Defying power is an act of daring and resistance. When ordinary people do so, it is fraught with unforeseen consequences. It could invite opprobrium from family and friends, baton-charges from the police and sometimes, even death, as those in power seek to crush even the semblance of something that threatens their hold on it. Yet, unmindful of the consequences, ordinary people have dared and performed courageous acts of resistance throughout history –sometimes in groups, as many historical struggles history illustrate; sometimes single-handedly, none more memorably in recent times as the ‘Tank Man in Tiananmen,’ who opposed a column of tanks, all by himself, with scarce a thought for what could follow.
And then there have been the odd ones–the uniformed ones who disobeyed orders they thought were unjust and thereby put those in power in a quandary.
The vehicle of asserting modern-day governmental and state authority has almost always been the police and the armed forces. In times of trouble, it is the unquestioning obedience of those in uniform that the state relies on to assert its power and herd those dissenting, into a state of submission. So, when there is dissent among those in uniform, it renders the state powerless, albeit briefly.
In 1930, Chandra Singh Garhwali of the Garhwal Rifles regiment of the British-Indian Army wrote his name into history through such an act of defiance.
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