“A new ‘Gandhi’ shakes India” is the headline a British newspaper carried on Thursday, referring to the popular support that has sprouted all over India in support of Anna Hazare, an anti-corruption activist. When Hazare, a self-proclaimed Gandhian had initiated his fast earlier this year, he himself marketed it as a second call to independence. Just like Gandhi, Hazare also lives a simple life dedicated to chastity and public service. He wears only khadi, hand-spun cotton and a Gandhi cap and lives in a small room in a remote village in Maharashtra in western India called Ralegan Siddhi. But the similarity with Gandhi possibly ends there.
The implicit flaw in Hazare being a modern Gandhi is as Mahatma Gandhi’s grandson, Tushar Gandhi told an Indian newspaper recently, Gandhi’s fasting was never confrontational.
“Hazare’s fast is different because Bapu’s fast was to reform an adversary into a friend, while Anna’s fast is against an enemy. It is like a me versus you kind of thing,” he had said.
One of the points that Gandhi’s grandson had admitted to is that Hazare’s movement has brought the spotlight back on non-violent agitation. But the fact is that Hazare has never been as committed to non-violence as Gandhi was. Hazare whose public service started with reforming the village of Ralegaon Siddhi didn’t balk from using violence to stop people from drinking or coming drunk to the village.
As a Reader’s Digest article (http://www.readersdigest.co.in/anna-hazare?page=3) in 1986 had revealed, “He soon proved he meant business. A few days later, when three men returned to Ralegaon drunk after a binge in a nearby village, Hazare had them tied to the temple pillars and personally flogged them with his army belt.” It is the same tyranny that is apparent even now in his, what his critiques call “blackmailing tactics” against the government. Gandhi was not a tyrant.
The entire premise of Hazare’s philosophy cannot be more far removed from the Gandhian philosophy. Gandhi didn’t believe in or propagate coercion. Neither did he promote fundamentalist ideology. But Hazare’s movement is supported by the RSS – as Sushma Swaraj, told the parliament on Wednesday, “Why do the police not take any action when separatists from Kashmir come and make seditious speeches in Delhi? You protect their human rights. But if a sadhu [saint] in saffron or a Gandhian supported by the RSS comes to protest in Delhi, you start raining batons on them.”
When Ramdev initiated an indefinite fast in Delhi in support of Hazare in June, the state police had cracked down on him. Upon which the yoga guru fled unceremoniously, disguised as a woman to his ashram in Haridwar. The damage that this association would cause to Hazare’s image was something his marketing team (or close advisers) – comprising of top lawyers, social activists, a former federal minister and a former tough cop – had not foreseen and they quickly went on damage control mode with Hazare retracting his earlier support of the yoga guru. But the damage was already done – the discerning had started seeing Hazare’s machinations, his affectations of being the new Gandhi for what they were – not just preposterous but plain silly.
It is also bizarre that Hazare and his coterie of followers, all die hard anti-corruption campaigners did not deem it fit to distance themselves, even if temporarily, from two of his chief advisers Shanti and Prashant Bhushan who earlier this year were involved in a bribing controversy when a CD surfaced in the media where the senior Bhushan was heard telling a former Uttar Pradesh chief minister that his son would be able to bribe a judge to settle in his favor. And close on its heels came the land deal controversies. In one the Bhushans were accused of accepting a plot of land from the Uttar Pradesh Government at a much lower price and in the second they allegedly evaded stamp duty by undervaluing their property in Allahabad worth nearly $4.44 million.
Meanwhile, in Ralegaon Siddhi, the village Hazare reformed, any kind of addiction including chewing betel leaf (a popular digestive in India) is forbidden. There is also a ban on cable TV, non-vegetarian food (according to him it induces craving for alcohol) and even a ban on cows and goats grazing freely (They have to be fed where they are tied to stop soil erosion from grazing). There is a ban on axes, so people do not chop tress and men have to undergo vasectomy to limit family size.
In Hazare’s village no one is free – not even the animals.
Do you still feel comfortable comparing him to Gandhi?
