The death of Gandhism

Sanjay Jha examines the incongruities of the obsession wth Anna Hazare’s methods

AT 5.15 PM on January 30, 1948, Mahatma Gandhi was shot three times by Nathuram Godse at pointblank range. In the years that have followed his tragic assassination, the Father of the Nation as he is appropriately called, has influenced the world at an unprecedented magnitude making Gandhism a philosophy of life. Nonviolence, peaceful protest, silent resolution, indomitable resolve to stand for truth in any circumstance, all practiced with noticeable humility, capture the Mahatma’s credo. Even Hollywood was inspired to make a biopic that was to sweep the Oscar awards and make Ben Kingsley an iconic global face of peace. Back home, Munnabhai became the most charming rogue character, a benign, benevolent, buffoon with a heart of gold. Gandhigiri became the buzzword in town. Over the past few months in general, and in the past two weeks in particular, the Mahatma’s name and legacy has circulated with extravagant abandon, revealing a flawed comprehension of history and more worryingly, a distorted assessment of its future.

One of the most memorable reminiscences of Gandhi is at the time of the Kolkata communal riots of 1947, which had reached disturbing levels of incendiary madness. Raging flames towered into the twilight sky, a reminder of the horrific debris of human flesh incinerated below. Gandhi went on a fast, his most formidable weapon of remonstrance. His body was fragile and vulnerable to exacting pressures . But within days the bloody carnage had come to a dramatic halt, the conflagration had ceased. The leaders of different communities assured Gandhi they would not just halt the brutal slaughter , but would do their best to ensure it does not recur. Gandhi’s unflagging moral determination had become a binder. Once again.

When I saw two young children from the Dalit and Muslim communities offering coconut water and honey to Anna Hazare to break his fast at Ramlila ground, I cringed. To borrow from Salman Rushdie, it was the chutnification of the carnival. An overwhelming sense of repugnance and indignation engulfed me. It was a craftily manufactured television moment , meant to manipulate India’s vulnerable sensibilities. It was insufferably crass, a synthetic attempt to mollify two communities that have felt frightened of the stridency from Ramlila. India was being reduced to the ultimate farce, the symbolic gestures straight out of a Bollywood script from the 1980s; when a patriotic song played in the background and Rajesh Khanna (in Apna Desh) would help a blind Muslim man cross the road, a poor beggar and her child would get coconut juice, he would stop a Sikh and a Christian from fighting next to their religious abodes even as he stopped a safari-suited businessman from pawing lasciviously at a young girl. These were stock-in-trade winners. Poverty, communal harmony, social conduct and petty crime were addressed in a three-minute Kishore Kumar number. The events at Ramlila over 12 days of relentless media coverage were akin to an extended shoot on raw stock from the 1980s.

The orchestrated imagery; a tiny man pitted against the formidable state, juxtaposed against a giant-sized Gandhi image in the backdrop was assiduously created. Of course, the anti-corruption bandwagon will attract serpentine queues. It is a legitimate, justified cause but the expectation that the Jan Lokpal Bill ought to pass by August 30 was preposterous. The country is committed to creating a viable enduring anti-corruption institutional framework. Of course, the devil is in the details, ergo, it requires careful scrutiny, not cursory approbation. And therefore time. The ramifications of a flawed Lokpal Bill can seriously obstruct our democratic institutions. Thus, there was something immoral about the whole charade; its planned media strategy manifested its intrinsic character that manipulated the urban middle-class audience, which adores interminable conflicts like in the soap operas. What seemed initially like a genuine attempt to hasten watershed legislation, was now reduced to petty one-upmanship accentuated by questionable political overtones. Interestingly, Team Anna maintained an eloquent silence on the perfidious ways of big business and private funding of NGOs.

MICROPHONES CHANGED hands with monotonous regularity, and the soundbytes were meticulously worded . There was a rather arrogant assumption behind the entire jamboree; the public of India would gleefully consume the drama with unalloyed exhilaration given the emotive context. India should be worried about this presumptuousness. Rest assured, Team Anna would find it difficult to survive even relative anonymity any longer, consumed by the vicissitudes of narcissism. Expect more roadshows.

There are many who say Hazare was mischievously exploited behind what quickly transformed into a political ploy, with the Sangh Parivar playing backstreet boys. But I think we are being naïve here. Hazare did eulogise Narendra Modi, despite the much-delayed Lokayukta and Genocide 2002. To believe that Hazare was an innocent bystander to the nefarious goings-on around him is to devalue his political cunning. His repeated humiliation of the government and the prime minister was in poor taste, but we treated it as the petulant ranting of a crabby man on an empty stomach. Should we? Wasn’t the fast a calculated act of egotistical show of strength? The prerecorded messages, the well-timed public speeches and the gloating YouTube Tihar jail video smacked of over-desperation. Hazare knew what he was doing. Or he was being ingeniously influenced by his close comrades. Or both.

There are many who will argue that it is perfectly legitimate to exploit the whole multimedia-networked world (television, print, internet, social media, radio, website, events) to popularise your cause, that maybe even Gandhi would have done that. But Gandhi never let the cause be overtaken; the people of India were his medium, message and his messengers. His central doctrine dictated events, but in the case of Team Anna, including Hazare himself, the message was subsidiary, the perfect timing of events took precedence. The self-proclaimed second independence struggle and the Gandhi topi, now rebranded as I Am Anna, were marketing tactics. Hazare’s message blurred by the end, and the calibrated anti-establishment hostility seemed tiresome. But because it all came from this so-called Gandhian, instead of getting roundly rebuked for petty utterances, Hazare received tumultuous applause. Perhaps it helped that the Mahatma is barely known by today’s demographic dividend. Thus, there was no moral consternation when some branded Hazare as the modern Mahatma. I thought India would strongly repudiate that. Gandhi died 22 minutes after he was shot at 5.37 pm, 63 years ago. So did Gandhism.

Sanjay Jha is co-founder of hamaracongress.com.
sanjay_jha@dalecarnegie.com