Feet of clay

Dawn

January 12, 2012

I had set off to share today some instructive quotes from the self-styled anti-corruption crusader Anna Hazare with readers in India’s neighbourhood, chiefly those from Pakistan and Bangladesh.

The idea was to make them better aware of Hazare’s fondness for military discipline and how his innings with the Indian army
may have influenced his reactionary worldview.

Hazare’s exploits had inevitably cropped up during my brief visit to the elitist Dhaka Club at the weekend. A short drive away, Bangladesh businessman Annisul Huq, the current president of the Saarc Chambers of Commerce and Industry, had sponsored a South Asian colloquium on the role of youth in bringing the region’s countries together.

Not too far away from both venues a tense civilian government appeared to be battling the ghosts of the country’s violent history of military coups, assassinations and martial law.

Even as Huq was busy at the colloquium urging his South Asian guests and young Bangladeshi protégés to work for a South Asian federation, the men at the Dhaka Club were sanguine that a recent river water-sharing fiasco with India had destabilised bilateral trust for the foreseeable future.

Their interest in India’s fight against corruption, however, was similar to the keenness with which a delegation of notable Pakistanis, led by senior rights campaigners, met Hazare in September in his village Ralegan Siddhi in Maharashtra’s Ahmednagar district.

In my view, the visitors came in the manner of a terminally ill patient desperately seeking alternative healing and who usually finds a guru instead whose forte is spiritual mumbo jumbo. The Pakistani delegation was understandably concerned about rampant corruption in their country, this despite having a fairly powerful institutional ombudsman to keep a close vigil on their officials on the take.

Instead of sharing their dismal experience with the ombudsman akin to the lokpal that Hazare is seeking to install in India, the Pakistani delegation sought out the former military jeep driver to show them how his obscurantist ideals could help them root out graft in Pakistan. And, by the way, they wondered, could he also help them rescue hapless Pakistani fishermen from Indian prisons?

To them and to many other curious people who are genuinely interested in pursuing Anna Hazare’s vision of probity and public morality, I recommend Mukul Sharma’s book Green and Saffron: Hindu Nationalism and Indian Environmental Politics.

Sharma, a former journalist turned academic with wide-ranging interests in human rights and social change, has dug out a compelling range of source material to establish the underlying nexus between environmental campaigns and right-wing politics.

In Hazare’s case, his current phase of quasi-political crusade against corruption is not unrelated to his original campaign to set up an environmentally agreeable social order in his model village — Ralegan Siddhi.

Sharma focuses on three Indian examples of right-wing nexus with environmental campaigns and he connects them with a similar pattern of experiences in Europe.

The takeover by religious revivalists, including the international Krishna consciousness movement, of environmental matters in Mathura and Vrindavan, towns associated with Lord Krishna’s birth and childhood, is a case in point. An anti-dam movement in the Garhwal region of the Himalayas provides the second example of his thesis. Hazare’s movement is the third leg of the book.

“The daily routine enforced in the army such as getting up early in the morning, the jogging and the physical training thereafter, the cleanliness of body, clothing, living quarters and the neighbourhood, etc. led to development of a disciplined life, benefits of which I am availing of even today,†Sharma quoted Hazare as saying. “The habit of giving due respect and regard to seniors by age, post or competence was inculcated in us.â€

How his stint with the army led to his violent campaign to punish alcohol drinkers remains unclear, but Hazare prescribed public flogging of those on the wrong side of the barstool. This point could be of particular interest to the approaches prescribed in the Islamic nations of South Asia. Is there a lesson?

The deputy head of the village was found drinking. He said: “I was tied to the pole and flogged two or three times. It is normal.

Annajee will try to make you understand once or twice and, thereafter, he will beat you badly.â€

Hazare, whose methods of protest have been likened by the Indian media to Gandhi’s peaceful campaigns, has something in common with the father of India’s independence — his critique of the Dalits, an approach that put Gandhi in direct confrontation with B.R. Ambedkar.

“We used to go to their area sometimes and sat in front of one house. People used to gather there, wondering how this high-caste person has come to their place,†Hazare recalled.

“This way, a faith relationship came into being. We continued going there off and on. Sometimes we asked from them water to drink and had food together. Based on this relationship, we started telling them (the Dalits) why people kept them at a distance and what were the reasons behind it. We said that society condemns you because your living is dirty, your food habits are dirty, and your thinking is dirty. Therefore, you have to change. With such constant hammering, the whole village turned
vegetarian.â€

Looking for things in common with Gandhi would unearth Hazare’s search for Lord Krishna to solve many of the problems confronting India today.

“There is need for Lord Krishna to reincarnate and save the country, in the form of united strength of intellectuals of good character, active in social work, economic endeavour, religious guidance and politics.â€

Sharma draws an interesting conclusion here. “The hegemonic process of acquiescence and its vocabulary are deeply Brahminical,†he observes. “Anna Hazare’s narrative on the importance of vegetarianism is a case in point. He first contextualises the issue within Hindu philosophy, according to which the world is composed of three traits: rajas, tamas and satva.â€

You could divine the truth of Hazare’s utterances either by listening to the fawning Indian media, or you could lean on your own judgment based on the vast material thrown up by Sharma’s research. The book generally points to an obscurantist missionary flirting with fascist undercurrents to deliver Mother India from her many troubles.

The writer is Dawn’s correspondent in Delhi.