The Pre requisites
and Stages of the Revolutionary Process:
The only example of a Complete Revolution : The Revolution of the Holy Prophet (SAW).
A
complete revolution is composed of 6 or 7 stages:
1. Revolutionary Ideology:
The
first prerequisite of any revolution is a revolutionary ideology and a
revolutionary philosophy that will hit like an axe on the pre-existing
Politico-Socio-Economic system. And unless it has the bite to slash through the
political system, slash through the economic system and slash through the
social system it is not a revolutionary ideology; it is merely a sermon or an
academic discourse.
Secondly,
if the revolutionary philosophy and ideology is new then it is an easy matter
as regards its presentation. The new ideology will devise its own terminology
and determine their meanings itself. But if it is an old ideology then its
modern version will have to be presented and its explanation will have to be
according to the modern terminology of the present era compatible with the concurrent
level of knowledge and intellectual achievements.
Then
this ideology should be spread and made popular and for that all available
means of communication of the present time should be utilized. Formerly one
could walk through streets and bazaars gathering people and invite them to a
cause or people would be invited for a dinner and the message would be conveyed
to them. But now one can hold assemblies, address meetings and write books.
Hence, along with the print media and the electronic media all means of
communication available should be utilized for publicizing the revolutionary
ideology.
2. Organization:
At
the second stage, the people who accept the revolutionary ideology, should be
organized as a collective entity. There are two conditions for the formation of
this group or party.
Firstly,
it should be a well knit group with very strong discipline because when a
confrontation occurs and you enter the field to put an end to the current
system, the elite who have interests associated with the system, will stand up
against you to crush you to ensure the continuity of the system. That is why
you will require a military discipline against all odds. Merely a mob will not
be able to stand against them, rather what will be required is a strong group
which will be organized on the principle of "listen and obey" and
their discipline should be such that:
Their'
s not to reason why?
Their's
but to do and die!
Secondly,
the rank and cadre of its workers within the party would be determined on the
basis of their loyalty to, and sacrifices for, the movement and not that a
person enjoys a high rank in the party because he is a Brahman and if he is a
Sudra he should be low on the hierarchy. If the latter is the case then the
parry that we are talking bout is not a revolutionary organization. In a
revolutionary organization the rank and status of a person is determined by the
depth of his commitment, his association with the movement and loyalty. The
extent of his sacrifices will also be taken into consideration. It is quite
possible that a Sudra may reach the top cadre in a Communist party and a
Brahman might be in the lower rank.
3. Training (Tarbiyyah)
The
third stage is that of training the workers. At this stage the revolutionary
ideology should not be allowed to lapse from the minds of the workers of the
revolutionary organization for even a short span of time. For it is on this
ideology that the whole revolutionary struggle depends. If the revolutionary
ideology has unwaveringly and solidly taken root in the mind then the will to
act will also be sustained but if that ideology were to fade away from the
minds of the workers then the passion to act will also disappear and steam
away. Alongside this they should be trained and inured to discipline so that
they listen and obey. This is not an easy task; in fact it requires a great
deal of fortitude and a strict regime of training and inurement.
But
the habituation of acceptance and obedience is not an easy task. One's own ego
becomes a very potent and insurmountable obstacle in this process; in fact more
than the ego it is the inflated egoism and extreme ego-centeredness that
becomes a hurdle.
The
third target of revolutionary training will be to develop a zeal amongst the
workers of the party to sacrifice everything for the sake of the revolutionary
ideology. A revolution can not be brought about without this zeal and ardour.
These
three are the most fundamental and essential components of the revolutionary
training process. Apart from these the fourth component of this training
process for the revolution by means of which you wish to institute a particular
system is additional. If the development of the spiritual facet of the human
life is required in the ideology then the workers must be trained spiritually
as well. Without the spiritual training of the workers how can spirituality
permeate the revolution?
4. Passive Resistance
This
is so to speak the 4th stage but is actually initiated alongside the first
stage. Passive resistance means that the workers of the revolutionary movement
should remain steadfast to their principle or stand, should not retreat from
their stance but should not retaliate in any way to the violence and
persecution they face. There is a very logical reason for this. First of all,
conflict is created in a society by these revolutionary people. Otherwise the
people are generally quite content and satisfied with the existing state of affairs.
There were the rich and there were the poor; the poor accepted their lot in
life as fate and the rich were living in the lap of luxury. The slave is
fulfilling his duties, he knows that this is his fate, God has made him a
slave. This is why Marx has said that religion is the opium of masses, because
generally the masses remain contented for whatever their lot in life may be and
do not seek to stir a ripple in the prevailing conditions. In other words, they
do not rebel against the system.
Hence,
the scenario is much like your throwing a stone in a placid pond and creating a
frenzy of waves where there were previously no unrest or disruption. Likewise,
revolutionaries raise the voice of dissent against the established system and
assert that this system is wrong and that it is an exploitative and repressive
system. It is creating discrimination among the people. So who throws the
stone? Obviously those who advocated the revolution! Now when the stone hits
the water it is bound to generate a few waves. Hence, the waves that rise in
society are a natural consequence of the revolutionary message. Even this
reaction has different levels and stages.
There are two very important stages
in its retaliation. In the first stage an effort is focused on the character
assassination of the person who spread the word about the revolution. In one
way or another they try to tarnish his personality, to shatter his
determination and to subdue his will power. Hence the main focus of violence
and persecution becomes the person of the instigator and preacher of the
revolution. Initially this persecution is verbal; that 'this person is mad, he
is crazy, our system is just fine and has been in operation for centuries, it
has been enforced since the days of our forefathers and he says that it is
wrong. He has either lost his mind or is under the influence of some evil
spirit'. If this verbal persecution is successful in crushing the preacher's
will power then his determination will simply give away. Now no one else has to
be troubled anymore. If the root, the origin and source, of a tree is cut off
the tree will automatically wither away and die. But if the revolutionary
preacher manages to stay, survives the attempts of character assassination and
has not retaliated and the opponents see that the message is spreading and
people are rallying around him then the second stage of the retaliation begins
in which verbal persecution gives way to physical violence, torture and
persecution.
And
this time the target or focus of persecution will not simply be the preacher
hut all workers of the revolutionary movement particularly the weak and the
youth from the respected families. Now they are physically abused, deprived of
food and kicked out of their homes. They are jailed, murdered and made to face
the firing squad where hundreds of them are killed. Now, at this point Passive
Resistance is required so that all the physical violence and torture is
tolerated without any retaliatory action. This is so because initially the
number of followers of the revolutionary party is small. If this small group of
followers is to retaliate with violence the established order would have the
right to crush them, thereby finishing them off. But if they do not retaliate
then they will still be made the targets of such violence and persecution but
the establishment will not gain the right to crush them completely. In this
manner they will gain time to act so that they can get their message across to
the maximum number of people and expand their organizational base. They will
only be able to confront the existing system if they have the power to do so
and to acquire this power they need time which I call "buying time".
Hence at this stage they should not even raise their hands in self-defense.
This mode of action will have a very important consequence for the followers of
the movement in that they will gain the sympathies of the public — the silent
majority.
You
see in a society where there are Chaudhris, Sardars, Industrialists and Feudal
Lords there is also the common man. The Chaudhris, Sardars, landlords, the
capitalists and industrialists think that the revolutionary struggle is against
them. That is not how the public views and understands the situation but they
do not have the guts and courage to stand shoulder to shoulder with the
revolutionaries; they cannot even speak up for them. These are the people whom
we call the silent majority. The majority of the public is silent but they are
not blind and deaf They can see what is happening; they question as to why are
the revolutionaries being persecuted? Why are they being killed? Why are their
houses being blown to bits? Why are their entire families being tortured? —
They think about and ponder on what is their crime? Have they committed some
kind of theft or dacoity? Nothing nothing at all! - they only believe in an
ideology and wish to remove cruelty, injustice and repression from the society.
Gradually, the common man starts feeling that this group is truly being
subjected to unjustified and outright cruelty. Hence quite imperceptibly the
sympathies of the people are turned towards the revolutionaries, thus
exemplifying the wise adage: "He who conquers the hearts is the true
conqueror".
5. Active Resistance
The
fifth stage of the Revolutionary struggle is that of putting up active
resistance. This is a time for making an extremely crucial decision and a test
of the leadership's intelligence. It is very essential to determine the
appropriate time for initiating this phase. If you are not fully prepared and you
take the plunge prematurely you will be wiped out. On the other hand if in
spite of being ready you delay in taking the step, you loose an opportunity. In
other words - 'You have missed the bus'. Hence whether you loose the opportunity
to initiate the forward action for the revolution or take the final initiative
prematurely, in both cases you will be unsuccessful The decision to start
active resistance should be made when it is felt that our numerical strength is
enough. The meaning of enough will be different in different circumstances In
a small country where the entire population consists of one billion people,
perhaps fifty thousand people would be considered sufficient whereas in a
country with a population of 15 billion people, 3 to 4 million trained and
disciplined members would be required.
Secondly,
at this stage they should abide by the discipline to which they have been
trained. They should be inured to the principle of 'listen and obey' that is to
say, they will only act when commanded to act and will stop only when commanded
to stop. They should not be the sort of revolutionaries who initially do not
act at all and if they do act, they do not stop. A case in point would be the
movement for the implementation of Shariah initiated by Sufi Mohammad Sahib in
Malakand in which the followers fired bullets prior to any specific command
from the leader. Then his followers had made pickets on the mountains and when
their leader commanded them to come down the general consensus amongst the
followers about him was that he had betrayed his principles. Hence this was not
an organized group, it was not disciplined. In fact it was a mob that had
responded to an emotional appeal. In this regard a third condition is that the
revolutionary workers should be prepared to sacrifice their life and wealth for
the sake of the mission. Only when these three conditions have been fulfilled
the Revolutionary Movement can move forward from the stage of Passive
Resistance into the stage of Active Resistance.
Now
you must be very clear as to what the term Active Resistance means. For
explaining this I will give examples from outside the Islamic context for die
time tang. I am not going to give any example from the seerah of the Prophet (SAW).
This is because you can, by means of Modern terms and terminology, form and
draw out a Sketch and then we shall add concrete details from the life of the Prophet
(SAW) into this sketch. Let this be very clear that I claim no other source for
gaming information about the correct methodology of bringing about a revolution
than the life of the Prophet (SAW).
Active
Resistance is when you prod a weak and ailing nerve of the society even though
you have neither out rightly or directly challenged it and neither have you
given an ultimatum. For instance it was Gandhi who for the first time raised
the slogan of "non-violent non-cooperation against the British rulers. In
fact Gandhi and his followers maintained that we will not indulge in violence
or killing and carnage but we will boycott and not use the cloth made in the
mills of England. Instead we will use our spinning wheels, weave our own
cotton, prepare khaddar and wear that. They declared the spinning wheel to be
their national symbol. Just think about a nation and an organized party within
that nation that it declared the spinning wheel their symbol in the 20th
century. Now can there be a law that you have to wear English cloth only? And
did they harm anyone? Nobody's life or wealth was harmed but it created a
frenzy in the corridors of power because the mills in Manchester started
closing down. India was a huge market for British textile industry and there
was a heavy trade of cotton, woolen cloth and Muslin from England here. But now
it was only khaddar that was being used by the nationalist protestors. This was
the first step of Active Resistance against the British. The British rightly
guessed from this step taken by Gandhi that something serious was about to
happen. The second step taken by this party at this stage was the Civil
Disobedience Movement based on non-violence: 'we will not perpetrate violence,
we will not indulge in killing and plunder but will break the law'. And now
consider the manner in which the laws were broken. They argued: 'The sea
belongs to the Parmatma, the Parmatma has created salt in the sea, we are
simply going to extract the salt from the sea created by the Parmatma. We have
not said anything derogatory to anyone'. But covertly and indirectly they had
actually challenged the British Government's Taxation Policy because there was
an excise duty levied on salt. Hence batons were charged, prominent leaders
were beaten up and injured and jails were crammed on a large scale even though
the members of the party themselves did not resort to violence of any kind.
6. Armed Conflict
After
the stage of Active resistance, the sixth and last stage will be that of direct
confrontation. That is there will be an actual physical clash between the
defenders of the existing system and the revolutionaries. Because when you have
started Active Resistance you have basically challenged the whole system. Hence,
the dominant repressive system and its custodians will go all out in taking
measures to crush the followers of the revolutionary movement. It is at this
stage that the revolutionary movement will be put to the test. If the movement
has prepared properly for the revolution, the organization and training of the
members was done along the right lines and steps were taken timely then this
movement will be successful. And if steps were taken in the context of Active
Resistance without prior preparation: neither is there a sufficient number of
the followers nor had they been trained or groomed to the discipline of
"listen and obey"; the movement will as a natural consequence fail.
In other words after the clash it will be either the throne or the bier, there
is no middle position. There can be many forms of this conflict, I will mention
these later. If you would like to understand in a poetic form whatever I have
said so far with regard to the methodology of revolution, you can understand
this by means of the following Persian couplet of Allama Iqbal :
In
this couplet Allama Iqbal is explaining a dialogue (in Paradise Lost) with God
and presenting his viewpoint. He imagines that, God asked me 'O! Iqbal, is the
world to which I have sent you agreeable to you? Do you like it? I replied,
"No, I do not like it"! Over here there is cruelty, the poor and the
deprived are being crushed. Here the capitalist sucks the blood running in the
sinews of the labourer. And due to the injustice of the feudal landlord the
harvest of the farmer is perishing. His children are hungry and his family is
not benefiting from whatever he has harvested. This is an epic poem by Allama
Iqbal in which he has raised the cry for a revolution. So, Iqbal says when I
replied that I do not like this world of yours, it is not favourable to me;
Allah (SWT) then decreed "Barham-zan" i.e. Ravage it! Destroy it!
Bring a revolution here!
Now,
what should be the methodology of this revolution? That question was also
addressed by Iqbal. He has answered this question in the following couplet in
which he has mentioned four stages in the first line and two stages in the
second line of this couplet:
First
adopt the mode of life of an Islamic ascetic and derwesh and continue doing
your work. Continue the mission of inviting to and propagating the message. If
somebody calls you insane or if somebody tries to disgrace or humiliate you,
respond to it gracefully with a prayer. This is saintliness (derweshi). That is
to say, you are like the monks of Buddhism. You are being thrashed but you are
not retaliating. And when you are ready i.e. you have a sufficient number of
followers, the training has been under-taken properly, you have been habituated
to obey the discipline of the organization and are ready to sacrifice
everything, then this is the time to go ahead for a head-on collision with the
bastion of power. A revolution cannot come about without this clash and
confrontation. Mere sermonizing does not bring about revolutions. In the course
of this confrontation lives will be lost, blood will be spilt. Revolutions do
not come about serenely and placidly. The six stages that I have explained
above must be traversed for the completion of a revolution in any country.
7. Outward expansion of the Revolution
Apart
from the above mentioned 6 stages there is a seventh stage of revolution and it
is a litmus test for a true revolution. A true revolution is never limited to
the geographical, national or governmental borders. This is so because if the
revolutionary ideology is powerful, convincing, strong, logical and rational,
it will definitely succeed in gripping the hearts and minds of people
everywhere. Hence, a true revolution will always be exported. It can never stay
within the geographical boundaries of a particular region or country.
This
is the blue-print of the revolutionary process I have gleaned from the life
trajectory of the Prophet (SAW), and presented before you in very general
terms, without using any technical terms. Now I will place in this theoretical
gestalt the concrete details and specifics from the seerah of the Prophet (SAW).
To be continued ....
