Anna Hazare and Gandhian Politics

by Sumanasiri Liyanage

(April 11, Kandy, Sri Lanka Guardian) Many Sri Lankans may not have heard of Anna Hazare until he began his fast-unto-death fast last week. "The government has accepted all our demands… this is a victory for the entire nation. I will end my hunger strike on Saturday morning," Hazare told scores of supporters gathered at the JantarMantar in Delhi. Hazare, 72-year-old social activist, is a school drop-out from an indigent labour family of Maharashtra’s Ahmednagar District. Since he launched his fast on Tuesday, there has been an enormous support for his cause throughout India so that the Union government of India has had to give in. The main focus of Hazare’s campaign is widespread corruption which has reached Himalayan proportions since the liberalisation policies as epitomised by 3G scam, which finally forced Telecom Minister to quit the Cabinet. He wanted Centre to drop the anti-corruption Bill. The draft Bill is weak vis-a-vis corruption as it does not allow citizens to make complaints directly against public officials. The Bill restricts such inquires to those forwarded by the Lok Sabha Speaker or the RajyaSabha Chairman. In place of this weak Bill drafted by the government, Hazare demanded a strong anti-corruption Lokpal Bill drafted by a joint committee of the government and civil society. In his revised draft sent to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Friday morning, Hazare demanded that 50 per cent of the members of the committee be from civil society, and that it be headed by a non-political member. On Friday, Anna Hazare gave a call for a "Jail Bharao Andolan" in the country from April 13 if his demands for the passing of the Lokpal Bill were not met by the government.The Congress Party-led government and the emissaries of Hazare have finally agreed to form a drafting committee of ten members consisting of five Cabinet ministers and five civil society members with co-chairpersons. Civil society would be represented by Anna Hazare, Justice Santosh Hedge; Prashant Bhushan, Kejriwal and Shanti Bhushan, a former Union Minister who will also be co-chairman of the committee. The 10-member joint drafting committee will have Pranab Mukherjee, Moily, Sibal, P. Chidambaram and Khurshid.

Hazare phenomenon is of great importance for all the countries in South Asia for several reasons. First, he has decided to launch a struggle against the government and power centres on the issue of corruption that reached an unseen proportion in India and other countries in the South Asian region in recent years. His notion of anti-corruption cannot be reduced to or should not be identified with the demands for transparency and accountability by the international financial agencies. The people like Saif Gadaffi’s business have shown the way in which these notions have being used by the IFAs. For them, the ‘theatre of probity’, if I use Shaxson’s memorable phrase, possesses all elements of transparency, accountability and the so-called ‘good governance’. Hazare has a different notion of transparency and accountability as he is determined to fight for good governance until the "country’s poor get justice".

Secondly, Hazare’s struggle gives a new interpretation to the issue of law-making. The Presidents, Prime Ministers, Cabinets and Parliamentarians and Senators seemed to believe that they were vested with the monopolised authority to decide what kind of legislation should be drafted. He has challenged this view and forced elected governments to accept the fact that the ordinary citizens have every right to intervene in between elections in the law-making process. Many legal pundits appear to be apprehensive that people like Hazare are derailing and hijacking the democratic process while trying to do good for the country. Democratic government as Amartya Sen has informed us is a government by discussion. When the elected legislators betray the trust reposed in them by the people who elect them, people have every right to intervene directly and actively in the process of law-making. Hazare has proved that this is doable.

My third point refers to the validity of Ghandian politics for today’s world. In recent years, in many countries and in several occasions, Gandhian tactics of non-violent Satyagraha has failed. It is instructive to note that for India, whether its contemporary leaders like it or not, the legacy of Gandhi cannot be done away with. The mass appeal Gandhian symbolism has evoked has been so strong so that it would be extremely difficult for the Indian state to suppress Gandhian protest. The attention people have paid for Hazare’s fast-unto- death campaign was enormous and as a result the government was forced to succumb to people’s pressure. However, in Sri Lanka, as we have witnessed, Satyagraha campaign by many resistance groups were suppressed by the police or security forces or subterranean groups following the campaign led by the government that those protests would be potential danger to security of the state. Hence the platforms resistance groups have set up for Satyagraha were demolished and oftentimes the people who participated in them were forcefully removed. Does this Indian specificity signify the strength of Indian democracy? Of course, this question can be answered in multiple ways. Some have answered the question in the affirmative arguing that the Indian state recognises and respects people’s demands so that India has developed a mechanism through which people’s views, demands and aspirations could be incorporated into law-making. On the other hand, some have pointed out, the actions of this sort do not go beyond cosmetic changes. Shuddhabrata Sengupta opines:

"Anna Hazare may finally go down in history as the man who - perhaps against his own instincts and interests – (I am not disputing his moral uprightness here) - sanctified the entire spectrum of Indian politics by offering it the cosmetic cloak of the provisions of the draft Jan Lokpal Bill. The current UPA regime, like the NDA regime before it, has perfected the art of being the designer of its own opposition. The method is brilliant and imaginative. First, preside over profound corruption, then, utilise the public discontent against corruption to create a situation where the ruling dispensation can be seen as the source of the most sympathetic and sensitive response, while doing nothing, simultaneously, to challenge the abuse of power at a structural level." Of course there is a grain of truth in this criticism as resistance of this nature finally ends up without producing long lasting results. However, the outcome partly depends on the continuous pressure and intervention of the people.

Finally, the strength of democracy lies in the fact that it allows limited and conditioned intervention of people through their collectivities. The Arab Revolutions have shown that when this safety valve was closed, the entire system will be forcefully questioned. Gramsci and many others have argued that why social revolution has been made extremely difficult in the West. When there is a society between the economy and state and when that intermediary large space is strong and extensive, mass resistance can be absorbed and their demands may be gradually watered down. Hazare phenomenon has raised this paradoxical character of the democratic institutions and structures.

( The writer teaches Political Economy at the University of Peradeniya. He can be reached at sumane_l@yahoo.com )