All over Southasia, people suffer under autocracies and anarchies. Then they rise, in swellings called people's movements. Of course, these movements are not in themselves enough, as has become clear from the continuing confusion in Nepal a year and a half after the People's Movement of April 2006 overthrew King Gyanendra. But when a movement is real, as Nepal's was, it gives society the energy required to overcome the hopelessness and disillusionment that inevitably seep in on the long road to peace and democracy. A people's movement provides the mass base, the mandate of the people, which cows down extremists on both the right and left, and which provides energy for civil society and political parties to continue in the task of institutionalising peace, representation and pluralism. A people's movement does not kill its own children, as a revolution is liable to. It is a force that is much more moderate, but crucially mass-based.
Burma, Pakistan and West Bengal – different entities at various stages of democracy and un-democracy – have, over the last few months, provided examples of peoples attempting to rise as one, in order to wrest back control of their political affairs. For the most part, these hopes have been dashed, at least temporarily. The Burmese last rose up in 1988, when the people were subsequently crushed by the same junta that today wields power from the new capital of Naypyidaw. During the course of this past August and September, the country's monks led protests that were once again brutally crushed.
One thing was different this time around: there was tremendous international interest in the goings-on in Burma. The worldwide coverage of these events, from television to radio to the Internet, was backed by the powerful moral presence of Aung San Suu Kyi under house arrest, as well as the special interest of United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. But none of this was enough to allow for the monks' protests to spark into a larger movement. Instead, the power of the junta – in part bolstered by the steadfast support it receives in the name of geo-strategic and economic interest from India, China and ASEAN – was enough to snuff out the flame of liberty in Rangoon, Mandalay, Pakokku.
Flickering panos
Pakistan, meanwhile, did not have an Aung San Suu Kyi to serve as the public rallying force. The protests there coalesced around the personality of Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry – ejected from his post, reinstated by his fellow judges, only once again to have his services 'terminated' on 3 November by a general about to transform into a civilian president. The Supreme Court Bar Association jumped into the fray, led by its chief, the jurist-politician Aitzaz Ahsan. Together with the judges, lawyers and human-rights activists, journalists fought the declaration of state of emergency and the imposition of the Provisional Constitutional Order by Pervez Musharraf.