But that last part, IMHO, says as much about you and your politics as it does any protesters. If hearing about people getting clubbed, shot and attacked by dogs for having the temerity to protest their lack of trivial things like voting makes you think, annoying, lazy unimaginative people; I have no respect for them, I will give you a heads up the next time Cannoli is in the mood for some King bashing. Indira Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru were many things, but unimaginative they were not. Why would any protest actually work? Because when people assemble en masse to demand their rights it encourages recognition of those rights, even sympathy in people not predisposed to dismiss all protesters unheard. It would work because it has worked many times in the past, particularly when non-violent peaceful protesters with legitimate greivances have been met by violence at the hands of those entrusted with serving and defending them.

I understand and even share disregard for people who consider protesting a consequence way to "rebel" or "be cool" or just avoid doing anything productive with their lives, but participating in a protest does not automatically make one guilty of those things. There is a fine and honorable tradition of productive positive protests in America and the world, notwithstanding the fact that some people try to abuse that fact to pointlessly shake (or swing) their fist at authority. There is an equally long history of powerful figures dismissing everyone from abolitionists to labor rights activists to suffragetes to civil rights workers as malcontents and malingerers who belong in jail if they refuse to go back to the jobs where they belong, but it was still the protesters who were in the right.