Parallax View: What makes us treat Hazare differently from Ramdev?

Anybody who has observed the government’s mishandling of the latest round of the Anna Hazare agitation will

wonder how a bunch of otherwise bright and sensible people – and let’s not kid ourselves; many senior ministers are very intelligent – could have got it so wrong.

 

   Everyone will have his or her own theory but here’s mine: they were misled by the success of their strategy with regard to Baba Ramdev’s agitation.

 

   When Baba Ramdev first announced that he was going to go on an indefinite fast in Delhi, the cabinet’s response was one of sheer panic. Emissaries were dispatched to reason with the Baba and at one stage, five senior ministers turned up at Delhi airport to greet the private plane (owned by Sahara) on which Ramdev arrived in Delhi.

 

   A full set of negotiations took place at the airport and then there were more talks at Claridges hotel. The government says that it believed that these talks had succeeded but when Ramdev went ahead with his agitation anyway going back – at least according to the government’s version – on the assurances he had given ministers, the cabinet changed its strategy.

 

   Put simply: it decided to get heavy. The police went into Ramlila Maidan and broke up the gathering. There were lathis, stampedes and instances of random violence. Several people were hurt and Ramdev was removed from Delhi.

 

   At first it seemed as though the government had overplayed its hand as its actions were condemned and there was an outpouring of public sympathy for those injured in the police action. The BJP also tried to associate itself with the Baba’s cause with Sushma Swaraj going off to meet him at the ashram.

 

   But, within a few days, the public sympathy faded and the criticism of the government dried up. People took the line that perhaps Ramdev had been treated badly or perhaps he hadn’t but either way, it was time to move on.

 

   Today, the Baba is a relatively lonely figure whose business affairs are being investigated and whose associates face possible jail terms. His credibility as an anti-corruption crusader has never recovered.

 

   My guess is that the government based its strategy on the success of its handling of Ramdev. In the Cabinet’s view, the soft line did not work. When ministers respectfully petitioned Ramdev, the government got nowhere. But when it sent in the police it ended the agitation once and for all even if it faced an initial wave of public criticism.

 

   When it came to this stage of the Anna Hazare agitation, the government decided to apply the lessons (or what it regarded as the lessons) of the Ramdev agitation. Just as police action had killed off that movement, ministers believed that a show of force would cripple the Hazare movement even before it had a chance to establish itself.

 

   That’s why Section 144 was promulgated, that is why the matter was ostentatiously handed over to the Delhi police, that is why Hazare and his associates were arrested even before they could violate the provisions of Section 144 and that is why, even when this approach blew up in the government’s face, the cabinet waited for a few days before initiating the Pranab Mukherjee-led talks on Wednesday. At some level, ministers were still hoping for a repeat of the Ramdev experience. They believed that once public horror at the sight of Hazare in Tihar jail had died down, the movement would lose its momentum.

 

   In fact, no such thing happened. And now, even those who have serious reservations about the provisions of the Jana Lokpal Bill or the methods adopted by those who lead Hazare’s movement have no choice but to condemn the Manmohan Singh government.

 

   It doesn’t matter whether Hazare’s cause is just or not. He still has a perfect right to protest. And no democratic government can take that away from him.

 

   But there’s a more interesting question here. Ultimately the government’s get-tough-with-Anna strategy failed because it is clear that we do not regard Anna Hazare and his movement in the same way that we regarded Baba Ramdev and his agitation.

 

   Why should that be? What makes us treat Hazare differently from Ramdev? Why do we bristle when Hazare is treated badly even though we were accepting of the hard line taken against Ramdev?

 

   The answer is complex. But here are some theories.

 

* A movement against corruption only works when it is led by somebody who has no interest in wealth. Even Anna Hazare’s worst critics will concede that he is entirely un-materialistic. The allegation of ‘corruption’ levelled against him by Justice PB Sawant is that a public trust, controlled by Anna’s organization, paid for a felicitation function and that a charitable trust should not be spending its money on felicitating Anna.

 

"This time around Hazare’s people have made a deliberate attempt to keep the movement secular. The visual backdrop is a photo of Gandhiji, the sloganeering is less Hindu-influenced and though the Congress may claim that the crowd contains Sanghis, this is hardly indicated by the behaviour of the crowd."

   Possibly. But it hardly suggests genuine corruption – even if Sawant’s allegation were to be upheld which, as far as I know, it has not been.

 

   On the other hand, Ramdev runs many successful businesses worth hundreds of crores. It is possible that these businesses have committed irregularities as the government claims. But even if they have not, Ramdev still does not come across as the other worldly, almost-Gandhian figure that Anna Hazare appears to be.

 

   In our minds, that makes Ramdev’s motives suspect while Hazare’s seem to be purer.

 

* There is – let’s be honest – a vaguely Hindu under-current to the Hazare movement. This was more apparent in the Jantar Mantar phase with the Hindu imagery, the presence of Ramdev on the dais and the large number of volunteers from Sangh Parivar-linked organization.

 

   This time around Hazare’s people have made a deliberate attempt to keep the movement secular. The visual backdrop is a photo of Gandhiji, the sloganeering is less Hindu-influenced and though the Congress may claim that the crowd contains Sanghis, this is hardly indicated by the behaviour of the crowd.

 

   On the other hand, the Hazare agitation has been the cue for a variety of new age Hindu leaders (from Sri Sri Ravi Shankar to Jaggi Vasudev) to make the rounds of TV channels lecturing us on the way forward. Admittedly, these are religious/spiritual figures who claim to be above religion but there are precious few Muslim or Christian influences apparent in the movement.

 

   Most of us are secular. We may be a little perturbed when Dalits call this an upper-caste movement, masterminded by a couple of banias or when Muslim leaders criticize its Hindu bias but, by and large, we accept that Hazare’s motives are untainted by caste or religion.

 

   Contrast this with Ramdev’s agitation which was not only openly Hindu in character but also accorded pride of place to such rabid communalists are Sadhvi Rithambara.

 

   In our hearts, we want any anti-corruption movement to be secular. Hazare passes that test. Ramdev failed it.

 

* Whatever you may think of Anna Hazare’s grasp of the Constitution or of world affairs, there is no doubt that the two masterminds of the movement – Prashant Bhushan and Arvind Kejriwal – are extremely smart, well-read, well-informed people who have come up with a concrete piece of legislation.

 

   The Ramdev manifesto, on the other hand, was plain idiotic – change the medium of instruction in technical education to Hindi – and frequently obscurantist. Even those of us who believed in Ramdev’s motives could not possibly support his ideas.

 

* And finally, there is – dare one say it – a class element. Anna Hazare may be a simple villager but the leaders of his movement are determinedly upper middle class. When they appear on TV and present their ideas, they seem to be People Like Us moved to anger by governmental corruption.

 

   Ramdev’s movement was the antithesis of upper middle class values. Few of his aides even spoke English and most come across as unsophisticated compared to the Kapil Sibals and P Chidambarams whom the government fielded to argue its cause.

 

   It is right to say that class should not matter. But it is wrong to say that it does not.

 

   Of course, class matters. And it is because Anna’s chief associates speak the same language as us that the internet classes and the English media-consuming classes take them more seriously than we did Baba Ramdev’s spokesmen.