There had been a big discussion, and there still is, about the propriety of democracy in a developing country. Are people ready for it? If they’re illiterate, then can they really make the decisions necessary in a democracy? And it’s obviously a valid question to think about, but that night, the real heroes of it weren’t the university students, the teachers. They were the uneducated, often illiterate peasants who were the rickshaw drivers. Whenever the troops opened fire, and we would all run back and run away, then these rickshaw drivers would, with incredible courage, go out and pedal their little bicycle rickshaws out toward the soldiers, into this no-man’s land. Pick up the bodies of the kids who’d been killed or injured, put them on the back of their rickshaws, and then drive back toward the hospitals. It was an unbelievable display of courage, and if you’d asked them what is democracy, they certainly couldn’t have given you an elegant definition of it, but they were risking their lives for it. And I’ve never forgotten that display of courage, and I think there’s a lot for us all to learn from that the next time we sort of paternalistically say that, “Well, people may not quite be ready for democracy.”