For God’s sake, it is about the rights of people

I am Anna Hazare… words that captured the minds of all Indians!

Words, without the support of a sentence, can say a lot sometimes. This is how I would analyse the phenomenon of the Anna Hazare movement against corruption that rocked the Indian parliament in August 2011. This war against corruption had innumerable shades supporting it… individuals, small groups, and larger groups spread all across the country in all of shades of socio-economic, geographical, religious, and political pockets creating their own brand of protest that spoke loudly and with a lot of conviction.

A few analysts did trash label the movement as one kindled by the muddled middle class of urban areas, or led by armchair Maoists, or existing on the social networks only, or even as a giant picnic for the holiday-starved Indian! One could see a bit of all these observations as the days went by but this was never the whole story. Yes, the social networks were ablaze. Yes, the armchair Maoists were having a field day. Yes, the picnic and the gaiety was apparent all around. Yes, there were people who came for the movement without being enabled to spout intelligently on its intricacies. But we miss the most important features if we just focus our attention to these little insignificant patches of truth.

The vital area that came to the fore is encapsulated in just one word: Rights. The literate and the illiterate, the knowing and the bumbling, the philosopher and the rag-picker, the net savvy and the tech challenged, the fashionable and the hand-me-down clothed, the starved and the junk food addict, the YOUs and the MEs… everyone was sure that they were concerned about their Rights. It is this word that was audible. It is this word that remained dominant even when silent. It is this word that went on to connect and latch itself to other words that are a major concern of the sane thinker today. Rights seemed right and caught the fancy of almost everyone.

The movement did begin with a few individuals wanting to be given the Right to express their opinion, the Right to question those in authority, the Right to ensure that the Right legislation was approved in the Right time-frame… it is this attitude that meshed itself into the word ‘Right’ and weaved itself intrinsically with the word ‘Rights’ that caught the imagination of people. Anna & co were not left alone ever since Right and Rights flavoured the moments of the ordinary Indian!

Right and Rights went boldly ahead and forged a fighting relationship with ‘corruption’ too. After all, it is corruption that has been hurting both right and Rights for long now. Corruption happens wordlessly. Corruption walks on words. Corruption uses the silence between words very effectively to thrust itself upon unwary prey and gobbles them up greedily. Corruption, and most of us know it very well, has the power to silence both the Right and the Rights. Corruption affects us all… wherever we are, whoever we are. Corruption is ostensibly just a word and like most words sometimes makes sense in solitary existence and sometimes surges ahead astride sentences.

Obviously then, there were the politicians, the civil servants, the administrators, and the unreachable authoritarian challenges that also wanted to latch themselves to the wonderful heady brotherhood of Right and Rights. The fight and the tussle was more about who was using and who was misusing their relationship with Right and Rights!

We all know who won of course, but that is not the point at all. Triumphs are as ephemeral as losses are… and what really matters is that perspectives of all contestants in any battle need to be tweaked to an extent that they become compatible and are able to co-exist in harmony. Who does this and how?

The only class that can do the job of making people and their psyches compatible for a harmonious relationship are the cynics! This breed generally formulates questions that they are invariably not able to answer themselves. Therefore, I searched all published material for the cynical mockery of this movement. A few of the questions are tabulated below. These are the ones that will be taken up and answered in this article;

Do we realise that Rights and Duties go together?

Are people from all walks of life really participating?

Is rural India equally restless?

Was this movement just glorifying the mela-instincts of Indians?

How serious were the parliamentarians about protecting its sovereignty?

Is cynicism about such movements justified?

Do we realise that Rights and Duties go together?

Truth is that most of us do not realise that with the enjoyment of Rights comes the responsibility of duties. We never equate what we deserve with the fact that a lot of hard work goes into every benefit we ask for. No wonder then that even as people raised energetic fists of their demands for Rights, the same people on their way back broke all traffic laws! People shouted hoarse about their Right to Rights even as they threw their empty pouch of drinking water on the ground even without making an effort to look for a bin.

Corruption is as much a function of the giver as it is of the taker, and starts to fade away as soon as one of them exercises restraint. However, if the giver willingly takes up the role of a taker in differing circumstances, the problem multiplies… this is what has been happening in our country. Wiping it out isn’t just possible with some law coming into force… it needs people to wilfully restrain themselves. The easiest way this can be done is by small digestible bits.

The first bit is a realisation that Rights and Duties do go together. The movement encouraged and continuously educated people about their own contribution to making their surroundings workable and corruption-free. For the first time in any rally one saw people helping each other, helping the venue remain clean, helping spread this message through whatever means they were exposed to or comfortable with. A valid start… the cynics need to understand that Anna’s movement wasn’t just another itchy bout of allegations but more about an attempt to bring about a thought change… both at the people level and at the political level!

Are people from all walks of life really participating?

The cynics presumed that it was only the unemployed and the directionless who flocked to the rally. The cynics also presumed that the numbers seen were not as big as the organisers made them out to be and would not be able to influence an opinion change in the political idiom that already exists in India.

The cynics presumed and were far away from the truth. With the unemployed were those who willingly took leave to participate… it was the latter who kept rotating, floating and adding to the numbers one saw at any of the rallying points in any of the cities. Yes, the middle class was fascinated by the dream of living in an environment where bribe-giving would not be thrust upon them, but so was the upper crust fascinated to find a forum which promised them an officialdom which would be less damaging. There were the savvy tweeters and the facebookers who inundated the net with opinions as well as debates. There were the inevitable non-thinking followers but there were also the thinkers, the debaters, and the opinion leaders.

Actually, even the cynics were there, despite their inner call for lying low!

Is rural India equally restless?

A friend on facebook announced that rural India was completely unaware of what was obviously being touted as a major movement shaking the political bastions in the Capital. What else can those who have been silenced by decades of exploitation and depravation do? However, it was their silence that, in the first place, had fired the imagination of those who organised this movement.

It is the silent majority that creates the loudest parliament-shattering pressure that ultimately brings about changes that benefit all. Our rural areas are spread out and obviously these folks were not paid and bundled into buses to be part of this rally… however, it was the thought of very folks at the crux of all the subliminal warfare that was strategized! This was no ordinary political rally where rural folk are given placards with slogans that they won’t ever be able to read… this rally was all about going deeper into why such a situation was created in the years since independence… this rally was all about searching for solutions through a meaningful education of the masses. We all know how much the political fraternity favours an uneducated electorate because it is easy for them manipulate them.

Understanding this factor, Anna’s movement public participation from a mere physical presence to one where it was because of a high level of information passed on to the literate as well as the illiterate. The print as well as the audio-visual media was used effectively through strategic actions like Kiran Bedi’s ‘pathshala’ where the Lokpal bill was discussed in all its forms.

Yes, the largely silent rural masses were equally restless but this time they were not herded to a city or a town for a day-out… they could continue with their work and also listen to the lessons that the audio-visual media beamed. Yes, the cynics probably did not find flag-carrying, face-painted, placard-wielding rustic arenas bursting with inane slogan shouting. This is because the change that was being hustled in the capital was slowly being comprehended by them… bit by bit and without the ignominy of listening to the nonsense of the likes of Laloo Prasad and then returning home to their generation of silence!

Was this movement just glorifying the mela-instincts of Indians?

No. if you observe what was happening in any of the cities, this movement was intent upon educating people to be better citizen. This movement was telling them that their entitlement was not limited to their Rights but also went ahead to include Duties. This movement was all about the awakening of the slumbering instinctive DNA-strands that make us all responsible citizen.

The media reported with aplomb the moment when all those physically present and even those who were participating by being glued to their TV sets were asked to take an oath to neither give nor take bribes. Unprecedented move that no politician would ever have dared to initiate… because you cannot ask a group of people paid to attend a rally to take an oath to be good as that would imply attending a rally without the usual paid picnic!

We all saw a mela, yes. But a mela that wasn’t just about laughing, relaxing and going back to the dinginess of a life of corruption… this was a mela where people shared their concerns about corruptions… this was a mela where bribing incidents were openly discussed and debated… this was a mela where people listened intently and made silent decisions. This was quite unlike those pravachans of Baba Asaram & others like him where these very people may have gone, listened to the ills of child marriage and come back to fix the marriage of their under-age daughter! This was a mela where changes were discussed, changes were mulled, and changes were adopted.

Even if a political rally wants to adopt these principles, they can and have socially constructive melas in future!

How serious were the parliamentarians about protecting its sovereignty?

We did see and hear parliamentarians instinctively and sometimes unthinkingly and callously wanting to protect the sovereignty of the parliament. Yes, this sovereignty is vital… however, not at the cost of letting an institution rise to its level of redundancy!

If a parliament is unable to protect the people, does it have a right to go on protecting itself? This is the question that was implicitly and otherwise asked by most of the thinkers as well as the media.

Truth is that the parliament is much above the antics of a mere actor and cannot possible be hurt by mere words (we all know the hullabaloo that the parliamentarians are creating because of what Kiran Bedi and Om Puri spoke at Ramlila Maidan). Parliament suffers irreparable damage when its power is undermined by letting vital legislations rot in inattention and when irretrievable time is spent in walk-outs and adjournments. The seriousness of the parliamentarians is something that the masses have only just recently begun to notice.

If you ask me, the parliament remains sacrosanct to most people and no one would deliberately try to over-step his/ her limits. It is the parliamentarian himself who needs to ensure by his proactive action that it remains dignified and towers in its glory by harnessing its power to help the country gallop ahead on relevant, timely, and mature laws and legislations.

Is cynicism about such movements justified?

Every form of cynicism at all times serves a unique and important wake-up role and is not to be over-looked. It is the cynics who drive the serious contender to out-perform himself!

Cynics are the ones who raise doubts but are not really dismissive about efforts. The people who deep into the action of a movement need people who shoot barbs at them… this is a playful method of creating that wonder of all social interaction: Success through meaningful interaction.

Conclusion

Whichever way you view this movement, there are people you will discover performing the role that they adopted, adapted or were assigned. Neither officious commands of the babus, nor pronouncements coming from the netas on their pedestals dominated the movement anytime.

This movement was created from the long-suffering imagination of the people and effectively meandered through the divides that civilization thrusts upon them to create strands of lively connections. This is what made them seem bigger than they really were and put fear into the hearts of the fragmented polity and egged them on to act in a way that may ultimately bring even them closer to the public at large.

The discovery of a new Gandhi

Arvind Passey
30 August 2011