Revisiting Anna

On April 10 after observing the Anna Hazare show at Jantar Mantar for three days I had written a piece, "The Jagran At Jantar Mantar". The overt Hindu symbolism of the movement, its middle class nature and manufactured television histrionics, had been analysed in that piece.

Since then the summer has gone and we are at the end of the monsoon season.

The movement has clearly evolved into something far bigger than anything any of us had anticipated. This week it became the biggest mass upsurge I have seen since the Ram janmaboomi movement. The Ram movement did not take place in the age of round the clock TV coverage and many of us saw the Babri mosque fall on BBC.

Now the power of the Anna crowd is magnified by the power of television. According to an MP who was part of JP's movement, this is bigger. However such comparisions may be unfair as the JP movement was sustained for two years in an altogether different age.

Yet the last few days at Ramlila maidan (where in the past I have attended numerous VHP and BJP rallies) have been an education. To see this as a middle class explosion would be a mistake as the working class is now dominating the show. In the humid monsoon heat, the Anna saga has become a lighting rod for discontent, an avenue to vent frustration, perhaps also celebrate and be part of a tamasha. The lumpen class is also there, enjoying the carnival atmosphere, trying to press their bodies against women who venture into the crushing mass of humanity at night as I did on Sunday when the crowds reached record numbers.

Unlike the committed but smaller crowds in sustained people's struggles many here do not know what they want but they do have a great frutration with the system. Currently this movement has an energy that cannot be dismissed with labels like middle class, upper caste, right wing, or the most commonly used, "RSS plot".

There is a point at which the middle class, upper caste and RSS do overlap and converge but that would now be just be one angle to the story. Vested interests and forces do try to take over or claim anything big as their own. The RSS and VHP have openly declared support for Anna Hazare and routinely send SMSs to journalists about their mobilisation. I have no doubt that they would love to take credit for this movement as all their other efforts in recent years have been a spectacular failure.

Suspicion of the "RSS hand" must not howver cloud our ability to see something new and unknown happening before our eyes. The organisers of the movement have consiously tried to tone down the symbolism that was visible at the Jantar mantar round of protest. The portrait of Bharat Mata under which Anna Hazare rests is now replaced by Mahatma Gandhi. And in every speech that I have heard Arvind Kejriwal make of late (the most effective public speaker of Team Anna) he has spoken of all communities joining in. He has evoked the token secularism of Muslims breaking their fast and Hindus celebrating Janmashthami together. A friend who attended on an afternoon sat through an hour of speeches made by a maulana and some ordinary Muslims.

These are strands in an evolving situation. Minorities too feel angry and frutrated and some do want to join what they see as a crusade against a corrupt system. Yet many are hesitant because they are unsure of what is happening and have been told that the movement could eventually be targetted against them. That is the sort of mentality that the Imam Bukhari of Delhi's Jama Masjid feeds into. Yet all the Muslims I have met and spoken to have been also been put off by the condemnation of this movement on communal lines. Members of the community do not always like to view everything through the prism of their religious identity. Like others, many Muslims too have landed up at Ramlila maidan as curious onlookers.

Many liberals who lean towards the left and are not embedded in the Congress patronage system, want to keep an open mind. Yet they wonder if the BJP is in the fortunate position of being the eventual political beneficiary of such a movement? Indian politics is too fragmented and scattered today for any definitive answers. Currently the crisis in the Congress has been accentuated and by default that can be seen as good news for the BJP. But in the long term this force that has been unleashed can present both an opportunity and a challenge to the BJP. This movement is not burdened by the sectarian agenda of the BJP/RSS yet it often uses an idiom and vocabulary that had worked for forces of the right in the past. The situation itherefore is too open ended for us to know what comes next.

Yesterday afternoon at Ramlila maidan there was a young man wearing a huge contraption on his head designed like a wedding cake. On the first level it was written "Inquilab Zindabad", on the second tier it was "Vande Mataram", on the third tier "I am Anna". I believe we should hesitate before pinning any ideological label or neat isms (fascism, casteism, communalism) on what is unfolding before our eyes.