Rowlatt Satyagraha – An Alternative Career Campaign in the Digital Age
How to discover your passion and live life to it’s fullest potential, written by a student
The goal of this essay is to share my story of how I discovered my own true calling and how I am pursuing it. As a disclaimer, I am merely a student and what I explain here are all things that I have learnt over time from various sources, with the sole purpose of helping you find your own path. I do not claim to be an expert or even remotely close to one. In fact, that is the whole point of this essay: there are no experts, everybody has his own special skill set and all you need to do is find yours. So without further ado, let’s begin.
The Tragic Hero’s Journey
As we know from stories like the Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter, the main characters go through a series of events that fundamentally change their outlook on life and who they are as people. These events are called character arcs and have a specific structure called the Hero’s Journey which was made popular by Joseph Campbell in his book “The Hero with a Thousand Faces” in 1949 (I highly recommend you read this book
Rowlatt Act: An Alternative Career Campaign in the Digital Age
During my four years as an undergraduate at IIT Kanpur, I aspired to become a scientist. But when I got my first job as a software engineer, I was not that happy about it. It didn’t seem to be the job that I had always dreamt of. Though the profession did excite me, it didn’t satisfy me enough. But after spending more than three months in this profession and doing some of my own research on its nature, I found myself falling in love with it again.
I don’t know why; but I think there are three reasons for this sudden change in my mind:
The first one is the variety of work involved. There is something new to do every day; there’s no routine whatsoever. Not only that, you can get your hands dirty with almost everything-programming, designing, researching, marketing, management; you name it! The projects are never too big and you get to see their end results fast enough.
I like the second reason even better than the first one: the people involved with this profession are all cool! You meet people from different cultures who are highly skilled and talented. And unlike other professions where you have to spend
The Rowlatt Satyagraha of 1919 was a significant milestone in India’s freedom struggle. The incident is also known as the ‘Black Bill’ movement. The whole of India was agitated at the passing of this Act, which gave unfettered powers to the government to arrest, detain and jail people without any trial.
The Rowlatt Satyagraha was perhaps Mahatma Gandhi’s first major political initiative on a national scale. It was also his first attempt at civil disobedience against the British Raj. In March 1919, Mahatma Gandhi arrived in Delhi from Ahmedabad. He started a fast for 21 days in protest against the passing of the Rowlatt Act. The fast was carried out in Kolkata, Lucknow and Bombay simultaneously by different leaders across India.
The people observed hartal (strike) all over India and protested peacefully against the black Act of the British government. They assembled at various places and listened to speeches by leaders like Lala Lajpat Rai, Jawaharlal Nehru and others who took part in peaceful demonstrations not only against the Act but also against General Dyer, who had ordered firing on peaceful demonstrators in Amritsar on April 13, 1919
The British Government, in response to the Jallianwala Bagh Massacre, passed the Rowlatt Act on March 18, 1919. This Act allowed detention of suspects for two years without trial. The act provoked widespread opposition across India, and Gandhi began what he called a Satyagraha (non-violent resistance) movement against it. Under pressure from his advisors and other political workers, Gandhi chose to call off the fight after a few months.
In my opinion, this was a mistake by Gandhi. A mistake made with good intentions but one that led to his jailing and the subsequent rise of Jinnah. As I see it, Gandhi’s move opened up the space for Jinnah to successfully ask for a separate state of Pakistan as a safe haven for Muslims. I posit that while Jinnah was an eminent lawyer and a powerful politician; he was never able to garner more than 15% of the vote in any Indian election till 1946 [1]. However, it is also true that Gandhi had never before failed in any of his campaigns. So what went wrong?
Why did Gandhi fail?
There are three main reasons why I feel that the Rowlatt satyagraha failed:
1)The campaign was not well thought out: Gandhi
“The Rowlatt Satyagraha is a perfect example of Gandhiji’s genius in organizing mass movements. The movement was a glorious success. The Government had to accept the popular demand for the release of the prisoners” (Tendulkar, Vol. 10, p. 6). The Rowlatt Satyagraha must be considered as one of the greatest events in the history of Indian nationalism. It was a great satyagraha struggle against British imperialism and Indian feudalism.
Rowlatt Act is known as “black act” and it was enacted during the First World War by the British government to curb the revolutionary or anti-government activities. This act gave power to police to arrest any individual without giving him any reason and keep them behind bars for as long as two years without giving any chance of bail or trial. This act was passed on March 18, 1919 and came into effect on March 23, 1919 which caused widespread anger and resentment among people.
Gandhi realized that this act would be highly repressive in character and he decided to launch a non-violent protest against this act which would be spread over entire country. He asked his followers to protest by maintaining peace and non-violence at all cost even if they have to
Probably, at least while they are young. To understand why, consider the career path of an average ambitious person in a rich country. They will probably start as a researcher or programmer in some big company. After a few years they will be making $200,000 a year and be responsible for several other employees. They will have a lot of people reporting to them and maybe even more who don’t report to them but who they need to work with if they want to get anything done.
So the question is, what do you do with that power? A lot of people will use it to make their lives easier. They’ll slack off and delegate. They’ll do little things to make work more comfortable, like getting their own office or hiring an assistant or changing travel policies so that business class is mandatory for all overseas flights over six hours long. And because there are so many people reporting to them, even if each one only asks for something small, the net result of all their requests will be pretty big.
What this usually adds up to is that the manager becomes an employee of his employees: he has no choice but to spend most of his time satisfying their wishes rather than trying to find out how he can best serve the company as a whole. The people at
As a student, I had the chance to work for a small fledgling startup during the summers. It was an exciting time! While I was working, I did not see myself as a builder of apps or products that could change the way people lived. My friends and I had fun making things and building things for the web. We felt we were on top of the world. I think it is only now, as I look back, that I appreciate how lucky I was to be involved in such an amazing journey.
As a child, my parents were both entrepreneurs. My mother sold photos from her home studio and my father ran his own business importing furniture from India. As a result, they instilled in me an entrepreneurial spirit at a very early age. I have fond memories of watching them work on their businesses together and then seeing them bring their ideas to fruition via their first successful ventures.
That said, there is another side to entrepreneurship: failure! When you are young and just starting out, you make mistakes because you do not know any better. You learn from them and move on. But when you are older, it can be difficult to fail without feeling like you have failed yourself or your family or your community.
As if to prove this point, after leaving
