One of the most popular social networking updates over the last one week in India has been how search engines pop up Anna Hazare when you type Anna instead of Anna Kournikova!
Indian media and communication space is clogged with discourse on how casteist this movement is or how revolutionary its ideals are and at least in my own community of journalists the division is quite evident.
India is a loud country but this amplified voice of the people seems to have taken even the fence sitters out of their comfort zone and thrown them into a take-a-stand position. My position was initially skeptical of the people driving the campaign which of course the Indian government has helped greatly transform into a sort of a movement. I was not comfortable with an almost caste and class bias I felt was woven in the campaign. Over the last few days, I veered dangerously close to the voice of the people but each time I heard the leaders speak out I cringed within me imagining a despotic anti-corruption institution that would even grade our moral fiber.
My friends who have been tagging this campaign as ‘fascist’ were the same people who tagged the entire country with ‘herd mentality’ as people without national pride. This countrywide campaign which has started resembling a carnival must have relieved them a little of that burden. There is an upsurge of national pride. A day after the Independence Day speech by the country’s prime minister who uttered the word corrupt at least 16 times, his government arrested someone who has been uttering anti-corruption in his every breath: Anna Hazare. That of course is no guarantee of his credentials which smack a little of a high moral ground based on pre-independence ideals.
But India in recent times has not witnessed this save-the-country movement by the youth, a section of the urban middle class, dabbawalas of Mumbai, farmers of Uttar Pradesh, executives from MNCs, chartered accountants, lawyers, etc. The mix has been quite heady for a country that cannot come to any consensus about any issue big or small. The result of this disunity has been a succession of corrupt regimes and non-governance advised by an arrogant bureaucracy that has been manipulating the country. So this sudden ballooning of national pride is welcome.
The visual narrative of this phenomenon may be short lived but does that in any way vindicate that people did not voice their angst and concern? They did. This is an acknowledgement of ‘we the people’ making a first attempt to give an audio-visual report card to a passive and indecisive government.
Even if the movement dies, falters, sways, I do not care. The same people who suffer from ennui of casting their vote are now in rain and shine wearing topis and carrying the national flag. The same people who never visited an Independence Day parade because it was too boring are now out sloganeering. So call it tokenism if you may but ‘we the people’ (I am still not included in this) have taken to the roads and that in itself is good enough for me.
Going by reportage and ‘inner circle’ conversations, I dare say Indians were a little envious of the swelling spring in Tahrir square and wanted a rallying point to display similar angst against a complacent and corrupt polity. My friends who have encountered rightist notions in this ‘we the people’ campaign may not have cared to find out the same notions in the Arab Spring. But collective voice will always have many shades. What is discernable and accountable is that it is ‘collective’. That of course does not mean that every citizen agrees or has thrown in his bit but there is no denying that every citizen is being forced to take a stand. The issue is such. It touches everyone, rich or poor or middle of the class.
While this fast for an anti-corruption law is underway, a few of the critics may be reminded of an unprecedented satyagraha by a lady Irom Sharmila in India’s state of Manipur. Sharmila has been on fast against a draconian army act that allows them to kill on mere suspicion. She has been without a drop of water for 10 years and in detention being force fed and kept alive.
Is Sharmila a fascist too because she is on a fast? I dare my friends who are disgusted by the multitude of Indians out on streets to call Sharmila’s crusade a mockery of democracy and disrespect to the state. They will in all probability support Sharmila because that lends voice to the marginalized and a cause and state ignored by the great Indian middle class. The controversial army act touches people only in Jammu and Kashmir and the North East of India and therefore the kind of mobilization being witnessed in an anti-corruption movement is unlikely to be there for Sharmila’s cause. But if Sharmila’s cause is just, then why is fighting against corruption so ridiculous?
While I have made a case for people who have come out of their fantasies of taking on a corrupt system and actually getting on to the streets, I am aware of the dangers that an unrepresentative group of people may have in forming policies. I therefore rest my case with the parliament in ensuring that they do not pass a law and make an act which becomes so draconian that someone else sits on a fast against this new law. At the same time, it is but a rare opportunity for India to hold hands together and admit that we all share the blame of a country best described as a ‘functioning anarchy’. The visual narrative of this phenomenon may be short lived but does that in any way vindicate that people did not voice their angst and concern? They did. They did and without violence which we are otherwise so prone to when caught in a mob. Therefore, this is an acknowledgement of ‘we the people’ making a first attempt to give an audio-visual report card to a passive and indecisive government.
The writer is North-East Region Bureau Chief of NDTV, a leading Indian television news channel. On a sabbatical now, he is Senior Fellow at Institute of Defence Studies Analysis in New Delhi
kishalayb@gmail.com