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SATURDAY, February 15, will be etched in the collective psyche of the world for a long, long time. Many media commentators were hard put to it to find words to describe the massive demonstration of people power to protest against the war on Iraq: It has been termed the biggest in living memory and historic in importance.

And well it might be: Even according to conservative estimates, 30 million people in countries round the globe participated in spectacular peace rallies, organised by the Stop the War Coalition, demanding an end to the war hysteria whipped up by the US, UK and their ilk itching to attack Iraq and depose its President, Mr Saddam Hussein. In other words, support for civilised conduct in conformity with international law and the UN charter comes from one in 200 of the world's population. In Europe alone, six million have poured into the streets to signal their opposition to war.

In the case of some prominent countries whose Governments have been out-Heroding Herod, the numbers are even more dramatic. The size of the peace rally in Hyde Park, London, has been put at two million, or roughly four per cent of the total population. Transposed to the Indian context, it is as if four crores of people converged in Ramlila grounds or the stretch of Rajpath between the Vijay Chowk and the India Gate in Delhi. The scale of protest was equally impressive at one million each in Germany, France and Spain.

Two aspects of these demonstrations are of enormous significance. They were truly of the people and by the people, without any trace of political, religious or ideological colour. From school boys and girls to housewives, lay persons and professionals, common citizens to eminent personages — all were out to make a display of their determination not to become pawns of their Governments and to put a brake on the megalomaniacal and unbridled fulminations by the US and the UK.

The second remarkable aspect of the demonstrations, a corollary of the first, was that they were utterly spontaneous and exquisitely coordinated across continents, testifying to the nobility of the average individual, his or her basic human decency, sense of justice and emotional identification with fellow human beings in their hour of trial.

Leaders drunk with power in the US and the UK, strutting on the world's stage as upholders of democracy, guardians of human rights, and devotees of public opinion, have dismissed the message conveyed by the demonstrations. A jingoist column in The Times is insulting to the demonstrators whom, it says, Mr Hussein would be happy to regard as "useful idiots".

These arrogant war-mongers will do well to heed, while there is still time, the warning of the Stop the War Coalition which has called upon the people, "the moment war starts...to walk out of their offices, strike, sit down, occupy buildings, demonstrate, take direct action, and do whatever they think fit... " It is as evocative, and will surely be as effective, as the "do or die" call of Gandhi at the start of the "Quit India" movement.

B.S. Raghavan

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