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Please don’t call it a revolution

Anna campaign is self-serving, condescending and even dictatorial at times.

28 August 2011

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Greater Kashmir, 28 August 2011

STATECRAFT BY HAPPYMON JACOB

Anna Hazare is a courageous man and I admire him for his guts. He has managed to do what a lot of others have not: think of it, a villager from Maharashtra is close to winning an eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation against a huge state machinery which is not in a habit of listening to the voice of the people. Before you start thinking that “I Am Anna†, let me clarify: today’s column is a political criticism of the Anna movement. And yet I wish to acknowledge that the “anti-corruption†part of the campaign and team Anna’s courage to take on the state are both laudable. That said, I am extremely skeptical of messiahs, I think they are a dangerous species for modern democracies and, in any case, too much adulation often turn them into tyrants – umpteen examples from history will bear me out on this. In all, I have four major critiques of the Anna movement.

Cult of anti-politics

First of all, I am worried that the Anna movement is the beginning of anti-politics in India. There is a certain understandable cynicism in the minds of the Indian middle class about the political class in India. Popular culture in India (jokes, cinema etc.) and the media in general assert that the root cause of all problems lie with the politicians in the country, be it corruption, crime, poverty or communalism. It is this deep sense of anger and skepticism that the Anna has managed to gather around himself in Delhi’s Ramlila maidan. This campaign seems to be clearly promoting a culture of anti-politics which, together with the impending defeat of the government, will lead to a further erosion of middle class’ faith in the country’s institutions. The Anna movement will prompt many more groups to take law into their own hands. Such tendencies of deinstitutionalization will have far-reaching implications for a pluralistic, diverse, conflict-ridden and developing country such as India. More than anyone else, deinstitutionalization will prove to be disastrous for those living at the economic, political, social and geographical peripheries of the country. Let’s face it, the last refuge of the underprivileged and minorities in India will never be the Indian middle class, but the state - a much better state of course! The rise of the middle class skepticism of institutions in the backdrop of the already receding state portends the beginning of the end of political representation as we know it now.

Many liberal commentators are taken aback by the huge amounts of people on the streets supporting the Anna campaign and hence argue that it is a legitimate campaign because it seems to have a huge amount of support around the country. But then getting people on the streets in a country like India is no formidable task: didn’t the Sangh Parivar manage an even bigger mobilization for the ‘Kar Seva’? Or for that matter, can not the Hindutva right wing in India mobilize such numbers for purely communal objectives? Remember, this is an age when the so called yoga gurus and spiritual gurus seem to take centre-stage in matters of politics and governance!

Politics of the apolitical middle class

Whose protest is it anyway? This protest is choreographed to suit the ‘apolitical’ tendencies of the Indian middle class which is in the habit of critiquing politicians and politics but would not find time to cast their votes when elections come. They are in search of quick solutions and speedy justice, which, they assume, can and should be achieved by circumventing the din and noise of politics. Why corruption? Because corruption is apparently an apolitical issue (or so they think), isn’t it? When Kashmir burned last summer and over a hundred Kashmiris were killed by security forces, the Indian middle class was busy chit-chatting about “Aisha†and “Rajneeti†– none of them were seen protesting in the Ramleela maidan against the atrocities committed on Kashmiris! They would, however, find time to assemble at the India Gate in candle-lit processions to protest against ‘high-profile murders’ (of urban, English speaking ‘one of them’) and when the Indian army fights Pakistan (remember the middle class and media support for the Kargil war?). And yet they prefer to look the other way when Dalit women are raped and killed in hinterland India or thousands of farmers commit suicide in the country or raise their voice against AFSPA, human rights violations and other draconian laws: these issues don’t matter to the middle class because farmers, Dalits, slum-dwellers, Kashmiris, Manipuris etc. are not part of their class. More so, how could the middle class take up those issues – they are ‘political’ in nature, after all (which corruption is not)!!

The rightwing rising

The Anna campaign would not have come at a better time for the Hindutva rightwing in India – they were in the process of losing political direction having run out of ideas, appeal and steam generated by Ram Mandir, nuclear tests and such other issues. What the nationalist, overly-patriotic, feverishly flag-waving Indian middle class led by political puritans like Anna, yoga gurus, and spiritual gurus (with excellent RSS background work) has done are multiple things: they have shown that the Congress is an indecisive and spineless political party which does not have it in it to rule this country; that we need a new ‘national awakening’ in the country and the congress cant lead it; it is alright for the religious figures to be part of the ‘civil society’s’ efforts at nation building, and; that the country needs to unite by blurring the various ‘differences’ (national agenda formulation process) that exist in the country in order to engage in nation building (read the last one as ‘the other issues don’t matter, only corruption does). All this bear good news for the resurrection of the Hindutva rightwing in the country. It is becoming ever so clear that the national struggle against corruption is increasingly becoming a cradle of rightwing ideas and Hindutva organizations.

This is no spontaneous movement

Politics is understood to be dynamic and transformative; Anna campaign is self-serving, condescending and even dictatorial at times. More so, I am unprepared to believe that the Anna movement is a spontaneous countrywide mass uprising against corruption. Notwithstanding the fact their definition does not include all kinds of corruption, it is important to note that this movement is mechanical and result-oriented in a negative manner – as opposed to being organic and transformatory – and is led by technical experts and ex-bureaucrats, and certainly not a campaign led by the downtrodden and oppressed for their better tomorrow. The Anna movement excludes more than it includes.

(Happymon Jacob teaches at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi).

P.S.

The above article from Greater Kashmir is reproduced here for educational purposes and is non commercial use