The Umbrella Revolution: Civil Disobedience by the generation next!

According to Li Xueying of the Asia Times Network, The Nation, Bangkok edition, Tuesday ,September 30, 2014 , Joshua Wong who is all of 17 years, not old enough to drink or drive-let alone vote yet, is fighting for greater democracy for Hong Kong. He is frail, looks barely able to lift his back pack, but is bearing the weight of politically aware Hong Kong's student's aspirations currently. Social media savvy students have emerged as a powerful political and 

social force in the country, as Wong incites them for civil disobedience. The logo and motto of the Umbrella Revolution is an Umbrella and ‘Hands up, Don’t Shoot’ has  gone viral on social media network.

Last Tuesday Wong’s Scholarism student movement, together with the Federation of Students, comprising university unions, spearheaded a mini Occupy Central exercise to lobby for the right to Public to nominate candidates in the Chief Executive race.  

Wong was prompted to get involved, as per his local media interview,' I have always wondered why my life is so comfortable while others had so little. And that's where we need start. When he was six or seven, his parents began to take him on visit’s to Hong Kong’s poor.

Today Wong is at the forefront of a surging protest movement or Umbrella Revolution pushing for the right to democratically elect the region's next leader. Joshua Wong is one of Hong Kong's fiercest and most influential government critics. He was concerned about the problems such as Hong Kong’s widening income gap, he said that could be traced to structural flaws in its political system that allows vested interests to control politics and policies.

But that is what he has been doing since he was 15, when he led a campaign that forced the government to back down on introducing national education in schools. His student movement, Scholarism, successfully blocked the introduction of national education in schools which would have required students to develop "an emotional attachment to China".

The child of middle class Christian parents -his father works in a multinational cooperation while his mother is a housewife, Wong says his interest in social issues started at an early age. Learning about the Tinanamen student movement in 1989 had fired him up. Wong has difficulty in reading because of Dyslexia, but he is otherwise articulate and has formidable communication skills in rallying his young non-violent troops.

Since late Friday, police have arrested dozens of protesters who had scaled fences at government headquarters following a week of pro-democracy protests and class boycotts. Police had used pepper spray on some of the students.

“The courage of the students and members of the public in their spontaneous decision to stay has touched many Hong Kong people,” said Occupy Central, which had originally planned to launch a mass civil disobedience campaign around China’s National Day holiday on Oct. 1, when many mainlanders visit the city.

It is interesting to note that, as we gather to celebrate the International Day of Non-violence on 2^nd October in Bangkok, the Man born 145 years ago had extended the experiment in non-violence to non-violent resistance, non-cooperation and civil disobedience. The method and this experiment have changed with every decade and in each country. The essence though, remains the same; its strategy has changed in response to a specific context. The method that seeks not to vanquish the adversary but causing a change of heart and thus making the victory a joint one is relevant even today in the world. The answer for Mahatma Gandhi was always found in action. Mahatma Gandhi had said, ‘An ounce of practice is worth more than tones of preaching.’