From "Main bhi corrupt" (I am also corrupt) to "Main bhi Anna" (I am also Anna), India seems to have changed hats in the last fortnight. There might be pros and cons (you could even say Kiran Bedis and Arundhati Roys) to the Anna Hazare movement and intellectual murmurs of discontent but it does look like this 74-year-old has made a younger generation step out of Barista coffee bars, chuck their designer headgear, i pods and Ray Bans for Gandhi topis and National flags. The surprise element of the Anna Hazare drive to bring on a strong Jan Lokpal Bill has been the participation of youth – the Facebook and Twitter generation. Young boys with pony tails and electric guitars are strumming songs about India, girls with butterfly tattoos are taking out rallies in the heat, school children are waving paper flags in the crowd. The campaign seems to have taken the country back to pre-Independence India and introduced young India to a leader they have fallen in love with and a cause they want to fight for.
Young theatre actors in Hyderabad, school teachers in Muzzafarnagar, Air Force employees in Hyderabad, office assistants in Jammu: who don’t know each other but know the common pain they want to rid themselves of, are coming together in spirit inspired by an old man who seems to have unleashed a madness. Candlelight vigils, dharnas, demonstrations, shaved heads, sand sculptures with a dozen Annas rising up on sandy ocean banks are colouring our TV screens. School girls with fat pigtails and blue uniforms waving paper flags, college boys with the Tricolour painted on bare brown chests, young smiling volunteers dishing out dal and rice from Anna ki Rasoi at Ramlila Maidan, spikey-haired artists painting national flags on willing cheeks; these are the newly recruited soldiers of old man Anna. They are the ones standing vigil in the sun and rain; in sultry August evenings and dark fasting nights, not just in metros like Delhi and Mumbai but also places like Karad and Kotdwar, Moga and Manali.
We are a corrupt country. We are a corrupt people. How many of us can put a hand on the heart and say we never paid a bribe to get a driving license; or got a passport in an emergency by dishing out a few extra thousand bills; or used an office car for a private trip or an official phone for a personal call; or paid money in black besides white for a flat or a piece of land? Very few, if any. Not only have we done all this, we have also employed underage children for housework/looking after the baby/the shop; paid bare minimum wages to menial employees who need the job so desperately that they won’t protest. We have bribed traffic police, got train reservations on a discreet extra payment, managed postings by greasing palms. Corruption has become a way of life for us so completely that anyone who cannot or will not indulge in it is labelled a fool. It’s true that the Lokpal Bill cannot change this on its own or overnight. But Kisan Baburao Hazare, now of course Anna (elder brother) to the whole world, has taught young India to think (if only for a while) about issues other than a degree in a foreign university, a job with an MNC or a night at the pub. He seems to have introduced them to the country that belongs to them; to satyagrah and Gandhian means of protest ( something most of us had forgotten) and the passion of supporting a common social cause. He has got us Indians singing Vande Mataram again when we weren’t even sure we remembered the words. He has us waving the Tricolour (that used to come out of the cobwebs only on Independence Day) and shouting slogans about Bharat Mata (had't heard either of those two words in a long time) that must make the tears well up in our grand or great grandparents ’ eyes who saw this kind of passion only during the freedom movement.
From a nation that has celebrated corruption in all these years of independence (we boast about the black money we have, give each other tips of which palms to grease and with how much for a certain job, buy tickets in black for a super hit film about a corrupt and fearless cop) we seem to have once again become Mahatma Gandhi's country of people who want to participate in the change they want to bring about. Might not last, but feels good nevertheless.
The social media has played a very important part in getting a country of a billion plus together, particularly young college kids - the Facebook/Twitter generation - who were born long after Gandhi died and are getting a feel of what struggles and causes are all about. India’s so called second fight for freedom – freedom from corruption - is starting with elementary lessons. Naturally, there is a nursery rhyme for beginners. Twinkle twinkle little star; Anna is our rock star! that’s how it goes.
Bharat Mata: Mother India
This article was the cover story in Deccan Herald, Saturday magazine. You can look it up on http://www.deccanherald.com/content/186461/indias-pied-piper.html