Nepali Times

Indian political activist Anna Hazare has come to epitomise men who are diminished in their triumph.

For over two years, the septuagenarian Gandhian sat on fast and protests by activists who now form the nucleus of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) to press the Indian Parliament to enact a national ombudsman law to check corruption. After the AAP’s strong showing in the recent Delhi Assembly elections, this demand was accepted and the bill passed in both houses on Wednesday. Hazare broke his week-long fast.

Yet, the adoption of the Jan Lokpal Bill for an ombudsman did not stop many from alleging that Hazare’s triumph was pre-arranged, that he had gone on fast days before the winter session of parliament because the government had assured him it would put its weight behind the bill. This the government did because the AAP’s astonishing performance in the Delhi Assembly had rattled India’s entire political class including the Congress and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

People chose to see in the passage of the bill a tacit understanding between Anna and the mainstream parties. It was a watered down version of the bill that Hazare’s team had framed months ago with Arvind Kejriwal and Prashant Bhushan, who broke away from the ageing leader to participate in election despite his objection. The bill that the parliament adopted, retains government’s control over the investigating agency entrusted with the task of probing allegations of corruption against public servants.

During the week Hazare sat on fast, he and his followers engaged in a heated exchange with AAP members. Ultimately, they were expelled from the site of fast, leaving none in doubt about the severing of relationship between AAP members and remnants of Team Anna who had together constituted the popular front against corruption. The relationship between the two had been strained for a while: Hazare had not only refused to campaign for the AAP in Delhi, but had even tried to undermine it.

Even Hazare, it seems, couldn’t transcend such human attributes as envy, vanity, and pettiness. He committed the mistake of harbouring the belief that it was his charisma alone which was pulling the people whenever and wherever he sat to rail against the discredited UPA government. He forgot it was Arvind Kejriwal and his comrades who had provided him the national proscenium to perform, inviting him from Maharashtra to lead the anti-corruption movement in Delhi.

Kejriwal decided to enter politics, defying Hazare who perhaps believed that minus the glow of his charisma, his pugnacious lieutenant was bound to eat the humble pie. Like the Congress, Hazare didn’t have his fingers on the people’s pulse. As the AAP began to gather momentum in the weeks before the polls, politicians adopted dirty tricks to stump it. Hazare turned sullenly silent and then acerbic.

Around the time political parties of all hues began, rather hypocritically, to question the AAP’s source of funds, Hazare too joined the chorus. He wrote a letter to Kejriwal claiming there were allegations against him to divert the money collected for the anti-corruption movement. Hazare said the AAP had been using his name in its campaign even though its leaders knew of his opposition to their participating in politics and that ‘Anna SIM cards’ had been sold and the proceeds misappropriated. To many it seemed an outwitted leader, in pique, was backstabbing his lieutenants perched on the cusp of astounding success.

The AAP’s strong showing also brought out Hazare’s vanity. A day before he sat on fast on 10 December, journalists reminded him of his past observations that if he were to contest election, he would lose his security deposit as he did not command money and muscle power, considered essential for electoral success. Then came the stinging question: how did he then explain Kejriwal and the AAP’s triumph?

Hazare paused for a while before saying that had he campaigned in Delhi, the AAP would have swept the polls and Kejriwal would have become chief minister. This was an incredible display of petulance and pettiness.

In accepting a watered down version of the bill and in provoking and criticising the AAP, Hazare has thrown in his lot with the political class, not because he believes in its rectitude and sagacity, but because he wants to weaken the lieutenants who have decidedly stolen a march over him.

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