Force one, only one?

I’m ashamed. Deep down in my cynical writer’s heart, I didn’t believe he would actually do it. But he did. And I am ashamed because I’d heard of him but never took him seriously until he died.

I’m signed up on an environment e-group and had seen a press statement about Nigamanand — a Ganga-bhakt who had been on hunger strike for 68 days, who was arrested, then moved to Dehradun after poisoning fears at the Haridwar hospital.

What we do to our rivers can only be described as abuse (if this wasn’t a family newspaper, I’d use stronger language). I knew this. Yet, I thought that if a sadhu has been on fast for 68 days — if a sadhu was arrested in Haridwar! — newspapers would have written about it. My cynical side began wondering about the veracity of the press statement.

Next I heard Nigamanand was in the mainstream press. He was dead. And everyone seemed to be leaning forward as if to ask: “What? Swami Nigamanand? Who?”

The poisoning angle was first stressed, then refuted. In any case, we cannot refute his giving up his life to oppose excessive sand-mining and stone-crushing units around the Ganga. According to Matri Sadan (the group Nigamanand was associated with), he began fasting on Feb 19. Some media reports say it was a 73-day fast, some say more. But the campaign has lasted much longer. Matri Sadan’s website says the other sadhus have fasted several times over 12 years.

The battle was fought on both legal and moral ground. But when Nainital High Court granted the stone-crushing lobby a stay order, Nigamanand continued his fast. In his view, rampant mining of the Ganga was illicit, even if it wasn’t illegal. Only, nobody was paying him any attention. Celebrity circuses in Delhi were hogging newsprint while Nigamanand was safely tucked away in Uttarakhand. Even the state didn’t think to arrest him sooner. Perhaps, they knew that his fast wouldn’t ruffle too many feathers.

And clearly, no feathers got ruffled. He wasn’t a yoga-millionaire. He was only Nigamanand — a 36-year-old man who cared enough about the Ganga to die for her sake. Besides, he wasn’t trying media stunts. He didn’t grab attention by attacking the mining lobby in the name of religion. He didn’t talk about arming sadhus. He just said he would fast-unto-death. And he did.
Now that he’s gone, I’m forced to acknowledge him as something of a moral force. He was, after all, someone who lived by a set of ideals and died for their sake. That’s what a moral force is. One who isn’t cowed easily; one who may have supporters but is willing to die alone; one who chooses peace and sacrifice over violence and fear.

Then I began to wonder about the moral forces that have shaped my generation. I ran an online search for ‘moral+force+India’. Most results threw up one name — MK Gandhi. Moral force #1. Moral force of the century.

I must have looked at three hundred web pages before I started to despair. A few pages mentioned Anna Hazare, but the writers’ voices seemed hesitant, iffy. No other contemporary moral forces were mentioned, or not described that way at any rate.
So is Gandhi all we have? Surely not. There’s Irom Sarmila, for one. She’s fasted for over a decade. There must be others. Why don’t we write more often about them, acknowledge our debt to them, allow them to lead us? Sometimes I wonder if our greatest moral failing as a nation is not a refusal to recognise the few moral forces we do have.