The Dhaka tabloid Blitz reports that a blogger said in Bengali, “We want an Anna Hazare now to salvage this nation”. Netizens of Bangladesh are canvassing support for a demonstration against corruption on Tuesday, August 23, 2011 all over the country. The Hazare wave has crossed the Himalayas to enter Chinese blogosphere where the icon of the middleclass has been termed as “a new Gandhi”. Now, wait a minute: A New Gandhi? The comparison would have hugely amused the Mahatma.
One does not need to look too hard to spot differences between ‘the half naked fakir’ and the toast of tea drinkers in New Delhi. No one doubts that Anna’s heart is in right place and his commitment to crusade against corruption is genuine. Fasting for a cause is indeed a Gandhian way. However, methods of protest adopted by Team Anna are closer to the tactics of recent Tea Party Movement in the United States of America than to the Satyagrahis of Champaran in 1917 or the ‘one-man-army’ of Lord Mountbatten on a peace mission in Calcutta in 1947.
The self-described Team Anna chose New Delhi to raise the flag of what they call the Second Independence Movement to coincide with August festivities in the Indian capital. Campaigners sport trendy t-shirts, cool slacks and dainty white caps as they sing specially created theme song of their cause. BlackberryTorch, iPhones and Android-powered handheld devices help their organizers remain constantly in touch over Twitter, Facebook, Hotmail and Skype conference calls. Tech-savvy and media-smart, Team Anna has journalists eating out of their hands. A viewer watching Indian news channels would be forgiven for thinking that Irom Sharmila, on an indefinite fast since 2000 to get the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) repealed from Manipur, lived on some other planet. The Indian government discharges and arrests Iron Lady Irom on a regular basis and force-feeds to disrupt her fast.
In run up to his protests, Anna figured on television music contests and used the fawning media to hit out at political parties, parliamentarians and institutions of the state. The Indian government in turn lived up to the Groucho Marx dictum which defines politics as “the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies”. The ham-handed arrest of Anna and government’s plan of sabotaging his protests turned what would have been a pretentious farce into a high-octane drama.
Showmanship matters
The Ram Lila Maidan fasting show is so picturesque that television channels never tire of airing Anna raising his fists to supporters. In front of a large portrait of a skimpily clad and emaciated Mahatma, sits the visibly well-built, well-fed, well-clothed and relaxed campaigner from Maharashtra as media-persons mill around for pithy soundbites from the throng of admirers. Legendry newspaperman C P Scott once wrote that facts were sacred. He failed to anticipate that the sanctity would vanish once 24-hour news channels took over the task of manufacturing reality through wide-angle lenses and frenzied ‘tele-porting’.
It would be a mistake to dismiss Anna’s fasting antics: Unlike Baba Ramdev who counted upon his supporters from the countryside, suave urbanites of Ram Lila Maidan are no pushover and they would not go back to their lairs without drawing some political blood. Meanwhile, a quick assessment of Anna’s achievements presents an interesting picture.
Team Anna has successfully diverted attention away from corporate frauds and multi-billion 2G and 3G swindles to relatively petty corruption of the political class. The builders, the bankers and the multinationals siphoning billions of dollars through dubious acquisition deals in Africa or trophy properties in London and New York have edged out a reliable report that more Indian money went out to Swiss Banks after 1990s than the entire period before it since the independence. All that the Gandhi of television screens can see are public officials under prosecution for wrongdoing.
The Maratha warrior is apparently well-tutored in the art of media manipulation and chooses his words carefully to incite indignation. Team Anna wants a Lokpal Bill that would emasculate elected representatives and put all authority in the hands of One of Us (ONUS), preferably a highly educated individual who would spout platitudes, profess to hate politics and would want to exercise absolute power in the name of the people without having to ever face the ire of electorate. Such a person would be hugely popular with the likes of Nira Radia—the lady who could get any decision made for her high-profile corporate clients—and save Indian democracy from the unwashed masses and their uncouth leaders. The prospect looks so alluring that an influential section of the urban middleclass have put their credibility on line to project the former truck-driver of the Indian Army as its fresh redeemer, even the next Gandhi.
The udder class
The Yellow Shirts of People´s Alliance for Democracy (PAD) hated the chutzpah of former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra who would never lose a free and fair election and sent him in self-exile through street protests that could be called the Bangkok Summer. The connecting thread between the Arab Spring in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Syria and the rage of the disparaged that flowed out into England’s urban streets is perhaps a heightened sense of unintended exclusion and an awareness the state does not take the middleclass very seriously.
The perception that the populist politicos pander to the underclass and grovels at the feet of the upper crust but pays little attention to those caught in-between has become particularly strong in media-saturated societies. This group is enraged when it sees a Hindi film like Rajniti where politics mean physical and moral violence. Another flick Pipli Live is an apologia for the 24-hour television forced to dish out trash to maintain fickle television rating point (TRP) index. Recent brouhaha in the Indian press over Arakshan revealed that the in-between people have a disturbing feeling that they are being left out as the downtrodden flex their numerical muscle and the rich get richer by feeding the manure to most productive cows. This pressure finds release in street protests devoid of politics.
The revolutionary rule-making has a hoary history dating back at least to the French Revolution. But what kind of uprising is the one that goes into deep slumber after a junta had replaced an ailing military dictator as it just happened in Egypt? It was not a revolution but a bourgeois insurrection where protestors went back to their professions once their target of hatred agreed to bow out. In an inversion of Gandhian injunction, it could be said that protestors in Cairo and Alexandria hated the sinner but are ready to live with the sins of each other.
The problem of the middleclass was that it could never really organize itself for political action. Course work had to be done at the university. Customers had to be served at restaurants and bars. Buyers had to be cultivated in the marketplace and clients had to be heard and indulged at bureaus. Weekend would be for families and friends and after-office hours were reserved for self-improvement or entertainment. There was simply no time for long-drawn debates over state of the state or dull speeches of the rustic boors who never went to Harvard Business or Yale Law School. Enter the internet: A technology that has truly levelled the playing field.
Feudalism begot pocket boroughs when the rich could simply buy their way into the legislature. Industrial revolution strengthened political parties and it became much more convenient for the moneyed class to purchase nominations. The service economy of the post-industrial society was more suited for the street-smart negotiator who could barter their brains for the money of the rich and serve the interest of their patrons from public offices. The opposition figure of the feudal age was a rebel who later had to master demagoguery to survive in the era of rapid industrialization. Backroom operators and persuasive dealmakers dominated opposition politics of the service economy. Now, who would lead the charge against the establishment in the information age? Enter the ‘actorivist’: A new breed of protestors for whom appearance is the essence.
Anna Hazare has no position on Pakistan-held or India-administered Kashmir, the plight of the tribals in Dantewada and Bastar areas of Chhattisgarh or the state-sponsored sectarianism in most provinces ruled by the Bhartiya Janata Party. His team has nothing against Indo-US nuclear deal, the antics of occupation forces in Afghanistan or the illegitimate bombing of Libya. They have no alternative economic agenda to fight the scourge of SEZ or the curse of corporatism. It is much easier to denounce corruption: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is against it, Sitaram Yechury is against it and Swami Agniwesh too is against it. So, what is the problem?
The problem with non-political solutions is that socio-economic issues are complex and demand multi-pronged effort through coordinated and sustained action of committed groups. Such groups have comprehensive agenda to address interrelated issues and political plans of action to pursue their goals. They are called political parties. Mahatma Gandhi had one, so did B P Koirala. Jayprakash Narayan had become non-political when he chose to become a social reformer but had to create a political party to fight authoritarianism and high corruption. The ‘udder class’ wants it all here and now at the speed of a tweeter post or live telecast. The risk with this ambition is that it can easily lead to either anarchy or fascism.
Those who yearn for a Anna Hazare in Nepal would do well to ponder over Oscar Wilde’s famous epigram: “There are only two tragedies in life: one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.” The most committed campaigner against corruption in Nepal was Chairman Gyanendra and his henchmen in government. In private lives, some of them were indeed very ‘clean’ people. In fact, they were so clean and smooth that their image has not retained even the stain of blood of innocents killed during long struggle for the restoration of democracy, which had to embrace republicanism to oust ‘clean and competent’ teams from the seat of power.
The ‘udder class’ would have to realize that it does not hang just there in the air: The cow to which the civil society is attached is a political entity, which needs to be nurtured by the participation of citizens in competitive politics. Any ‘non-political protest’ is a contradiction in terms; it may simply mean that protestors lack the courage of convictions to proclaim their beliefs. It is true that the Big Four (Maoists, Nepali Congress, UML and the Madhesi Alliance) have failed to live up to promises made during Constituent Assembly elections.
The alternative now is to go back to Surya Bahadur Thapa, Pashupati Shamsher, Kamal Thapa and Company or create a potent political force capable of focusing on the future.
The popular judiciary, a celebrity officer or populist activists are all very well, but enduring transformation of society is impossible without the leadership of a political party or patronage of a foreign power. The choice is no choice at all—a political party would have to emerge to assuage the ‘udder class’ and prevent a bourgeois insurrection.
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