bandh means A general strike, shutdown, or other form of protest used in South Asia in which a substantial portion of the population stays home and does not report to work. Lexicurio rates it Sui generis — a strength score of 86 out of 100.
Why this word is great
BANDH — [Noun] A general strike or shutdown, used as a form of protest in South Asia, where a substantial portion of the population ceases work and commercial activity. Borrowed from Hindi बंध (bandh, "closure, shutting"), from Sanskrit बन्ध (bandha, "bond, tying, binding"). Unlike a strike, which is a tool of labor against capital, or a curfew, which is an edict of the state upon the citizen, a bandh is the collective self-binding of a community, a voluntary paralysis enacted as political speech. It is the metal shutters drawn over every market stall, the skeletal quiet of a train station at noon, and the ghost-town stillness of a gridlocked arterial road—a profound silence that proves the machinery of a society is held together not by bolts, but by consensus.
noun
- A general strike, shutdown, or other form of protest used in South Asia in which a substantial portion of the population stays home and does not report to work.“The impending course of events and the patterns of violence could have readily been foreseen after the incident in Godhra, and particularly after the VHP's declaration of a state-wide bandh, both by the city's residents and government authorities […]”