There are decades when nothing happens, and there are weeks when decades happen. Lenin said this nearly a hundred years ago during the turbulent days of Russian revolution. The last few weeks have once again vindicated this Leninist insight when the people of Tunisia and Egypt succeeded in ending decades of autocratic rule through weeks of massive street protests. It took the brave people of Tunisia just four weeks to not only end the 23-year-old autocratic rule of their notorious US-backed ruler, Ben Ali, but also inspire upsurges across the Arab world to put several other Ben Alis on notice. One of them, Hosni Mubarak, the octogenarian strongman of Egypt, the biggest political and military partner of the US in the region, has already had to step down in the face of sustained mass pressure. Protests are also on in countries like Yemen, Algeria, Jordan, Libya, Morocco and Sudan, and the rulers have already announced some measures to pacify the protesters and meet some of their demands.

The return of mass upsurges on the Arab street has revealed tremendous potential and struck a chord of global resonance. True, the upsurges had the local rulers as the immediate target and the US-Israel axis was hardly even mentioned. But the fact remains that Egypt has been the lynchpin of the US-Israel strategic axis in the Arab world. Even when Obama tried to ‘reach out’ to the Muslim world, he chose Cairo as the stage for delivering his address. Any mass upsurge for democracy in Egypt therefore has the unmistakable potential to destabilize the US-Israel strategy and pose new challenges for the US policymakers. Washington’s response to the Egyptian developments has been carefully calibrated – it was only when it became crystal clear that Mubarak had no other option but to step down immediately that the US went for a military-monitored transition. It now remains to be seen how the awakened people of Egypt respond to the challenges of transition in the coming days.

It is well known that while the US loves to topple regimes in the name of democracy, it is always afraid of democracy straying beyond the dotted lines of the Empire. Will the Egyptian urge for democracy be satisfied with the mere ouster of Mubarak, the hated and tired dictatorial face, or will it insist on more changes in the set-up that Mubarak had built over the years and in the policy trajectory he followed both internally and externally? With the opening up of the democratic space in Egypt and the larger Arab world, diverse trends in Egyptian society, history and culture will now have a chance to reassert themselves and we will have to wait and see if the once dominant trend of secular Arab nationalism can again emerge as the leading current.

While keeping a close watch on the unfolding developments, one must wholeheartedly welcome what has already been achieved by these popular uprisings. Together with popular victories in Latin America, militant student protests and workers’ struggles in Europe and the continuing people’s resistance in many parts of Asia, the Arab uprising marks a major rejection of neoliberal policies of privatization and corporate plunder. “Bread, freedom and dignity” was the central slogan of Tunisia’s “Jasmine Revolution” (Jasmine is Tunisia’s national flower) and in Egypt too the upsurge is clearly rooted in popular anger against rising prices, growing unemployment and the spectacular accumulation of private wealth at the expense of public resources and rights. The thoroughly modern, secular and popular character of the uprising has also demolished the mischievous imperialist propaganda that demonises Islam and depicts life and politics in almost all Muslim-majority countries as being dogmatic and medieval.

Tunisia and Egypt have not only furnished inspiring examples of popular upsurges in the present phase of global financial and economic crisis, in many ways they have also shown us what people’s upsurges can be like in the twenty-first century. The electronic speed with which the protests spread and the people assembled using every new technological medium – from television and mobile phones to the internet – gave us a glimpse of how revolutionary advances in information and communication technology can be made to serve the cause of a fighting people. The uprising also showed how a modern state with all its repressive apparatus can be effectively immobilized by a united and aroused people. It was truly a people’s uprising when the people reigned supreme and seemingly all-powerful rulers had to give in.

Given the historical reality and objective conditions in the Arab street where years of dictatorial rule had pushed back the organized political parties and the trade union movement, the uprising could only have a party-less and leaderless character. It will be wrong to universalize this as the emerging era of civil society and idolize it as the politics of the multitude. Indeed, now that the pro-US Egyptian Army, bureaucracy and elitist leaders are back at calling the shots, the people of Egypt will increasingly realize the need for sustained and organized political intervention to realize their dream of a meaningful democratic transition.

In many ways Egypt’s evolution in the latter half of twentieth century has been similar to that of India. A close ally of India during the heady days of Non-Aligned Movement, and a big votary of state-led industrialization and public welfare in early Nasser years, since 1980s Egypt has fallen headlong into the trap of neoliberal economics and pro-American geopolitics much the same way as India has. Will the rising tides of the Nile today be followed by a similar upsurge in the land of Ganga and Kaveri, Brahmaputra and Narmada?