In the flames of protest
Protests have been a part of human nature ever since we were little children. Sometimes we cried, sometimes stopped speaking and even eating. When things go wrong, we do a myriad of things to grab the attention of those that wronged us.
And as we grow up, the reasons for our protest also evolves. We no longer cry for a thing, but instead protest on behaviors, actions and negligence. Sometimes these protests are personal- like a wife who stops talking to her husband for his smoking habit. Sometimes these are professional- like an employee going on a strike against unfair policies. But the kind that has the biggest social impact are the political ones.
These are also of the most impersonal kind. For you do it for the sake of others. The results of such protests not only affects the person participating in it but also innumerable those who attend it. And this is why they are the most memorable to watch.
One such memorable protest was that of Buddhist Monks in South Vietnam during the 1963. It was era known as the Buddhist Crisis. The protest was against President Ngô Đình Diệm's pro-Catholic policies that banned the Buddhist Flag, divorced Catholics in public service and military promotions and made civil and business laws undermining the Buddhists.
One part of the protest that shocked the world and still awes everyone, was the self Immolation of Vietnamese Mahayana Buddhist monk- Thích Quảng Đức.
The Day
On 10 June 1963, U.S. correspondents were informed that "something important" would happen the following morning on the road outside the Cambodian embassy in Saigon. Most of the correspondents were kind of bored with that threat after a while and tended to ignore it.
However, two western Journalists showed up-
David Halberstam of The New York Times and Malcolm Browne, the Saigon bureau chief for the Associated Press.
The protest started from Pagoda where everything had been organized. The monks and nuns were chanting funeral chants as they walked to the central part of Saigon on the instruction of their leader.
Upon reaching there, the monks quickly formed a circle around a precise intersection of two main streets in Saigon.
Suddenly, a car drove up and two young monks got out of it with another older monk. This older monk was Thích Quảng Đức.
He got out of the headed right for the center of the intersection.
One of the younger monks placed a cushion on the road while the second opened the trunk and took out a five-gallon petrol can. In a swift calm motion he calmly sat down at the centre in the traditional Buddhist meditative lotus position on the cushion. Suddenly a colleague emerged and started emptying the contents of the petrol container over Đức's head.
Đức rotated a string of wooden prayer beads and recited the words Nam mô A Di Đà Phật ("Homage to Amitābha Buddha") before striking a match and dropping it on himself.
David Halberstam, the NYT journalist later recounted,
“I was too shocked to cry, too confused to take notes or ask questions, too bewildered to even think … As he burned he never moved a muscle, never uttered a sound, his outward composure in sharp contrast to the wailing people around him.”
The image of Thích Quảng Đức’s burning body is today one of the most famous photographs in history.
This protest captured the whole world’s attention at the time, and in the months following, more protests were carried out. Eventually, the leaders of the South Vietnamese government were overthrown and President Ngô Đình Diệm was assassinated on 2nd November 1963.
The significance of the protest
Soon after this first public self Immolation act, burning self for a cause became an ultimate symbol of protest.
More than 3,000 acts of self-immolation since have occurred in countries with Buddhist or Hindu traditions. Czechoslovaks did it to protest the Soviet invasion in 1968; five Indian students did it to protest job quotas in 1990; a Tibetan monk did it to protest the Indian police stopping an anti-Chinese hunger strike in 1998; Kurds did it to protest Turkey in 1999; outlawed Falun Gong practitioners did it in Tiananmen Square in 2009, at least according to authorities in Beijing.
The most recent cases have been the self burning acts of Tibetans who are fighting for independence. More than 142 people have lit themselves so far.
And yet the Chinese Government remains unaffected. In some appalling cases, the Chinese police officials even forced the families to pay compensation when their uniforms were burnt or stained while preventing such incidents.
A troubled world
In the cries and chaos of a world, where people use bombs and mass killings as a form of protest, some say that self Immolation is one of the most powerful, peaceful acts.
Though yes it requires a lot of courage, possibly unimaginable for most, it is still a condemnable act. In many cases the people who lit their bodies on flames are seen running and screaming in pain into the crowd that gathers to witness the horrifying spectacle.
And yet people in the Asian region are still indulging in these acts. This tells us about the persistent sense of injustice that these people face, in regions like Tibet. Also the fact that governments still continue to function the way they are shows how little the value of a human being is in such dictatorial regimes masquerading as a democracy.