IT is only out of good fortune that one stumbles upon a book like Blueprint for revolution by Srdja Popovic. The full title, Blueprint for Revolution: How to use rice pudding, Lego men, and other non-violent techniques to galvanise communities, overthrow dictators, or simply change the world, in this climate of overthrowing of dictators around the world, was compelling enough to warrant a read, and I cannot be more glad I did. Profoundly informative, utterly readable, easily identifiable, and largely convincing, this book should be the first go-to point for anyone involved in, or wanting to begin, a peaceful resistance in their country or community.

Popovic, one of the key leaders of Serbia’s Otpor! movement that eventually succeeded in overthrowing the long-standing dictator, Slobodan Milosevic, and established democracy and stability in the country, is the cofounder of Centre for Applied Non-Violent Actions and Strategies (Canvas). And he now works as a “friend and consultant to any movement, large or small, anywhere in the world, that wishes to apply the principles of non-violent action to oppose oppression and bring about liberty, democracy, and joy”. The aim of the book is to convince, through ideas and stories, budding revolutionaries fighting injustice and oppression around the world, that even though “the suits, the bullies, and the brutes … may look invincible, often all it takes to topple them is a bit of good fun”.

Despite calling it a blueprint, Popovic understands cultural, sociopolitical, and religious sensitivities and disparities, which is why he and his other mates from Otpor! continue to give encouragement, inspiration and support to non-violent movements around the world, from Maldives to Egypt to Syria. Drawing on the experiences of Otpor! and other such struggles around the world, Popovic illustrates why peaceful resistance works and why violent struggles fail.

The first step, he says, is for activists to overcome the reservation that what has happened in one country cannot happen in theirs. While it may be true that the same dynamics and strategies may not be universally valid “the notion that there is categorically no way for a non-violent movement to succeed in your country is absolutely wrong”.

To begin with, a movement must dream big but start small. The two key points here are 1) to make the fight “relevant to everyone,” and 2) “no matter how important the big issues are, it’s imperative to start with something manageable”. In colonial India, Gandhi began his revolt against the mighty British Empire by calling for the removal of tax levied on salt, a commodity essential for survival, and using small successes to leverage subsequently bigger ones. The key to success, then, is finding an issue that puts “just about the rest of the world on one side of the line and a handful of evil bastards [the dictator and his cronies] on the other,” and when you are able to do that you have already won.

In shaping the vision for tomorrow, movements must incorporate causes that are personally important to the common man. Idealistic visions and national issues, in other words “the big things … and abstract ideas of liberty” do not galvanise ordinary citizens as much as basic needs, like safety and security of their community, healthcare and housing do. And history has time and again demon-strated that movements pick up steam when disparate groups come together, build trust and work towards mutual benefit.

Popovic has used several examples throughout the book, including quoting empirical data, that tyrants and dictators cannot be confronted with arms, as such missions are most likely to fail. But nothing is more convincing to this effect than his use of the following simile: “If you are up against David Beckham, you don’t want to meet him on the soccer field. You want to play him at chess. That’s where you can win.” Another key limitation of violent resistance is that it can only make use of a few physically strong activists, leaving out the majority. And the strongest and most forceful resistance movements are the ones that have on their side, the strength of numbers — the grandmothers, the professors, and the poets!

The most effective tool that Popovic repeatedly advocates for non-violent resistance is what he terms ‘laughtivism’. While the police and army have hours upon hours of training on how to deal with violence, they have absolutely no training in dealing with people who are being funny. To outmanoeuvre the state’s prohibition of protest against election fraud in 2012 — that saw Russian president Vladimir Putin once again in power — Siberian activists resorted to using a bunch of Lego men, cars and stuffed toys holding up protest placards against Putin at the local town hall, which even had policemen laughing at the toys. The state couldn’t do much else except for a local official declaring that “neither toys nor, for example, flags, plates, or domestic appliances can take part in a meeting”. Using laughtivism thus becomes a lose-lose situation for dictators.

In Syria, activists took to letting loose ping-pong balls with anti-Assad slogans in the streets of Damascus, and hiding USB-speakers playing anti-Assad songs in garbage dumps and piles of manure in Aleppo. The hilarious scenes of Assad’s dreaded security men running after ping-pong balls, and pulling up their sleeves and digging through garbage and manure to retrieve the speakers were brilliant at getting the message across.

Laughtivism, Popovic points out, then can not only “break the fear and ferocious public image that cement an autocrat’s legitimacy, but it also serves to burnish the ‘cool’ image” of the movement. In the last few decades, the “global shift in protest tactics away from anger, resentment and rage, and towards a more powerful form rooted in fun” has seen activists achieve more success and “all of this works even better the harder the dictators crack down on it”.

While the first half of the book focuses on the ‘what’ of non-violent resistance, the latter divulges on the ‘how’. Unity of opposition is imperative, Popovic insists, and should speak to every single one of the masses — “the urban, the rural, the conservatives, the liberal, the short, the tall, the drivers, and the pedestrians”. Only then can it hope to survive and succeed. Otherwise history is bereft with examples of struggles, extremely valid and pertinent, fizzling out sooner or later due to a power vacuum. At Otpor! he says, they “fought two parallel battles — one to topple the dictatorship, and a second to unite the feuding political parties under a single umbrella”. And then to unite them under a single imperative cause rather than umpteen disparate ones so as to give the impression of being focused and organised. Otherwise you get what happened in Egypt. While dictator Hosni Mubarak was overthrown, the vacuum created by the warring opposition parties still meant that there was no establishment of a peaceful representative government. Similarly Ukraine’s Orange Revolution saw the country falling back into a similar dictatorship in no time.

In planning your way to victory, timing is most important: “strike when the hour is right and you are guaranteed to win”. And keep the momentum going till objectives are achieved. Just as important as the “holy trinity of successful non-violent struggles”, non-violent disciple and planning is “knowing how — and when — to finish what you started”.

Popovic argues that as much as there is a moral case for resolving conflicts peacefully, it also holds true that they are more likely to be successful. Quoting the research done by Erica Chenoweth and Maria J Stephan in their book, Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict, that analyses the 323 major conflicts between 1900 and 2006, he writes that there is a 53 per cent chance of success for non-violent movements while 26pc of violent conflicts are successful. And in the last two decades this number has gone up much more.

But what is more noteworthy is that in the case of armed struggles there is only a 40pc chance of countries establishing and remaining peaceful democracies five years on after the end of the conflict and a mere 5pc chance of them becoming functional democracies. Non-violence leads to a 28pc chance of relapse into a civil war compared to a much higher 43pc in the case of armed struggles. What the numbers tell us “is irrefutable: if you want stable, durable, and inclusive democratic change, non-violence works and violence doesn’t”.

The concluding point that Popovic makes is that while Canvas can and does introduce potential resistance movements to the principles and techniques of non-violent resistance, the “creative solu-tions … must come from within the society”.

The principles mentioned in the book are “perennial advice for life” and are not limited to overthrowing dictators, but fighting any small or big social injustice or simply improving one’s society and neighbourhood “through committed non-violent activism,” and a life of “ongoing civic and social engagement”. The courage, however, to want to bring about change has to first come from within ordinary citizens.

The writer is a former editor of Gallery.

The author Srdja Popovic is interested in hearing from those interested in his work and can be reached at psrdja@gmail.com

Blueprint for Revolution

(POLITICS)

By Srdja Popovic and Matthew Miller

Spiegel & Grau, US

ISBN 978-0812995305

304pp.