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The writer is senior fellow, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi.
express@expressindia.com
Why I choose Team Anna
YOGENDRA YADAV : Tue Aug 07 2012,
In choice between two less than pure sides, I prefer protesters’ infirmities to rulers’ intransigence
Feel disappointed with your decision to join this movement which
has mediocrity and righteousness at its core...” This was an SMS from an
old friend whose opinion matters to me. The context was the “Anna
movement” and its decision to “embrace politics”. I was one of the
signatories to the statement that called upon the fasting leaders to
give up on their expectations from the political establishment and
instead work towards creating an alternative political force, not
necessarily a political party. Hence the message.
I could have ducked it, and pointed out that at the time of
writing this I have not “joined” Team Anna. Those of us who signed the
statement requesting Anna and his associates to call off the fast did so
precisely because we were outsiders. I spoke from the podium as a
friend and well-wisher, but not as a member. I could have also pointed
out that every time I spoke from the stage, at Ramlila Maidan in August
and December last year and at Jantar Mantar, I underlined a friendly
disagreement with the movement. Yet the fact remained that I did extend
moral support to the movement. This is what she questioned and I could
not duck behind a formality.
I could have simply overlooked the message, as one odd response
among many. Of the many responses that I have received in the last few
days, the dominant voice has been positive, if not enthusiastic. I dare
not speak of the aam aadmi, but the subset that I get to hear in my
everyday life — ordinary TV viewers, middle class persons with casual
interest in politics, lower middle class men who engaged me at Jantar
Mantar and on the streets and ordinary activists in the movement circles
who cared to call — had on balance supported this move. They had
questions about its success but not about its rationale.
At the same time, the more intellectual, discerning and
politically more astute responses have been more critical. Many of the
finer minds and committed spirits have cautioned me against extending
support to the movement. They may be in a minority. But this small voice
is often the shell that protects one’s conscience. This SMS lay in that
domain where brute majority must not prevail.
I could have, of course, disagreed with my friend. The Anna
movement may have been anything, but mediocre it is not. The group of
young activists involved in this movement has been amazingly innovative
in its approach and strategy. They dared to make established political
wisdom stand on its head. And the meticulous planning that went into the
movement is anything but mediocre. Or, I could have retorted by asking
how could she complain about the “righteousness” of a bunch of activists
on the street in the face of shameless wrongdoings by those who wield
unlimited and unaccountable power. How could we notice imagination
deficits of the protesters, when compared to the heaps of lies that the
government has dished out to protect its ministers and allies?
At least, the protesters have learnt a thing or two over the last
one year. They have tried to distance themselves from blatant
anti-politics and institution-bashing and from the ideological stream
represented by Ramdev. The political establishment, on the other hand,
is as coarse and smug, if not more, as it was last year.
That may have been a smart response but not fully honest. Faced
with a real-life choice between two less than pure sides, one cannot but
prefer the infirmities of the protesters to the insensitivity and
intransigence of the rulers. Yet that does not justify the failures of
Team Anna. Over the last 16 months, I have, more than once, felt uneasy
about the stridency and hyperbole deployed from the podium. I wished
Team Anna were more attentive to the constructive criticism and
alternative proposals offered by their erstwhile colleagues in the
NCPRI. I felt, and said so from the podium in Ramlila Maidan, that
politicians’ corruption must not be used to cover our own. And yes, I
could not disagree with her: monotonous righteousness that refused to
look within often made me cringe.
I wanted to tell her something else. Anna movement was not my
first real-life encounter with social and political movements. Over the
last three decades, I have worked closely with a number of non-party
political formations and non-mainstream parties. I have sat through a
number of painful discussions and negotiations about transiting from
“non-political” to “political”. And I know how lack of viability and
visibility has finished some of the best political alternatives of our
times before they could take off.
I wanted to tell her about my political guru, Kishen Pattnayak.
For a full-time politician and former member of Lok Sabha, he was
unbelievably self-effacing; you felt embarrassed talking about him in
his presence. He did not draw any attention to himself; the media paid
virtually no attention to him. He was as close to a fusion of morality
and politics as I have seen in my life. He did not compromise on his
principles, but he kept losing colleagues and followers to mainstream
parties. He was the opposite of mediocrity: I think of him as one of the
original minds of our time. His own followers did not quite understand
him and the academia did not glance at someone who did not write in
English. He was not frustrated or dejected. But the kind of alternative
politics he spent his life building never ever took off.
I know what I do not wish to say to her. I am not saying that
politics is not for the intelligent or the thin-skinned. I am not saying
that palitiks mein sab chalta hai. I guess I wish to draw her attention
to a deeper paradox of modern politics: politics opens at once the
possibility of ethics in public life and also becomes the source of its
routine negation.
In our times, the pursuit of goodness draws you to
politics, at the same time immersion in politics has a built-in drag
away from goodness. For those who keep their eyes, ears and soul open,
political choices are always very delicate, very complex, very painful.
I could not have said all this in an SMS. So I wrote this article.
The writer is senior fellow, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi.
express@expressindia.com
