Sippin’ OJ
Published May 1, 2007
By Lauren McGonagle-Akin
Entering into a conversation about the hunger strike that began last week has reached almost abortion-status in terms of controversy and disagreement. Some common sentiments float around campus, ranging from avid support and solidarity to complete disbelief.
I’ve heard many students express that they feel all this energy could be channelled into a more worthy cause. Also others just shrug and say “the economy is the economy,” and UVM employees aren’t doing so badly in the big capitalist scheme of things. Passing value judgements on worthy causes is a dangerous stance to take, especially if you seek to be a facilitator of change. The more prevalent issue on campus though, seems to be one of means rather than ends.
Denying one’s body of what it needs in order to influence the actions of others is an undeniably radical approach, but by no means novel. Before we come to any conclusions about those kids outside Waterman, we ought to take a look at the history and evolution of this form of protest.
Fasting as a means of protest finds it roots in pre-Christian Ireland, where it was known as Trocad or Cealachan. In 1980, Irish Republican prisoners incited a mass hunger strike to protest the British goverment’s revocation of “Special Category Status” (similar to prisoner of war status) for paramilitary prisoners in Northern Ireland. After IRA members died the following year in a similar hunger strike, the British government granted political prisoners Special Category Status, and the Provisional IRA experienced a huge surge of support.
Guantanamo Bay is also no stranger to this form of protest. The first strike, occurring in July of 2005 left the prison’s infirmary filled past capacity with detainees being forced to receive intravenous rehydration.
The term “hunger strike” finds its origin, not in Ireland, nor at Guantamo, but in India, and more specifically with Gandhi. Gandhi used this form of non-violent protest, among many others, to realize the dream of an independent India. He also employed this tactic to encourage an end to civil violence post-British rule.
After Hindu, Muslim, and Sikh community leaders gave Gandhi a commitment to renounce violence and call for peace, Gandhi broke his fast by sipping orange juice.
In 1940, when invasion of the British Isles by Nazi Germany looked imminent, Gandhi offered the following advice to the British people:
“If they [the Nazis] do not give you free passage out, you will allow yourselves, man, woman, and child, to be slaughtered, but you will refuse to owe allegiance to them.”
Gandhi states that we are neither our countries, our homes, nor our bodies. This is to say, that in any of these capacities, our allegiance is incapable of being sacrificed.
When Elie Wiesel came to receive his honorary degree last week, he delivered a similar message about never giving up your soul, your belief that injustices are occurring.
Gandhi cited the Hindu text, the Bhagavad Gita, as an inspiration: “the Spirit is beyond destruction. No one can bring to an end the Spirit which is everlasting. For beyond time he dwells in these bodies, though these bodies have an end in their time.”
Gandhi offered a bodily sacrifice for the sake of that which cannot die and lives in all beings, including those we call perpetrators. Whether you want to call it the Spirit, justice or love, hunger striking is a denial of the physical realm of the self in order to show the importance of a cause larger than oneself.
This notion can both simplify and complicate our attitudes towards social change, when we ask ourselves if our cause is one of the human spirit, and if our course finds itself in harmony with its end. Some food for thought (pun intended), for all of us trying to make some sense of causes on and off campus.
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