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Hazare’s anti-corruption movement has received considerable support
across the country. The mainstream media is awash with stories about
Anna and his fast. It is as if there is nothing else happening in
India that is worth reporting on. But even as the media is busy
projecting Anna and his movement, a vast section of India’s population
– the country’s Dalits, Adivasis and religious minorities, who are at
the bottom of India’s social pyramid and who suffer the most at the
hands of the corrupt system that Anna and his supporters are
supposedly denouncing – have maintained a studied distance from this
movement. Not a single well-known and respected Dalit or Adivasi
intellectual, social activist or public leader has come out in support
of the movement. Nor too have ordinary Dalits and Adivasis. Likewise,
workers and peasants are barely involved in the movement. Yet despite
this, the movement and the men leading it claim to represent the
entire country.
India Against Corruption, the outfit behind Anna’s
movement, claims that it is the voice of the 120 crore people of
India. But when the tens of crores of Dalits, Adivasis and religious
minorities have evinced little interest in the movement, how can such
erroneous claims be made on their behalf or on behalf of this
movement? One of the reasons why Dalits, Adivasis and religious
minorities feel ignored by the movement is precisely this sort of
behaviour on the part of the men behind this movement, self-proclaimed
people’s leaders who are projecting themselves as messiahs of the
masses.
To understand why the oppressed castes have shown
little or no interest in what is being projected as independent
India’s largest mass movement, the movement needs to be analysed from
a caste perspective. It is striking to note that when Hazare went on
fast at Jantar Mantar, New Delhi, the banners that his supporters put
up depicted a whole range of icons, from Bharat Mata to Gandhi,
Shivaji and Lakshmi Bai. But Babasaheb Ambedkar and Mahatma Jyotiba
Phule, the true liberators of the oppressed castes, were conspicuous
by their absence. At the venue of the fast slogans like “Scrap
Reservations, End Corruption” rent the air. Dalits who visited the
venue came back thoroughly disheartened on being confronted with the
fact that the movement was distinctly opposed to reservations for the
oppressed castes.
But that was not all. When the joint drafting
committee for the Lokpal was formed and five members from civil
society were nominated for this purpose, not a single one was from
among the Dalits, Adivasis or religious minorities. Moreover, not one
of them was a woman. When Dalit leaders from across the country raised
their voice against this, Arvind Kejriwal, the man who heads India
Against Corruption, replied that one needs specialists in order to
devise laws. Is it the case, Dalits demand to know, that more than 60
years ago, a Dalit, in the form of Babasaheb Ambedkar, was available
to take up the task of presiding over the Drafting Committee of the
Indian Constitution but that today not a single Dalit can be found who
is thought capable enough to sit on a panel to draft a single law?
True to form, here too questions are raised about the supposed merit
or capabilities of Dalits.
When Dalits protested against this insinuation,
Kejriwal simply replied that the government could appoint a Dalit. In
other words, reservations may be followed in the rapidly shrinking
government sector but certainly not in the burgeoning private sector,
nor in the so-called civil society that falsely claims to represent
the whole of Indian society. Is it at all surprising then that Dalits
and other oppressed castes consider this anti-corruption movement to
be a cover for an anti-reservation movement and hence have distanced
themselves from it? Can Hazare’s team, which presides over a movement
that is funded by corporate houses, tell us what the movement’s stand
is on reservations for the oppressed castes in the private sector?
What is the condition of Dalits in Hazare’s own so-called model
village of Ralegan Siddhi? Is Hazare a supporter of the varna
(caste) system in the name of gram swaraj (village self-rule)?
What message is being sent out to the millions of Dalits and other
oppressed communities through slogans such as “Anna is India”, “Those
who are not with Hazare are thieves” and “Reservations are the root of
Corruption”?
Dalit, Adivasi and religious minorities are curious to
know why Hazare and his followers did not care to go on a fast when
heinous atrocities were committed against their people. Why not when
Dalits were brutally massacred in Hazare’s own state of Maharashtra,
in the remote village of Kherlanji, which set off mass protests by
Dalits across Maharashtra and beyond? Why not when, under the guise of
the Salwa Judum, the government was seeking to crush Adivasis
protesting against oppression by branding them as Naxalites? Might
this indicate that Hazare and his team have no interest at all in the
injustice and oppression that millions of Dalits, Adivasis and
religious minorities have to suffer on a daily basis? By praising
Narendra Modi, who permitted the brutal murder of several thousand
innocent Muslims, Hazare has shown that communalism and fascism too
are not issues that he is interested in struggling against. Hazare did
not sit on a fast to protest against the suicides of tens of thousands
of impoverished peasants in his own Maharashtra. Given all this, is it
surprising that Dalits, Adivasis and religious minorities are by and
large not interested in joining his movement?
The oppressed castes are wary for another reason. The
Lokpal that Hazare’s team is demanding would be so powerful that it
would have the power to hear complaints, to investigate allegations,
to arrest, to tap phones, to snoop into emails and text messages and
even to impose punishments. This enormously powerful body would be
superior to the country’s legislature, executive and judiciary. The
Constitution speaks of the separation of powers of these three wings
of governance but the Lokpal that Hazare’s team is demanding would
subvert this structure by imposing itself, in an unconstitutional
manner, over and above the three wings. While everyone from a
village-level patwari to the prime minister would be answerable to the
Lokpal, the Lokpal itself would be answerable to no one at all. This
clearly indicates that under the guise of Anna’s ‘anti-corruption
movement’, an uncontrollable mob is seeking to set aside the
Constitution of this country and constitutional provisions and do away
with democracy.
Babasaheb Ambedkar was chairman of the Drafting
Committee of the Indian Constitution and so Dalits have an emotional
attachment to the Constitution. If a movement sets itself above the
Constitution and challenges democracy, a pillar of the Constitution,
Dalits will refuse to support it. That is why Dalits and other
oppressed groups remain indifferent to Hazare’s movement. And because
of this, the movement, despite claiming to speak for the whole of
India, does nothing of the sort. Rather, it may be considered the
voice of just a section of the English-speaking middle-class
savarna (upper-caste) Hindu minority.
