Anna Hazare has declared war on democracy

We should be grateful to Anna Hazare for dedicating his life to the people and battling for accountability in governance. Millions look to him for inspiration and guidance. We are all sick of mismanagement, venality and the lack of accountability that plague not only governance but also other institutions, including many NGOs that call themselves “civil society” institutions, the term made fashionable by international donor agencies.

I feel perturbed by the disdain with which some in the movement treated elected representatives, MPs and MLAs who expressed their support. Our politicians have indeed failed us, so have many others — the judiciary, the police, the bureaucracy and “religio-spiritual” leaders. Many of these worthies are no less venal than the worst of our politicians. No politician can get away with corruption and crime without the collaboration of the bureaucracy, police and the judiciary. 

Let us also remember that Mahatma Gandhi, Jayaprakash Narayan, Bal Gangadhar Tilak and B.R. Ambedkar all fought elections. Those who claim to draw inspiration from Mahatma Gandhi cannot afford to be so self-righteous. The arrogance of “tyaag” is no less dangerous and corrosive than the arrogance of money and power. If the movement is ready to welcome celebrities who may well be evading taxes and bypassing laws, why single out elected representatives?

At many points, such leaders, including epochal ones like Mahatma Gandhi are ignored or even ridiculed by society. Does it mean that they lose the right to raise public issues? The groundswell of support for those who are ably leading the current movement should not undermine the importance of those who actually go to seek the mandate of the voters. They can also be removed through elections, whereas we self-appointed representatives cannot be voted out when we exceed our brief.

To tar all politicians with a black brush is to declare war on democracy. Our politicians are as much the victims of the money- and muscle power-dominated electoral system as they are its beneficiaries. By declaring that politicians cannot even come and express support to the anti-corruption movement from Anna Hazare’s platform is to treat them as untouchables.

Corruption is no longer confined to politicians and bureaucracy. It has percolated into the very vitals of society. Many of those who are now shouting against corrupt politicians could well be evading taxes, or violating building and other laws, selling adulterated goods and manipulating the system. Just as that does not undermine their urge for a clean polity, so too politicians currently using corrupt means to win elections could well be yearning for a more dignified entry into electoral politics.

The Lokpal bill has already invited a good deal of well-meaning criticism from those who share Anna’s hatred of corruption but have alternative strategies. Merely making the Lokpal a supra-government body and giving it full powers to make its own appointments will not ensure that the institution becomes worthy of the trust reposed in it. For example, the power to appoint Supreme Court and high court judges was taken away from the government and entrusted to a collegium of Supreme Court judges. That has not stopped some of the most corrupt in the judiciary from rising to the very top.

The legitimate concerns of all sections of society must be taken on board if we want to create an India where people don’t have to resort to bribery, string-pulling and subversion of laws in order to carry out an entrepreneurial activity — whether as street vendors, farmers, petty shopkeepers or as industrialists.

It is equally important to recognise that the present scope of the bill is so overarching that it could collapse under the weight of its own gigantic ambition. Anna Hazare is aware that the existing machinery of governance is not just corrupt, it is also dysfunctional. We need far-reaching administrative, judicial, police and electoral reforms if the Lokpal is to become an effective instrument.

If our municipal offices, police stations, public hospitals and courts are not equipped with the appropriate personnel, incentives and resources with mechanisms of accountability, there is no way that a Lokpal or Lokayukta can get the system to work. The blueprint prepared by the Administrative Reforms Commission for wide-ranging reforms has been gathering dust. We need to bring that reform agenda on the table along with the Lokpal bill in order to restore the health of our institutions of governance. 

Otherwise, the Lokpal will either collapse under the tsunami of complaints or become yet another unaccountable bureaucracy that uses its extraordinary powers to add to the harassment that we routinely experience in our dealings with the government. 

Madhu Purnima Kishwar of Manushi in Indian Express. More Here

RSS leader said ‘Ram is too effeminate to serve our purpose.’

In 1990-91 I had interviewed at great length the chief priest of the Ramjanmabhumi temple itself, Baba Lal Das, a remarkably courageous, ecumenical man of religion who was murdered soon after the mosque was demolished. He told me that during the previous seven years of the movement in support of the temple, no major political leader of the movement had cared to worship at the temple, except one who had got a puja done through a third party without herself visiting the temple.

I may tell at this point my favourite story about the devotion to Ram of the Hindu nationalists. Once, in the course of his only visit to an RSS shakha, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi looked around and found on the walls of the shakha portraits of some of the famous martial heroes of Hindutva such as Shivaji and Rana Pratap. Being a devotee of Ram, Gandhi naturally asked, ‘Why have you not put up a portrait of Ram also?’ Those were not the days of the Ramjanmabhumi movement and the RSS leader showing him around said ‘No, that we cannot do. Ram is too effeminate to serve our purpose.’

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Many of the most famous temples of Ayodhya, the pilgrimage centre that has become a symbol of religious intolerance in South Asia today, were built with the help of land grants and tax exemptions given by the Shia Nawabs of Avadh in the pre-colonial days. By being patrons of temples, they were making a statement both on their position vis-a-vis the Ramanandis who dominated the sacred city and the Sunnis, constituting an important component of the Muslim community there. Likewise, when B. R. Ambedkar, the Dalit leader and writer of India’s Constitution, decided to convert to Buddhism along with a sizeable section of his followers, did so after much deliberation. It was not the standard Therawada Buddhism, with its closetful of deities that he chose, but a more austere Buddhism that, by being close to Islam and Christianity would represent a sharper disjunction with Hinduism. By his conversion, he was making a state­ment to the Hindu world.

From Ashish Nandy's thesis on 'The Present State of Gods and Goddesses in South Asia' in Manushi

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