---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Faizi S <[email protected]> Date: Wed, Apr 13, 2011 at 9:07 PM Subject: [Arkitect India] The Indian rainbow shall flourish (Don’t worry about Anna Hazare) To: [email protected]
* * *The Indian rainbow shall flourish (Don’t worry about Anna Hazare)* An op-ed article I wrote for The Statesman (23 March) arguing for the need for every country to have a perpetual Tahrir Square to sustain and renew democracy ended by asking where shall India’s Tahrir Square be. The answer came too soon, I thought. I was away in Utharkhand on work with meetings and visits to forests areas; team mates who switch on the hotel tv as well as phone calls from home mentioned of something like a Tahrir square taking shape at Jantar Mantar. I was excited, but Shri Avdhash Kaushal – who has won many an environmental battle- when I met him at his home, poured some cold water over my excitement. I then sifted through news reports on the net and was pretty disappointed that all that Anna wanted was to create another law against corruption. When I entered the office of a central govt office in Dehradun that morning I saw a notice prominently displayed there saying that asking or giving bribe is a crime. I also know that legally speaking a govt servant in Kerala buying even a gold ring, without informing his office, is an offense. Is the problem the lack of one more laws or the system that has rotten. Anna’ s attempt amounted to saving the system that is rotten to the core by one more cosmetic application. Anna’s was an insult to my expectations. I was expecting a movement deeply rooted in peace but uncompromisingly committed to challenge the system that has increased the number of families living on rs 20 and less per day to a shocking 80% of the population, as an official report has conceded. And that’s happening in a country with rapidly increasing numbers of billionaires. The common wealth of the nation ends up in a few hands, and an embarrassed prime minister asks (twice in fact) the hedonists not to display the wealth that they have amassed. I thought Anna was talking about the painful erosion of national sovereignty, that was re-confirmed by the Wikileaks. Even a right wing magazine (The Week) has also come out with details of how a foreign power controls our affairs. I thought it was about redeeming the freedom that our ancestors had brought us which was being lost since the time of Narasimha Rao. Nehru, Indira and Rajiv protected us against the evil empire while the twin sister became its colony. Now we compete with the twin sister to be a vassal State of the evil empire. Don’t we deserve Independence too, but Anna was apparently not worried about this. And he wouldn’t be perhaps. Because he holds the Ramon Magsaysay award, I realized. And two of his partners too. A sheer coincidence? At no time our media reporting on this ‘coveted’ award did mention that it is a project of the Rockfeller Foundation. And it was a CSR activity for them, incidental to the International Rice Research Institute in the beautiful little town of Laguna near Manila. IRRI was the one that stole our entire collection of rice germplasm assiduously built by a scientist called RIcharia, using a former agriculture secretary (an account of this story was published in the Illustrated Weekly of India available at http://earth.org.in/pipermail/rtn_earth.org.in/2009-September/000063.html). I thought it was about the fast losing environmental security of the country. I see in my travels the nation’s greatest treasure- the forests- being lost to commercial interests, and the Adivasis, its historical custodians, uprooted and displaced, using conservation as an excuse. And do we know where have our fabulous water resources disappeared into. I did ask this as member of a govt committee and found that the Cola company has depleted and polluted the ground water of Plachimada. And Plachimadas galore across the country. I thought Anna was fighting a regime that presides over the misappropriation of our natural resources. I thought it was a battle using the ammunition of peace for rescuing the country, but it wasnt. The colonial regime created a bureaucracy to manage the people as enemy. And they created a system of illegitimate laws (eg the Land Acquisition Act 1894 , the Indian Forest ct 1927), I thought Anna would be asking for the dissolution of the colonial bureaucracy and to create an administrative system that would set the objective as serving the people; I thought he would be campaigning to discard the anti-people colonial laws. But he wasn’t. He wasn’t even asking to prosecute and punish the numerous criminals who robbed the nation- corporates, politicians, bureaucrats, journalists… under the current laws. If the laws are strong enough to convict Abdul Karim Telgi they must be strong enough to convict other culprits also. Anna was too forward looking. Nevertheless, I went to Jantar Mantar as soon as I came to Delhi on the 9th to offer my support and to view the spectacle of mass movement that the media was speaking about. A powerful law against corruption by itself is a great national asset, and I am prepared to see incremental change. What I saw there on the stage was really amusing. Hare Krishna guys were dancing on the stage, waving the national flag and chanting praise of Krishna. Anna had left following the issuance of the govt order constituting the drafting committee. I like the Hare Krishna cult, never mind the allegation that they are CIA propped. The dothi clad caucassians offer a good sight, and i like their heavy music. I had danced with them in the Hare Krishna temple in Nairobi in 1989, I had chanted with them in Trivandrum when I was just out of school. In spite of my fancy for them, I was amused, rather puzzled to see them on the stage of what was supposed to be a mass movement built on secular and democratic plank. And on the back of the stage was the image of a thickly ornamented young looking goddess imposed on a map of India. I just wondered if this didn’t represent a disfiguration of the national insignia. This was an image familiar in the domain of the Hindutwa, how come this found its place in a space supposedly dedicated to the name of the Mahatma, I wondered. There was a patient gentleman, a look-alike of Manmohan Singh, posing for a number of people to photograph with. There were pictures of Swami Ramdev and Sri Sri Ravisankar. And this was a forum against corruption, I was supposed to believe. Both of them are alleged to have endless number of corrupt folks among their disciples, in commensal relationship. Humble beginners, their budgets now surpass some major companies, dispensing spiritualism to the parched minds. They are the frontrunners in strengthening a Constitutionally secular, democratic and socialist republic! My long time interest in yoga had taken me to two courses of the art of living, though I didn’t learn anything new there I had this joke to remember. One of the participants quite inquisitively asked the disciple who was leading the session, ‘why does he carry double sri?’, and quick came the answer, ‘ if you go to Varanasi you find people writing sri a thousand time, so why cant he have it twice’. (Recently I came across Mayavati posters in UP where her name was preceded by SuSri, no one around me then was able to give a helpful explanation of SuSri). India has religions from the original Budhism to the most modern Bahaism, I just hope the Rastafarians too will be here soon. And then there are people like me understand god as the imagination of human minds. It is an unpardonable act of violence to project India as belonging to any particular type of religious persuasion. This also amounted to an insult to the memory of the great atheist and martyr, Bhagat Singh whose image was also placed on the corner of the back of the stage. It violates the spirit of the singular religious text of India- the Indian Constitution- that makes it a duty of the citizens to cultivate a culture of scientific temper. Obscurantist and sectarian views do not help build an India of its people. The babus have worked this one time and issued the official notification of the decision to constitute a joint drafting committee. And this was displayed there. I was amused to see a father and son, staying at the same address figured in the committee. Eminent lawyers, but do we have shortage of eminent layers to be able to recruit two from the same household. And now we are 1.21 billion, the new census report says. I wasn’t too sure of what was going on until I had the chance to read some news reports from ‘ground zero’ the previous days. RSS was banned by Sardar Patel within a week of the dastardly assassination of the Mahatma. But they were warmly welcomed on the stage by this ‘Gandhian’. And he tendered an apology to Uma Bharati, who was turned away by the people gathered around him a day before. And then at the press conference he was in praise of Modi. I wonder if Anna has been to rural Gujarat, I have been several times, it is based on these journeys I wrote this article in 2009- Gujarat: An ecological nightmare (http://www.countercurrents.org/faizi020509.htm ) which was heavily used by civil society groups. And as I write these lines news comes in that Anna has supported the campaigns against north Indians (and probably south Indians also) in Maharashtra, at a meeting at the Banaras Hindu Uny. So much for a Tahrir Square. But no one can deny us the right to dream, not even Anna. Hope masses will peacefully mobilise sooner than later to rescue India from the multi-pronged rot and give meaning to national sovereignty, bring about economic democracy, uproot poverty, eliminate corruption, secure its natural capital and bring forth the whole Indian rainbow to flourish. And we must continue the vigil perpetually to protect the Indian rainbow. 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