The peaceniks have turned

There’s growing consensus over the futility of non-violent protest. Arundhati Roy’s long piece in Outlook articulated a long-felt frustration over the inability of non-violent, ‘Gandhian’ protest to confront and change government policy.
What strikes me is that this indicates a major shift. Roy might have well been called a ‘peacenik’ – in the tradition of the non-violent protesters of Vietnam. The whole NBA movement took its inspiration from Gandhian forms of protest… but now I wonder…
Does this show that Gandhian, non-violent protest is ineffective? More to the point – has it ever been effective? Was the ideology as lofty as has been made out? The Congress view of Indian independence has predominated --- that all the credit for achieving independence was due to one form of protest only, a 'moral' form.
As a fan of Subhas Bose, this view has always irritated me. There was no mention of the INA, the naval mutinies at Bombay and Karachi, the Red Fort trials that were the immediate precursors to Indian independence. Instead, all we got was the Gandhian halo that spread beatifically to the British – who, in a fit of remorse, handed over India to the Indians.
Now, pitted against the might of the Indian State, activists are beginning to see how puerile this view can be. What was to say that British administration took non-violent protest any more seriously than the Indian government of today? Among activist circles there is definitely an acknowledgement that Maoism is perhaps the only form of protest that is likely to make the State acknowledge the rights of the dispossessed.
In other words, the peaceniks have turned. I wonder what kind of moral turbulence they're going through.
The State has become indistinguishable from a business conglomerate. Look at the way it handled the IPL. Why did it require three years for it to figure out that there might have been massive swindling going on? What motivated them to act after Tharoor quit – the love of transparency, or a demonstration of government might? Their tax raids and telephone tappings show that the State is interested not in maintaining the law, but in keeping alive the interests of its constituents. The instruments of State are used to blackmail those that won't fall in line.
There won’t be a follow-up of the IPL tax raids. People like Shibu Soren, an alleged murderer, will continue to head state governments. Mining lords can ransack entire towns and forests, and the State will look on indulgently. Poor Irom Sharmila has spent a lifetime fasting, and there's nothing to show that the State takes her seriously.
It has always been cool for activists to talk of Gandhi, and uncool to even mention Bose. The next five years will tell.