ANNA DRAWN INTO THE KILLING FIELD OF POLITICS
The news bout team Anna’s declaration, in response to a
request by leading luminaries from civil society and a referendum, obtained
through SMS, that the fast which commenced at Jantar Mantar on 25th
July will be called off on 3rd Aug at 5 PM, is met with a mixed
reaction from the people. Also, the core group has declared their decision to
take their fight against corruption for which the movement was conceived and
started last year in 2011, by joining politics and taking the subject issue to
the people in 2014 general elections. In the absence of the government’s desire
to engage with Team Anna and abstain from showing any sensitivity towards the
people’s movement, which mobilised civil society like never before against
venality in public life; the core group of the movement was shoved into a
corner to reconsider and redraft their strategy: as joining politics remained
the only possible alternative to influence the political system. It is
extremely unfortunate that, the movement which had the potential and future to
become a public uprising against corruption, and spread across the length and
breadth of the country has been aborted, by the government’s stratagem. A
government steeped in corruption and poor governance, has come out trumps from
this development, much to the relief of the political class in the country,
irrespective of the party and ideology to which they collectively subscribe to.
Notwithstanding the views of various panellists, who were
seen debating and discussing the issue on prime time news channels; from the ‘veiled
intentions of the Team to join politics, the futility of coercing the
government from the outside on a matter of constitutional propriety of
legislating and enacting a law and making a beginning towards bringing about a
political transformation in the politics of the country’, is a matter of opinion.
Wearing out the movement by ignoring it was a calculated move on the part of
the government’s spin doctors to isolate and frustrate it, and which it has. By
a pincer hold of law and constitutional authority, which the government was
able to apply on the leadership of the fasting activists, it brought them
around into taking a decision of its choice and thus has succeeded in drawing
them into its killing field. It is in this ground of their choosing and
strength that the spirit and conscience of the movement will be defeated and
destroyed in detail and interred in the dustbin of the country’s unflattering political
history. It was in this moment and opportunity, which got created by the initial
determination of a tall leader, social activist and a Gandhian to boot, Anna
Hazare, that there existed a window to enlarge the movement by sustaining its
duration through the ploy of chain fasts by the Team leadership and
subsequently the people who would have been sucked into its soul, only because
of the government’s reprehensible apathy for a public cause and concern. The
tide of public opinion and the wave of media coverage would have made this
movement into the uprisings, which the world had recently witnessed in the
leadership change in Egypt and Libya. To upstage the government with its own
strategy of ‘wearing out the movement’ would have been a befitting riposte, by
prolonging the movement and bringing the government to negotiate and talk with
the representatives of the Team. This is where the Gandhian in Anna lost the
plot; and at the first signs of firmness on the part of the government to cock
a snook at the movement and its supporters, the Team buckled under pressure and
yielded the gains it had made ever since the movement was conceived and
enacted.
The movement against corruption and the demand for a potent
and worthy Jan Lok Pal Bill has taken a beating and it is unlikely that the
chord which it had struck with the people or the 300 million middle class, who
were identified with it, will regain the ground which it has now lost to the
polity and the government. It is characteristic of Indians to explain lack of
determination and aggressiveness in their intent by making peace and harmony an
alibi for inaction and just retribution. The haughty arrogance of the Union Law
Minister, to say that ‘even I am fasting as it is Ramzan’ reflects very poorly
on the mindset and attitude of the government and its ministers to lampoon the
selflessness on the part of the fasting activists for a national and people’s
cause. It is unlikely that, in the years to come there will be a social and
public leader of the stature and capacity of Anna Hazare to selflessly steer
the people and join with the government on matters of public interest and
concerns. The momentum which had been built over the past nine days to bring the
government to a deserving response of the movement’s demands, has been lost and
surrendered most regretfully to the former’s ruse of empty posturing of not
engaging with the activists. The political future of team Anna is loaded with
problems, which go beyond its capacity and organization: and the one chance
which had emerged in the dark firmament of the country’s abhorable situation,
which engulfs its polity and social environment has been gifted away to the
scheming minds and condescending outlook of the people’s representatives.
When I had appealed to Anna through my writing ‘Save the
Nation’, it was essentially to pre-empt him from falling into a trap of giving
substance to his earlier view, on making this into a political adventure. This
will be a mistake which he will regret his lifetime and it will just be a
matter of time when splinter groups from this Team will be gobbled up by the
larger regional and national political parties. The present political system
which we have in our country has been derailed and subverted by the
institutionalisation of corruption in public life; and therefore it will be
extremely difficult nay improbable that, there will be any takers from among
the Team members who will venture into politics. Anna and his Team have no idea
what it takes to win an election, at any level of contest. The congregations at
Jantar Mantar and Ramlila Maidan on a single point agenda of fighting
corruption and pushing the passage of the Jan Lok Pal Bill in the parliament,
is hardly representative of political hustings held during the pre election
campaigning. Anna’s political party, if it does get formed will just be one
more to the already existing pantheon of so many others, which only confuses
the voter with its numerous symbols/signs. How I wish Anna had taken a leaf
from the Freedom Struggle and dwelt upon the doings of other patriots, who made
the British government to hear the voice of the people, by causing an explosion
in the then Assembly Hall. When a government becomes immune to the sufferings
of the people and rejoices in its ability to control the political space in the
people’s domain by its deviousness; and the inherent failings of our social
realities, it implies supremacy premised on numbers rather than a moral
acceptance. This, quite akin to the positional authority as against the
personal authority, in a hierarchical system.
An opportunity to bring about the much desired revolution in
the country, to free the people from the existing political system, has
literally gone a begging. This chance is unlikely to come about again in the
next 30 to 40 years, by when the country would have been fully consumed by the
compulsions of coalition politics and corruption becomes our bedfellow. Then
also, we Indians would require a fully accomplished Gandhi or Bhagat Singh like
leader to take us out from his quagmire of venality and perverseness. Anna could
bring us only this far.
Brigadier (retd) S D Dangwal
+919410900051
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