It is hard to say what the difference between abstinence and fasting is and what the difference between those two and hunger strike is. It is not easy to tell what is political, what is civic, and what is spiritual and religious in all that. In the end, where is the line between personal and civic self-purification is also arguable. The Bible seems to say that abstinence is not the only way of self-purification; it is not important what gets into your mouth, but rather what comes out of it. The founder of our teachings was always engaged in debates with Pharisees who would make the task of people easier, stressing the outward form – follow the traditions, pray, abstain, and that’s it, you are saved. Wouldn’t it be great, if it was so easy? Lord draws our attention to deeper phenomena; not to show ostentatious piety, but rather follow certain rules in one’s everyday – you may even say daily – actions, feelings, and words. You can have a strong will not to eat for a few days, but HOW MUCH stronger you have to be not to offend your nearest and dearest and not to seek vengeance for your sufferings. Raffi Hovhannisyan made us think about all that by entering active politics. His approaches are close to syncretic forms of thinking. For example, religious ceremonial, popular performances, singing, dancing, and teachings were considered integrally by prehistoric people, not being separated into art and other forms of consciousness. Or in ancient Greek society, natural science and philosophy, physics and metaphysics were not quite “specialized” yet. Everything is blended in the mind of the Heritage Party leader and is a uniform mix of political and civic struggle, moral instructions and religious approaches. You can add to that also the terms “the national” and, of course, “the people,” which are used in thousands of senses and, to put it mildly, not always for good purposes. That kind of “experimenting” has yielded no results in practice. However, one must say that the “tested” path, which was effectively employed by the Karabakh Committee in 1988, didn’t yield results in 1996 and 2008, when members of that committee, Vazgen Manukyan and Levon Ter-Petrossian, took the same path. With hunger strike or without it, with respect or without it, chanting “go away” or not chanting it, with lyrical-patriotic outpourings or with political analyses, breaking the National Assembly fence or staying in Freedom Square, threating to “demolish” or without it, the president doesn’t hand in his resignation, there is no change of power, anyway. However, even if he hands in his resignation, as it happened in 1998, it ends in nothing good. Therefore, those who will advocate the demands of the protesting electorate in the future will probably have to adopt the useful part from this way of struggle employed by Raffi Hovhannisyan – that he appeals to every citizen’s, every Armenian’s conscience, his moral and religious sentiments. It is also important that the Heritage Party leader tries to overcome partisanship, tries not to oppose, but to unite people. It is a different matter how he does that; let other people do it better. Comparing with art again, one can say that the experimental trends have never replaced classical ways of self-expression; it is ruled out that the main body of artists around the world will use cubist technique, and composers will focus on dodecaphony. However, trends have an impact on the further development of art, because they help look at the events from a fresher perspective. And there has been so much criticism of Raffi Hovhannisyan (mainly proper) that it is not worth repeating.
Aram ABRAHAMYAN
