Almost all of India is on strike today, it seems. Most stores are closed, and since no drivers were available to take us anywhere, we've had lectures on the three-tiered Keralan healthcare-system, and Ayurvedic treatment. It was something of a plan B, and didn't work out very well. What I walked away with, was, I guess, a crash course in the teaching methodology of Dr. Shenoy. To this man, failure to remember the finer details and curiosities of his gospel appears to be a grave affront, to him personally, and to the entire Indian healthcare. Never before have I seen so many test-questions thrown out at random to make sure we stay focused and net his pearls of wisdom.

Well, anyway. The strike. After the lectures, I heard from an Indian medstudent that strikes like these are fairly common, happening at least once every few months. So, for the first time since my arrival here, I do some thinking about Gandhi. It is, I guess, about time, as much as I'm expecting my trip to bring me closer to him. In the lastest printing of the rupee bank notes, the Mahatma's face is on every denomination, you know. That's not all bad.

So, did you know that a little more than 84 years ago, on April 6th, 1919, the British were going to pass a new legislation in India, the Rowlett Act, allowing arrest of Indians without warrant, and legalizing imprisonment for possession of writings deemed offensive. To show their contempt, Gandhi called for a nationwide hartal, or halt. It was called "a day of prayer and fasting", and meant of course that no work could be done by any Indians, anywhere in the country. No buses, no trains, no factories, no administration. The plan was to cause the country to stop, and it nearly did. The British government, losing control, started a series of mass arrests and various atrocities, culminating in the massacre in Jallianwala Bagh in Amritsar a week later.

It was at this point it became clear that Britain could not control India without the use of force and humiliation. As Gandhi put it, "One hundred thousand Englishmen simply cannot control 350 million Indians, if those Indians refuse to cooperate. And that is what we intend to achieve: peaceful, non-violent, non-cooperation."

He knew what he was talking about. Today, some 84 years later, I sit in a room in the middle of Thiruvananthapuram and think that perhaps the habit of arranging national strikes has its origins in the beliefs of the Mahatma. There is so much to this country about which I'm ignorant, but this, as clear a connection as it appears to my foreign eyes, is what I would like to believe.