Abhay Vaidya: Team Manmohan, as confused as the British Raj

The satyagraha as a non-violent form of public protest emerged as a powerful weapon of civil disobedience after it was used again and again by Mahatma Gandhi during our freedom struggle.

The idea was first mooted by the American philosopher Henry David Thoreau and it was Gandhi who effectively demonstrated the enormous impact of various forms of non-violent civil disobedience.

A peaceful gathering by disobeying prohibitory orders and courting arrest was one form. Marching to the seashore to symbolically make your own salt was another.

The most effective form of satyagraha was used occasionally, somewhat rarely, as a last resort — the indefinite hunger strike. One man’s fast would rivet the subcontinent and often deliver quick results, be it quelling communal riots or scoring a compromise with formidable opponents like the British.

Gandhi’s extraordinary capacity to rouse masses did not just bring freedom to India but also brought justice to blacks in the US through Martin Luther King Jr, an avowed follower of the Gandhian doctrine of civil disobedience. In South Africa, it was Nelson Mandela.

When non-violent public protests turn into mass movements, growing bigger by the day, it’s not easy to stop them. The nationwide protests against the Emergency that brought down Indira Gandhi is an instance, with an almost parallel example that originated in Egypt’s Tahrir Square and finally dethroned president Hosni Mubarak.

In India, the issue of the day is corruption. Rather ironically, it is the “clean and incorruptible” prime minister Manmohan Singh’s team that has lost face in the way it has handled the Lokpal Bill issue.

Barely four months ago, Team Manmohan agreed to include civil society members in the drafting of the Lokpal Bill in a frustrated attempt to bring Anna Hazare’s first round of satyagraha to a quick close. 

From then on, every attempt was made to discredit the civil society members of the panel — from questioning the inclusion of the father-son legal team of Shanti and Prashant Bhushan and challenging their integrity right down to calling Anna a corrupt man.

Finally, Team Manmohan submitted a diluted version of the bill to parliament and in the intervening period, Baba Ramdev and his supporters were caned out of Delhi. Team Anna was warned that they would suffer a same fate.

This arrogance of the Congress-led UPA government was on display at every turn and as a final roll-out of the plot, the government decided to thwart Anna’s plans for a second satyagraha in Delhi from August 16. Twenty-two pre-conditions were imposed and finally Anna was arrested from his Delhi residence even before he could step out to proceed towards JP Park.

Today’s generation could as well imagine Team Manmohan as part of the British Raj at its wit’s end in trying to deal with Mahatma Gandhi.

If the British police had their Rottweilers, Team Manmohan has its equivalents in Congress spokesman Manish Tewari and senior leader Digvijay Singh who lost no opportunity to try and tear Anna to pieces. Calling Hazare a corrupt man, dismissing his locus standi as he was not elected by the people (unlike our great netas) and telling him how to — and how not to — conduct his protest, were all part of the strategy to scuttle the public crusade against corruption.

It almost seemed that Team Manmohan had won this second round and demonstrated how to effectively puncture a satyagraha. The unfolding events suggest that they erred rather grievously.