Jallikattu - Student Leadership and a Movement

I won’t be surprised if you are wondering what on earth Jallikattu has got to do with “student leadership and movements”. Well, the recent Jallikattu agitation in Tamil Nadu has a lot to do with it. (Jallikattu is a traditional bull taming sport culturally intertwined with the ethos of Tamil Nadu, it is deeply and fiercely connected to agrarian culture of the people, their age old tradition of celebrating harvest festival) This drew thousands of people from all across the state comprising of all age group but the primary group and the most dominant group that led the movement were college students. They were at the forefront of it, leading it, spreading the word, mobilizing the crowds, being the spokesperson, chanting slogans; literally making something that started out as a tiny spark into a wild fire of a massive people movement which brought the entire government machinery to its knees so that they had to take it to the highest authority and get the bill passed. A spontaneous yet powerful peoples movement, but at the core of it was thousands of students.  

It was a very rare sight to see a mass movement without any political parties jostling to upstage one another even though there were few unsuccessful attempts to hijack it, there were no traditional stereotype leaders shouting their usual rhetoric, there were no superstars giving sound bites, it was totally peaceful till the end until some unscrupulous elements wanted to destroy that aspect of peace deliberately, there were no caste, creed or religion but just a sea of humanity. The most fascinating aspect was there was not a single leader for this group but the many unknown faces who came to the fore at the time of need and led. But still what made it such a huge success without any of the above masala ingredients? Is there anything that we can learn from this agitation as we endeavour to see “Student-Led”, “spiritual movements”. Well the immediate reaction from many will be, What! How can you take principles from a secular movement and replicate it for a spiritual movement. I fully agree that spiritual movements are built upon biblical principles and it is completely the work of God the Holy Spirit not of any man’s. But it is worthwhile to look at some of these factors that these students maximized to the hilt for the success of their Goal.

Three stand out features:

1.     The power of college students

2.     The power of social media and instant messaging apps

3.     The power of culture

You might be thinking, ‘Oh.. What is the big deal? There is nothing new in this, these are the same old principles that we have been talking about for some time now’. Yep, you are spot on, but the beauty here is that these students took each of these oft repeated elements, turned it on its head and unleashed it to achieve maximum results and that is where we are miserably failing. Let us look at each one of these in detail.

1.     The power of college students:

We are used to the maxim, “today’s students are tomorrow’s leaders” and have been using that to envision students for some time now. I believe it is high time we change that, “today’s students are today’s leaders” not tomorrows. They are leaders here and now and all it needs for them is to realize it and tap into their potential and step in to lead. In a culture where age is considered as a parameter for respect and hence an important factor for leadership most students hesitate to take initiative and lead, fearing push back and repercussions. But look at this instance, when there is a cause dear to their heart that strikes a chord within them, when they feel passionate about it, nothing stops them from gearing into high octane action. The thousands that thronged the Marina beach had no single leader to lead, but there were so many of them swaying and moving people to mobilize and stay on.

We can never underestimate the power of students, history is replete with examples of movements which were initiated and launched by few college students which later became so powerful that it brought down regimes, governments and brought changes whether it be the Chilean student protests or the Tiananmen square massacre or the student-left movements in early 1960 or the Soweto Uprising in South Africa in 1976 etc.

Christian history has numerous examples of students initiating and building spiritual movements. The Haystack prayer meeting by five Williams’s college students of 1806 is viewed by many scholars as the seminal event for the development of the subsequent protestant missions. The Cambridge Seven who were instrumental in rapidly accelerating the China inland missions. The movement started by 26 Yale college students in 1796 called the Yale moral society which laid the foundation for four subsequent revivals in that university in the later years, The Student volunteer movement of 1886 which was initiated by few students. Evan Roberts, a college student and the Welsh revival of 1904 which was primarily touching hundreds of young people. As a counter to the hippy culture among American youth in 1967 there arose counter culture called ‘Jesus People’ which awakened many youth. We can go on with examples but the key is to grasp this truth and “empower” the students with a cause larger than them and enable them to lead.

2.     The power of social media and instant messaging apps.

If there was one thing that was maximized to the hilt in the recent Jallikattu agitation that would indisputably be the social media and instant messaging platforms. Many students all across Tamil Nadu were connected and glued to their mobile phones constantly updated about the developments, sharing pictures, live feeds from the venues and modes of agitation with numerous pages and groups on Facebook and WhatsApp. They didn’t need news channels and media houses to break in the news. This was their language of staying connected and communicating.  In fact thousands of students were mobilized in Marina beach in a span of few hours just through these digital platforms. If there is something that connects, something relevant for them, something worth sharing then you don’t need advertisements or bill boards in today’s student culture, they will make sure that it goes viral so that everyone gets it.

And sadly this is one area where our message and content is not connecting the way we intend with students. Is the cause that we project striking a chord with them? Yes no doubt the message we preach is relevant as ever but the language that we use and the mediums are far from attracting the audience. How can we speak their language and maximize the social media and instant messaging apps to get our message across and raise them as leaders for a cause that is far more noble and world changing?

3.     The Power of culture:

This is one area which we can afford to neglect at our own peril. We take culture for granted, we gloss over it, we pit one against another and compare it with our prejudiced minds to rank the superior one, we tend to mix it with global culture or cosmopolitan culture and make a mess of it. Culture is close to every ones heart, it is next to our mother tongue in terms of emotional volatility. It makes you wonder why something as cultural and archaic as Jallikattu caught the imagination of the city bred globally connected college students. To understand this we need to delve deeply into the cultural landscape of India. Our Nation is a melting pot of different cultures where the kaleidoscope of myriad cultures in each and every state runs deeply and subconsciously in a student’s mind even though he might be studying in an uber prime campus in a metro city. Every state in India has its own culture and traditions which is deeply connected to the very identity of its people. This might not be out rightly visible among students studying in a prime campus in the city but it is very much dormant in their hearts and minds.

A recent example is a vernacular movie which became a mega hit especially among college students which was nothing but the same old cliché of a love story but told very much in the local cultural context of that state and it was still made trendy and cool. When the director of that movie was asked to remake it in other languages he flatly refused saying that this movie is so much intertwined to the local cultural flavors of that state that it is almost impossible to redo it in another language. 

Culture connects to the heart and it is the easiest way to reach a person and in missions we tend to minimize it or even go to the extent of completely neglecting it. We bring in western ideas and methods which was successful in their context and blindly ape it out here with little or no success. We even consider culture as evil believing that it needs to be “Christianized”. Even after 2000 years of our existence here, one stigma that has vehemently refused to go away is the tag of Christianity being a western religion even though it originated in the East founded by a man of middle - eastern origin. Are we truly connecting to the cultural ethos of the people to whom we are ministering or are we trying to take them away from their culture? Are our methods and message culturally and contextually relevant to the students whom we are ministering? Off course there are many things in our culture which have pagan or heathen origin which we need to be careful with but there are also many things in our culture which are unique, appreciable and can be adopted. After having the privilege of working in three different cultures as a cross cultural person few things I have learned is observe keenly, learn as much you can, adopt the good side of it and appreciate the local culture as that connects the fastest to the heart of any individual if you are trying to reach them.