India is on a ‘fast’ track to turn into a detox haven

Moses went without food and water for 40 days and nights to receive the Ten Commandments. Times have changed. In brave new India, such old-fashioned abstinence no longer reigns supreme. Now the country offers an a la carte menu of fasts to suit different constitutions, temperaments, causes and locales. As India moves firmly on the ‘fast’ track, spurred by a series of mega scandals, and anti-corruption activists of all hues take to hunger strikes to make their point, it is time to get real. In this crowded scenario, every fast has to have a unique selling proposition that takes on board the basic question: hungry ‘kyon’?

Needless to say, as in everything else in the marketplace, the timing and the positioning are critical. Take the latest announcement by Uma Bharti, the 52-year-old loquacious sanyasin who has returned to the Bharatiya Janata Party after a long hiatus. In a week when our famously silent prime minister Manmohan Singh chatted with five newspaper editors over roasted almonds, biscuits, and tea on the burning issues of the day, and his media adviser was robbed of his car (retrieved within a day), laptop and Blackberry, only someone of Bharti’s mettle would announce that she is forsaking cereals and would “survive on fruit’ to save the river Ganga.

Bharti, who is tipped to be the face of the BJP in the 2012 Uttar Pradesh assembly elections, started her Save the Ganga campaign at Garhmukteshwar in UP’s Ghaziabad district. She plans to be on a fruits-only diet till the Centre constitutes a board to review all Ganga-cleaning projects. She alleges irregularities in the implementation of projects to clean the river and has also demanded action from the Mayawati government.

Cynics among the weekend magazine supplement-reading population may breezily note that all this sounds like a detox diet and the sort of rejuvenating vacation idea that is routinely recommended as summer makes its way. That would be unkind. Make no mistake. Bharti may or may not be gorging on the famous Dussehri and Langra mangoes that grow along the Ganga with the express aim of restoring the sacred river to its fabled glory, but she is no neophyte when it comes to fasts: she has been on hunger strikes for varied causes - for a review of hydropower projects on the Ganga, against retrenchment of daily wage employees of the Madhya Pradesh government, to save a mythological bridge linking India and Sri Lanka, and in support of Gujjar agitators demanding Scheduled Tribe status for their community. And that is not all.

In the coming days, Bharti will be travelling along the Ganga as it meanders through UP, Bihar, and West Bengal, addressing meetings, seminars, and so on to create awareness about the pollution, the threat it poses to the river and the steps needed to save it. In the process, if she recharges her batteries, is rejuvenated, and sheds a few kilos, why should anyone complain? After all, she is only following on the footsteps of stalwarts in the Indian subcontinent who have made the fast an important tool of political protest. Among the most famed practitioners of this form of protest was, of course, Mohandas K Gandhi. But others too have been making news of late. Last week in Kolkata, finance minister Pranab Mukherjee slammed Anna Hazare, Baba Ramdev and their followers as a “handful of self-appointed messiahs” who were trying to ignite public sentiments through hunger strikes.

It is tough to say if fasting would fade out any time soon. But here is a well-meaning suggestion to the government, which may just take the fizz out of fasting as a tool of protest. As they say, if you can’t beat them, join them. Fasts have the collateral benefits of rejuvenating and renewing the body, with weight loss thrown in. There are many in the government who may benefit from occasional juice-only or fruits-only diet. Why not prod them in that direction? We would not only have created a leaner, more energetic government, we would also have established ourselves as the detox superpower without a peer. Better still — send the ministers and the civil society messiahs away to ‘fasting retreats’ where they would be forced to bond in calm and tranquil surroundings. Perhaps that is the way out of the current impasse.