Hazare Khwahishein Aisi

Many many years back, at the time of the first elected communist government of the world, which was in Kerala, there was a slogan which went “kerala naattil naattiya chenkodi, delhi yil jnangal paarikkum” (the red flag we have hoisted in Kerala, we will fly that in Delhi). To think about it, there was some kind of growth process implicit in that slogan, though it belonged to a party then more than ever, considered any decentralization of power a sacrilege of the central authority of ‘people’. Cut to Anna Hazare, the Gandhian. As far as i know, and I know great men only because many other men quote them (greatness definitely dwells in a susceptibility to be quoted), the great man Gandhi’s one of the most quoted lines is that the soul of India resides in its villages. Such a statement points to an absolute way of being – there is no progress, nor regression, no migration, nor outsourcing, it is stable – in the village. So on the one hand, we have a slogan which envisages an India which develops out of a province and then reaches the capital, and on the other, a permanent place for the Indian soul, which again, is not at the centre, but at the province.

What disturbs me most about the ongoing hysteria about Anna Hazare and India’s own Jasmine bloom is its vast inequity of geographic representation. So, now that you have a ten thousand or a twenty thousand supporters, you can force a bill on the parliament? Usually No. But if you are in Delhi, yes. And how do you reach Delhi? Not through a sustained movement in the villages, not by foot trailing India’s forgotten paths, not by rubbing against the dirt and grime of the monsoon stricken forlornness, but directly flown in, without any touch of those places where, the real Mr.Gandhi said that India’s soul resides in. Isn’t it just a blatant supremacy of metros that has been brought to fore in India’s ‘popular’ uprising?

I can speak only from my limitations. From my situations and sorroundings. Born in Kerala and having spent a considerable time there, I know that a few lakhs in this country of one hundred plus crores doesn’t represent too much of a popularity. I for one know that, the CPI (M) state conferences in Kerala has an average of atleast 5 lakh people converging. I also know that when Indian Union Muslim League wanted to show its strength to CPI(M) in Kerala, even that regional party with barely two MPs in Indian Parliament could muster that many people to attend its Malappuram District Conference a few years back. But they cannot hold the central government to ransom, because they are in a province?! And all these lakhs, whether of CPI (M)’s or other parties, comes to a few seats in the Parliament. But not for Team Anna and the media. For them the few lakhs which converged in the metros of India seem to represent the soul (and sole) -body of India. Forget it, the entire 3 crore people of Kerala have only 20 seats in the Parliament, while a few lakhs claim all the 545 to themselves!!

The worst victim of Hazare’s protests, if it succeeds, will be the federal structure of India and its decentralization of powers. How is it that crowds in India can force a government to legislate what will then be applicable to the whole of India? Why should then the people in the provinces accept at all a power in which their voices are drowned in the distance, while those in Delhi are amplified live through the apparatus of a 24 hour live illusionist?

Hazare’s revolution is in toto unGandhian. It is totalitarian, and worst, it is totalitarianism of the bureaucracy. ‘Meritorious’ (with all caste-class configurations that the term implicitly carries) citizens will be handpicked (by? The corrupt government!!) and then they will rule over the elected representatives. There is a clever hide and seek going on in this formula.

Here is how:
Point 1: supposing the politicians are corrupt, and also supposing that the politicians are nevertheless elected by the people of this country in a fair manner, and that the people do have a right to organize and to fight elections, you will have to conclude that the people, the winning majority of them atleast, are corrupt.
Point 2: we retain the premise that the politicians are corrupt. But we maintain that these politicians however are not the true representatives of people. In that case, the conclusion can only be that the democracy of this land is flawed.

Which one will you choose, Hazare? Neither!!

The clever game that Hazare and his Team plays is that they never come to either of the conclusions. If they come to the first conclusion, they will have to concede that their movement, after all, is not a popular one, but rather a minority of puritans out to teach the corrupt majority of this nation a purging lesson! Or worse, you cannot be pointing fingers anymore, unless you follow that old school teacher's logic of four fingers pointing at yourself. If on the other hand they utter the second conclusion - oh then comes the flood and fury. For what else are the Maoists, the tribals, and the many anti-state movements, armed and otherwise, saying? That would definitely hurt the corporate interests. Oh, why would you risk that?

"First as Tragedy, then as Farce" –the tragedy of the unheard revolutions waged each day on the land and the river, and for drinking water, and against all those who take away what was God-given; and then the farce of the crane mounted cameras, the exclusives, the candle lit marches – Media surely have ways to keep Marx alive, in quotations, of course, as every other great man!