The real face of Anna Hazare

The anti-corruption movement, spearheaded by Anna Hazare, and the passage of the Lokpal Bill have generated unprecedented interest amongst a wide spectrum of society about the ideas, politics and organisations of civil society in general, and Anna Hazare in particular. Hazare’s anti-corruption crusade merits attention not only for its importance in ensuring a corruption-free society, but also due to its multifaceted nature.

Hazare’s politics however has to be seen in a larger framework and in a wider historical context. Howsoever laudable the goals of anti-corruption movement in India today, the movement is not beyond the categories of gender, caste, authority, democracy, nationalism and ultra-nationalism. Far from transcending them, the movement is transforming and being transformed by the implicit deployment of such categories.

I wish to place Hazare in the larger context of his environmental journeys, where the elusive but crucial element is one of authority that is exercised due to a large degree of consent and conservatism. Yet, almost all accounts on him, largely celebratory in nature, do not examine the ideology and politics of his works. Though developmental and environmental works form the core of his ideological structures, they include other important issues. A belief system of force and punishment, liberal use of Hindu religious symbols, strict rules and codes, evocation of nationalism and ultra-nationalism, ‘pure’ morality and caste hierarchies, with a marginalisation of women, Muslims and Dalits, form the core of his village regeneration.

The basis for the authority of Anna comes from a belief system, where the people following him consider it their natural duty to obey, and the exercising person thinks it a natural right to rule. Thus a former village sarpanch of the region states: ‘Whatever Anna says, we do. The whole village follows his words. Anna’s orders work like the army.’ For another villager, ‘Annajee is like God.’ The absolute recognition of an authority locally works in several internalised ways.

In the process of social transformation, Anna believes that advice, persuasion or counselling do not always work and occasionally force has to be applied. Force can be applied in many forms, physical and social, and often the simple persistent fear of its application regulates society. Force gives a safe and solid grounding to socially accepted values. It is not only Anna Hazare who proposes flogging and fear as essential parts of a green village; it has its wide audience in the village.

In an environmentally sound Ralegan Sidhi, religious symbols are core vehicles for transformation and imposition. Its embodiment in certain places/people legitimises them. The command-obedience relationship also gets its rationale from the belief that a God or a temple is ‘supreme’ and any decision taken in front of them must be obeyed. According to Hazare, Lord Rama set an ideal before every citizen of how to conduct everyday life by his own example. There is need for Lord Shri Krishna to reincarnate and save the country.
It is not only environmental rules, but also rules governing the entire socio-political life of people that make an authority acceptable. Those who make these rules and those who obey them are legitimate; others illegitimate/illegal. Anna Hazare is deeply concerned with rules and norms with a definite model:

“The daily routine enforced in the army such as getting up early in the morning, jogging and physical training thereafter, cleanliness of body, clothing, living quarters and the neighbourhood etc. led to development of a disciplined life, benefits of which I am availing of even today. The habit of giving due respect and regard to the seniors by age, post, or competence was inculcated in us…. This has helped me in conducting the village development work at Ralegan Siddhi according to the rules and regulations decided by us by common consent.”

Others reciprocate this language. Villagers normally say that their village works like an army. As a commandant, Anna orders and we follow. Army discipline is the ideal. The path of rural development here depends in a large measure on many other ‘dos’ and ‘don’ts’. No shop in Ralegan can sell bidis or cigarettes. Film songs and movies are not allowed. Only religious films, like Sant Tuka Ram, Sant Gyaneshwar can be screened. Only religious songs are allowed on loudspeakers at the time of marriages. It is emphasised in the village that the villagers themselves decided not to sell bidis in their shops; they themselves do not watch films or listen to film songs.However, the language of acquiescence can be highly brahaminical and hegemonic.

Anna Hazare wants to build India into a strong, powerful nation. Narratives of war, army and enemy remain the core references in much of the discourse on nation and rural development. Here, expressions like ‘national regeneration’, ‘wholesome crop of national glory through comprehensive rural development’ are coupled with others like ‘We have to hold the nation. Otherwise, Pakistan will grab it. That is why we consciously send our sons to the army.’

The concept of morality and subsequent codes/behaviours/practices based on it are important elements in the notion of development. Anna’s concern with the moral is couched in his discourse of the nation that exercise control over the private and the public, the personal and the political. For school children there is moral education and practice, comprising physical training, body building, patriotism, obedience, samskars and Hindu culture. Doing surya namaskar and chanting Om is regular for the students. For women, it is stressed that they should certainly look after the household but they must also participate in activities intended to help their community and country. It is stated, ‘Woman is the Universal Mother, The Great Mother. Many such Great Mothers have given birth to Great Sons — Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj, Swami Vivekananda for instance.’ She is also a symbol of purity, sublime as well as innate strength. It is significant that much of the problematisation of morality of children, youth and village is done in the context of influence of western, modern culture. ‘Western lifestyle’, ‘modern development’ and ‘invasion of western culture’ invariably emerge as repeated expressions, signifying the collapse of morality in modern India.


In spite of the apparent diversities that characterise the various elements that make up Anna Hazare, there is an underlying thread of unity in his ideological positioning. Not only is this authority deeply rooted in the dominant socio-political tradition of the region; it is often blind to many basic and universal issues of rights, democracy and justice. Personal moral authority, while contributing in harnessing water and other natural and human resources for the betterment of economic conditions of the villagers, simultaneously also raises significant questions about its relationship to the making of a democratic, critical community, free from burdens of force, punishment, coercion, obligation, patronage, charity and piety. The present movement led by him too reflects some of these elements. Placing Hazare in a larger context posits in front of us several such questions.

(This piece is based on extensive field work on Anna Hazare and his movement in Ralegan Sidhi over some years by Mukul Sharma and is also a part of his forthcoming book Green and Saffron: Hindu Nationalism and Indian Environmental Politics.) Mukul Sharma in Kafila. More Here. and Here

The tale of two locks and the healthy, wealthy and globalised Godmen of India

Long before the Washington Consensus, and long before the empire began to write back, Indian globalization was first and truly effected by India’s  “godmen.”

The writing back, indeed, was preceded by the preaching back.   Where, however,  Swami Vivekananda was a freak one-timer in the  Chicago conference of world religions in 1892,  the efflorescence  has been a recent phenomenon, coterminous, significantly, with  the leaps made by a “liberated” world economy.

Quite rightly has Arundhati Roy said that  two locks were opened by the Indian ruling elites at one and the same time—the lock to the market, and the lock to the Babri mosque, yielding together that deadly mix of religious and developmental totalitarianism which has since informed the life of the nation as a dominant theme.

And  mutually reinforcing in a fatal sort of way.

II

The subject came up on  a TV talk show debate just the other night, and what follows may be read as a gloss occasioned by the coordinates that emerged. Indeed as regurgitations of cogitations that this scribe has experienced for a good many year  (the epigraph, which comes from a nasty written more than two decades ago,  being testimony).

Broadly, two  sharply articulated positions defined that debate, with the sedate and  subtle  historian, Ramchandra Guha on one side, and the feisty advocate, Rani Jethmalani on the other.

Guha made the point that since most of India’s frontline “godmen” seemed always to be chasing money and the media, they could hardly be regarded exemplars of the spiritual life.  This in stark contrast to a Gandhi who “democratized” spirituality, first by questioning his own fallibilities and then by sharing the totality of experiences with  vox populi.  Or, a Raman Maharishi who never stirred from his abode in south India. And, indeed, fed his mongrels even as he ate himself, he might have added.

Jethmalani, a highly successful scion of the legal fraternity, countered robustly to say that there was nothing wrong with so doing.  It was her grateful view that these  gurus of India were infact bringing succour and release for a whole lot of people who are otherwise too caught up in the deracinated rough and tumble of activity.  Yoga and meditation were  the way to bring fraught individuals in touch with their inner lives.

III

Now in recent years, “godman” after canny “godman” has been found to be complicit in some shenanigan or the other—land grab, hawala transactions (i.e. the illicit and clandestine transfer of unaccounted wealth from place to place), rape, sex orgies, and murder—all exposed by the very media, sections of which never tire of lauding their contributions to the “national image” as a haven of spirituality.

But there are a few currently who remain as yet clean to the visible public eye, although questions have been raised about dubious medical and labour practices of one, and shots heard recently at a conclave  addressed by the other.  Both hugely endowed with all that money may do, including exclusive TV channels for propagation.

So why then do the high and mighty continue to patronize these sorts of “godmen” whose so-called spiritual splutterings never seem to amount to anything more than platitudinous common sense (Guha), often readily available at the street corner paan shop?

I would like to suggest that the answer lies in the epigraph to this piece.

A whole new class of Indians spawned by the berserk possibilities of market fundamentalism know two things: one, that their ancestors never had it “so good,” and, two, that come what may, the last thing they wish to happen is to lose what they have accumulated, and may continue to accumulate.

Any spirituality, therefore, that enjoins turning away from  money-making and consumerism is passé and  infra dig.  So that the time-honoured  pieties of renunciation (tyag) and  the simple life centred around the common good and  search for truth beyond  possessions are  decrepitly medieval.  Utterly unsuited to a class whose burden now is to  see India at the top of the comity of puissant nations.

More heinously, such a course seems  a sinister device to reject capitalism and a dirty trick to bring back socialist ideas.

The agenda of this class, thus, is to see that capitalism goes hand-in-hand with painless placebos, that not only bring momentary relief but recharge entrepreneurial energies for further leaps in profit-making.

And the first of the “godmen” to understand this agenda to perfection was Maharishi Mahesh Yogi who fathered Transcendental Meditation world-wide.  It was his explicit boast that fifteen minutes of TM at work place could not only steady the nerve and stem the blood pressure, but, in so doing, make enhanced leaps in productivity possible. Maximum result at minimum inconvenience--never a better corporate commercial than that.

So, there you had it—you could eat the cake and have it too.

Just as any clever movie-maker fashions his cinema to articulate the desired underside of things, the classy Yogi sets out to become a “spiritual” collaborator in the  compulsive drive to the “good life.”

IV

None of this can happen if the “godman”  is seen to be a “beggarly” derelict himself.

In the new world that he seeks to skim, it is imperative that all the accoutrement appropriate to the zeitgeist are his in the first place, ranging from  palatial ashrams, to limousines, to fabulous and famous hangers-on, to in-favour politicians, to private jets.

For him these are tools that substitute the old relic, hairshirt, and frankincense.

And his unique selling point has to be, as the epigraph claims, that he brings spirituality not as painful questioning of what is, or of frustrating skepticism towards the preferred social and economic environment of his clientale, but, indeed, as an enhancement of the pleasure principle.

And in order that he sell, he must primarily be seen to be master of that principle himself.  Hey, you can’t give what you do not have.

No wonder then that you do not see such “godmen” trudging among the riff raff of the nation, or taking on injustices, or lining up on the side of  equity, or bringing  hope and  ministry to the  wretched of the earth.

Thus a spirituality that is adorned with diamonds and plaited with gold can ill afford to be bogged down in ethical concerns, except as vacuous and abstract gurgitations, uttered with tact and  a sense of timing.  Or upon catching an isolated raised eyebrow in the audience on any given day.

The whole point and purpose of this variety of “spiritual” intervention is to bolster and  justify the “good life”, and, all-importantly, to neutralize and hush the least stirring of the conscience  and of guilt.

Inorder to keep its hold on the Elect, it needs always to appear resplendent in a canny mix of the flowing beard, the loosely worn robe, the ever-smiling visage, the arty enunciation of clichés, and always always next to visuals that betoken wealth and intimations of hidden pleasures.

Truly, the art not just of living, but of living to the hilt.

It is thus that a deadly mix of the Freudian and the  Lockean  inform this “spiritual” enterprise, inviting the subject in  mystifying suggestiveness to look inward to the navel but seated in surroundings that ravish the physical eye, item after opulent item.

What more could the rich and famous ask for?

As for all the rest, their fate it  is to labour to keep the opulence in place.  Lucky rabble they.

V

For a contrast now, consider this other saffron –clad  Arya Samaji mendicant, name of Swani Agnivesh.

On a state television channel  he comperes a weekly interactive programme, titled  Vichaar Manthan (literally, “Churning Thoughts”).

Invariably his audiences are drawn from people readily available on any street, government school, slum NGO, relegated women, minorities, low-castes and suchlike, with a noted authority or two sitting among their midst.

And here is his route to the spiritual life: 

--what can we do collectively to redress  horrendous social and systemic wrongs, be it  sanitation, slum schooling, local health and nutritive care, honour killings and other caste oppressions, inter-communal mayhems, corruption in offices, in politics, among teachers, contractors, shopkeepers, police personnel, godmen, and so on?

--what mechanisms of redressal does the present system make available to  the ordinary citizen, be it RTI or any other?  How can we educate ourselves and others to use them?

--what new laws, legislations should we ask for?

--what pernicious influences does a  money-driven and complicit media perpetrate?  What kinds of advertisements bring shame to the ordinary Indian?

Who makes the money?

--what can be done about children in labour, anaemic lactating mothers, goons on the street whose lack of employment encourages crime against others?

--can injustices cohabit with a religious life?  Can any religion be true if it contravenes our fundamental humanity?

And so on.  These but some that I readily recall from his programmings.

Therefore, do not be surprised that the Rani Jethmalanis of India  would not see Swami Agnivesh as a “godman” one bit, but indeed something of  an irritating,   corrupted and radical rabble rouser—mendicant in himself and inviting to a mendicant life.  And suspiciously partial to the Left.  Could it get worse?

What is a “godman” who dwells perpetually on the externals, and  miserable ones at that, and never rolls his eye upward to the “transcendant” truths?

Nothing more, indeed, than a  proletarian Jesus or a troublesome Gandhi.

Would you marry into a family that has no BMW? No.  And if you did, it would be your problem if you lost your club membership.

Would you enter a  corporate house that offered you less than  X plus plus plus? Forget it; what would your peers think?

Would you be seen next to a “godman” who rode a bicycle?  For god’s sake, you must have lost your so-spiritual beans.

From Badri Raina's excellent article in Znet. More Here.

Badri Raina could be contacted at badri.raina@gmail.com