’t we start by talking about that?SP: Politics is a skill, and coming from a natural science background into the Serbian politics, it was a necessity: theregime was so bad that there were only two choices: you could fight, or you could flee. When you get involved in thefight then you learn things along the way.The good thing about the people coming from natural science backgrounds is that we do experiment and this is howactivists learn. My book is also about learning: you learn from your successes, and you learn even better from yourmistakes.YY: Political scientists often think they are being very scientific when they do what they do. But when I made atransition to activism, I realised that politics is prospective, and political science is retrospective. It tells you how todo a post-mortem, but it doesn’t tell you which medicine to give for which disease. Politics is, as you said, a skill.Political science is strictly understanding. It doesn’t tell you what to do. So when I graduated as a student of politicalscience the one thing I did not know very much about was politics.Yogendra Yadav and Srdja Popović presenting at the LSE India Summit 2016. Image credits: Sonali Campion and Tim Aldcroft.SP: Exactly, I used to teach a course in a political science university in Belgrade, and I was amazed how littlepeople know about the practical things, the campaign, the mobilisation, the volunteer management – all of these1/4things which we learn by doing. So they were very aware about how the car works, and how the combustion engineworks, and how you shift the gears, but they couldn’t drive the car.But this dilemma you posed is something we always observe through the combination of understanding politics andactivism. The way the non-violence struggle works is that you need to mobilise numbers. How? You need tounderstand what’s important for the people, because people will join the movement only if it based on the thingsthey consider important. In other words, it was not really the colonialism and anti-colonialism idea in India, it was thesalt that mobilised the people because everybody needed salt, which was part of Gandhi’s strategic genius.The issue with politicians is very often they think they know what the vision of tomorrow should be. They go to thepeople and tell them, as opposed to the popular movements, which go and listen to the people. What is it that willmake you, my friend, spend time, and energy, and money and take risk – invest – into this movement?YY: That said, the strange thing is how little activists actually listen to the people, because they think they are withthe people, they speak on behalf of the people, and they construct a reality around themselves. Say I’m a farmeractivist, I claim to know what is in their interest, and I know what should be in their interest, and I therefore think it’sbelow my dignity to actually speak to a farmer.SP: Your activist highness!YY: Exactly! Something else struck me when you were talking about Gandhi, you see the interesting thing is thatIndians love to speak about Gandhi. They speak about him all the time.SP: Of course, you should be proud, he was a genius.YY: The interesting thing is how much of attention is paid to one aspect of Gandhi. Everyone raises him into amoralist, “Gandhi: non violence, Gandhi: purity, Gandhi: ethics, Gandhi: morality”. All that is right. But what theynever care to see is that he was a great advertising genius. What made Gandhi into Gandhi was not because hewas for truth, not because he was for non-violence. He was great, he did very nice things…SP: …but he was a great strategist and a tactician.YY: Absolutely, he in a sense choreographed every single thing that he did. In the salt march that you spoke about,Gandhi had almost like a film director decided every single step.SP: That brings us to the world of political theory, and ethics. The difference between non-violent movement andnon-violent protest is the core values. So obviously Gandhi has the core values, the right of self-determination, beingnon-violent, that’s great. But when you look at the very different struggles, Serbs and Indians, we are different, withdifferent colour of skin, different gods, different history, but the same principles apply. You’ll never win withoutmapping your battleground, you’ll never win without identifying potential allies, you will win by listening to the peopleand putting something into their vision because they will follow if there is something there for them. Then you need astrategy and you need reliable tactics. So what really struck me the most talking to the people here is how little weall know about this technology.The basic idea is you want to make everybody participate. Not only because of your selfish goal that you will win bynumbers, but the change is as durable as the number of people involved in the change. This is very simple maths,the reason why Serbs have free and fair elections, it’s not in the fact we ousted Milošević, yes we fought bravely, hewas the Butcher of the Balkans, all the ethical side of things. But he stole votes. The moment he started stealingvotes it turned from political into very personal. It’s like someone stealing your wallet, it becomes between you andthe state. So the moment the people defended the vote, the free and fair elections became a durable change inSerbia. I always assume the Serbian politicians wouldn’t have anything against manipulating the vote but they knowthere is a huge price tag on it.2/4So every struggle, wherever you look at it, supports the same principle, but the moment it becomes efficient is themoment people take it personally.YY: That in a sense is what in India the national movement succeeded in doing. It ended up making it very personalfor everyone.There are two things that we need to pick up. These are my dilemmas, coming from a democratic socialist tradition,which is convinced about the merits of non-violence, the question is only of how to do it.Firstly, how do we practice this non-violent protest in a society which is so large in scale, so diverse in its publics,and in society where no one channel of communication binds us all? There are mobile phones now, but thatprobably reaches two thirds of India. Television reaches half of India. So, scale, diversity and absence of singlemessage. Secondly, what is the role of the political party, party as an agent of change? Is it more effective to be apolitical party or not to be a political party?SP: The first question, India is a huge society and thoroughly diverse – I wouldn’t dare give any advice on how to dothings in India! But how it is done everywhere else is that you have a process in which you listen to a lot of diversesocial groups, you put them on a spectrum of allies and you try to take a look at why the different social and politicaland ethnic and geographical and business groups will join your movement. What the smallest common denominatorthat will gather the majority of the people around the idea?Sometimes it is something very simple. I mentioned the case of Harvey Milk being the first openly gay electedpolitician in the United States. He understood it was dog’s poop that he needed to solve: very often this answer isnot something very high and very ideological, it’s something very down to earth that will unite people. Like salt in thesalt march.When we talk about the messenger, the real problem of modern communication, whether it’s television or theinternet, is that people are measuring everything quantitatively. The fact that you’ve got three hundred thousand,three million, in India probably thirty or thirty five million, views of something doesn’t necessarily mean you’reaffecting things. Finding the way to move from the virtual space into the real space is the key, as opposed to gettinga lot of Likes and a lot of Shares. Because the virtual world is not where you are fighting the struggle.Second, and the most tricky thing, is who is the most suitable carrier or agent of change? And of course, the answeris “it depends”. It took us 10 years in Serbia was to understand that the only way to win was to unify dividedopposition parties, a separated civil rights community and brave but small in number student groups. So even if wehated the political parties, we needed to find a way to bring them to the table. That gets us back to the principles,whenever you wage a non-violent struggle, you need to tackle the three main principles: unity, planning and non-violent discipline.YY: That’s right. And even non-violent discipline is not all that easy. It doesn’t come from history books, everygeneration has to learn it afresh. Which is what, in a sense, our challenge is today. We’ve been through the AnaHazare/anti-corruption movement. Then came the Aam Aadmi Party, of which I was one of the founders, followed bythe experience (at least from my point of view) of the party going the way of every other established political party.This is when some of us moved out and are trying to think of a way forward. The real question is what is a suitableinstrument? We want to be something of a political party, but we don’t want to be just a political party. How does oneuse all other organisational forms, the form of an NGO, the form of a movement, a university, and in Indian contextthere is also the ashram, which is a semi-spiritual space. How do we bring all that space together in a new, differentimagination? But it was great fun speaking to you – I’ve been speaking to your book for the last year so it’s beengreat to talk with you.SP: And let’s continue the dialogue, I think these have been very important questions, and very difficult to answer. Imust say, in my experience working with people from different countries is the values are more important than the3/4form. The form can be the parties, the civil rights groups, the movement, the student groups, the intellectuals, thechurch groups, the ashram, whatever. If you’re clear about the values, then you can take all of these different formsthat are only the vehicles to communicate this and to mobilise the people. So thank you for this marvellousexperience.This post is an edited transcript of a recorded conversation. Listen to the full podcast here.Note: This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of the South Asia @ LSE blog, nor of the LondonSchool of Economics. Please read ourcomments policy before posting.About the AuthorsSrdja Popović is a Serbian political activist. He was a leader of the student movement Otpor! that helped toppleSerbian dictator Slobodan Milošević. He is founder and Executive Director of Centre for Applied Nonviolent Actionand Strategies (CANVAS) and author of Blueprint for Revolution.Yogendra Yadav is Professor at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS), Delhi. He was afounding member of the Aam Aadmi Party and is now a founder-member and ideologue for the Swaraj Abhiyan andthe Jai Kisan Andolan.Copyright © 2016 London School of Economics4/4

Srdja Popović in conversation with Yogendra Yadav: “Every non-violent struggle supports the same principle – it becomes efficient the moment people take it personally”

Srdja Popović in conversation with Yogendra Yadav: “Every non-violent struggle supports the same principle – it becomes efficient the moment people take it personally”

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