Thoughts on Anna Hazare's Movement

In the Ramayana, Rama goes hunting in the forest while they have been banished to live in the wilds by his father. He charges his loyal brother, Lakshmana, to look after Sita, his wife. Sometime later Lakshmana hears a piteous cry in Rama’s voice from deep in the woods. Lakshmana is torn between protecting sita and responding to his beloved brother’s cry. He then decides to rush to his brother, but not before he draws a magic line on the ground in front of their hut. “Please keep within this  Lakshman Rekha,” Lakshmana implores Sita. “All will be well if you keep within this line whatever the temptation or provocation”. Then the devoted brother speeds away into the woods. 


As soon as he is gone, a holy man appears in front of the hut asking for food and alms. Sita brings out the food and tries to give it to the sage, but he is standing beyond the line. She hesitates and he says: “Daughter, if you are so small-hearted that you do not even want to offer your alms to an old sacred man with respect  and you wish to throw the food from a distance then I do not accept your mean gift. Then the sin of refusing to feed a holy man will be on your head. If you wish to honour me you must come to me and put the food properly into my bowl”. Sita reluctantly agrees and crosses the lakshman rekha, and lo and behold, the old man becomes the great demon Ravana who seizes Sita and abducts her away to his kingdom Lanka, thereby precipitating a bloody and terrible war with Rama and his army of monkeys and bears.

Since then, Lakshman Rekha has become a metaphor for the limits of ethical action in life. 

At a workshop 2 months ago, I asked: "Two people have identical knives. One is a great surgeon and the other is a great thug. What is the difference between their uses of the knife?" A woman answered "Ek jaan dethe hai; doosra jaan lethe hai" (One gives life; the other takes away life). When it rains, it brings life to the earth; when it floods, it brings destruction; when the rain becomes a sunami, it brings death. Fire goes from the beauty of life-giving to the horror of death as the 'lakshman rekha' is crossed. A cancer cell is nothing but a healthy cell gone greedy. So what is this lakshman rekha, this rubicon, which separates life from death, constuctive from destructive, embrace from smothering, caress from throttling?

The instrument is the same; the difference is one of purpose, of morality, of concern for others. So, when we see the knife, how do we know whether to lie down or to fight back? This was the question I faced when I first heard of the Anna Hazare agitation/movement.

In the beginning, I was for it. I saw Anna as the welcome rain at the beginning bringing the freshness of idealism to the parched cynical earth which is India for many; voicing the near-universal cry of every honest human being in India for a life that was just ordinarily decent and leaders that were boringly honest. Someone had to stand up and say: "I have had enough; I can't take any more of this".

But, then I changed my mind. (I do not think I have been inconsistent on this matter. Not that I would mind if I were. After all as Emerson said "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds". Gandhiji ends his foreword to "Hind Swaraj' by saying 'if you find that I have contradicted myself, take my latest opinion as my opinion".) Now I am against it, even afraid of it.

I believe this despite my recognition that many good things have transpired in the last two decades, and that the glass is half-full.

In fact, precisely because we have progressed we know not only what we have but also what we don't have. We have climbed a mountain and can now see the next peak. An optimal mixture of frustration and hope is the recipe for a revolution in all social transformations.  Neither one by itself is enough. India now has both, at least for the middle class (not for the poor yet, but it is coming; to the rich it will come as the threat to their vested interests). When this potent mixture explodes it creates a "Movement" - a temporary System lacking structure but compensating for it with aspiration and passion. It is highly unstable, but while it lasts it is exhilarating and, like a forest fire, it consumes the lives that it touches. With a clean sweep of creative destruction it does, at its best, trasnsform the SYSTEM. If it succeeds, if the values and purposes resonate with enough followers,  it becomes a precursor of more permanent structures to lead to an organization and a long-term vision of an institution. While a movement is a necessary-but-not-sufficient cause in certain contexts where profound issues are at stake for the society (or some significant chunk of it - "Bhakti movement in Hinduism/evangelists in US" vs. Civil Rights movement or Independence movement which were holistic and relatively all-embracing), it has to convert itself into an Institution at the right time to be of any use to the long-term transformation of the System (See Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions).

I thought that Anna was creating such a movement, which would be within the “Lakshman rekha”.

But, then Anna and his core committee demanded not just that their version of the Lok Pal bill, the “Jan Lok Pal Bill,” be the only bill to be presented in the Parliament, but also that it MUST be passed! Till then they were exercising their right to free speech but were not denying that right to anyone else. He flagrantly violated the right of elected parliamentarians to consider alternatives for achieving the same goal, the eradication of corruption, and dictated terms to the constitutional body that it should, in fact must, vote only one way and no other, or else Mr. Hazare would fast unto death. This was blackmail of the Parliament, of the Civil Society proponents of other versions of the Lok Pal Bill, and of ordinary citizens of India. It was ‘my way or the highway’.  Gandhiji, the greater of my two heroes, undertook fasts but only against the illegitimate authority of the British Empire. There the Lakshman Rekha is any moral means to oppose the usurpers. Even there, Gandhiji insisted on the primacy of the means over the ends, of non-violence over violence. He never used a fast unto death as a means of coercion, even of the hated enemy regime. A martyr is the nightmare of a dictator, and is morally right to be one;  but it is criminal to be a martyr against democracy. That is where Anna lost the moral power he had gained by focusing the attention of the nation on the issue of corruption in a peaceful, non-violent way.

There are other, subtler, disillusionments I have with him that did not cross the Lakshman Rekha, but do decrease his moral leadership for me. 1) Praising the Chief Minister of Gujarat, Narendra Modi, who is still being investigated for the pogrom he initiated against Muslims and colluded with in 2002. 2) Calling for the gallows for corrupt politicians: He calls himself a Gandhian, which is a serious claim, and the death penalty betrays the values of that title. 3) Not asking his crowds to take a pledge of never paying a bribe nor taking one. He and his team are so obsessed with the high-level punitive bill against the high and the mighty that they refuse to even acknowledge that it is we, the people, who are the 'mother of all corruption'. We pay bribes and very often we pay it not only voluntarily but eagerly to get ahead of another citizen in the pursuit of some pecuniary gain. Refusing to pay a bribe often means delay, not denial of your rights. We are corrupt inside and do not want to pay the price of honesty. Anna gained the 'bully pulpit' but used it only selectively, and not with the source of the malaise, the cancer of the body politic in India. He became a mere populist currying favor with his crowd. The moral leadership slipped, fell, and disappeared down the drain because he wanted to hold on to his newly acquired power by playing to the gallery.

What could he have done to further his cause without crossing the Lakshman Rekha? He should have criss-crossed the country with his team, prosyletising the gospel of anti-corruption in every state of the Union. He would have aroused the conscience of the nation further, put immense electoral pressure on the political parties, including on their elected representatives in the Parliament, and still maintained the sanctity of the Constitution. If the people really wanted the reform he (and many of us) desperately wanted,  they would have applied real pressure, in the streets and in the ballot box, which is where it matters, and Anna and all of us would have won. A baby is not bath water. Do not throw away that which took so much to bring into being. If Anna succeeds in his blackmail he will have created the most dangerous precedent for every kook, crank and weirdo in the land to insist that s/he will die unless their demands are met, every last comma and period.

In short, “the operation succeeded but the patient died”.  One sure way to “cure” cancer is by killing the patient.

Looking back, I should have known what would happen with the Anna Hazare “movement”; it is obvious from the history of movements (including revolutions of all kinds). At the beginning, the birth of a movement, the 'Mover' creates the movement. As time passes, as power gathers for the cause, as the temptations increase for abuse of personal power (if the Mover lacks the wisdom to put the genie back into the bottle) THEN the roles reverse. The Movement begins to carry the Mover who is the now the 'effect' rather than the 'cause', a cork floating in a giant wave imagining it is causing the wave (Robespierre in the French Revolution; Nehru & Jinnah at partition;  JP in 1977). It is only a matter of time before the cork disappears and the sharks appear because they love, and thrive on, chaos. Of course, the cork can itself transform into a shark as has happened numerous times in history. ( 'one has to compromise for the cause; so let me kill those who oppose me'). The Mover starts humble, a servant of the masses to lead towards the Light but comes to believe that HE is the light and hence the Master, not the servant or just the Mover. This happened to most of our post-independence leaders (but, thank God, not all).

Movements are not a like a scalpel; they are at best more like a hammer in the hands of a smith and at worst like a bludgeon in the hands of a marauder. They are not precision bombing, they are carpet bombing. If you get in its way, innocent bystander and guilty perpetrator alike, you will be the indiscriminate target. Movements cannot afford the luxury of nuances and subtleties. No shades of grey, just black & white. This is why it’s difficult to predict the outcomes of movements. Either you overestimate (3 cabinet ministers wait to receive Yoga Guru at the train station) or you underestimate (You arrest and jail a far more powerful adversary). 

Of course, if all movements were bad, we, as a species, would have perished long time ago. Some of the greatest inflexion points in human history have been movements, and many have been significant advances for our planet. (More on this some time). But, Anna’s has lost its way, if it ever had one. It lost its way when it displayed the arrogance of perceived ‘moral power’; it lost its way when it arrogated to itself the sole representative of all citizens, the moral guardian of the Indian Conscience, ‘the keeper of the flame’, the arbiter of our moral destiny. By overdoing the ‘mandate’ they lost the mandate in its real sense. They could have been, should have been, would have been; but the hubris, as in the Greek tragedies, swallowed them. Now they are part of the problem, not of the solution.

Thanks, as always for your patience in reading the 'stream of consciousness'  prose.

Warm regards,

Jayaram

The Joy of Meandering

Welcome to my new blog. The topics, ostensibly, are Leaders, Institutions, and changing the world for the better. As Omar Khayyam wrote: "If per chance we were to dare/ To alter this sorry scheme of things entire/ Would we not shatter it to bits/ And then remold it nearer to our heart's desire?" (I am wary of the ‘shatter it to bits’ part; Hippocrates had it right, “Above all, do no harm”, but the spirit of the lines gets me.)

A better world is like all those beautiful Sanskrit phrases, "सर्व जन हिताय सर्व जन सुखाय" ("To the welfare of all; to the happiness of all") not to be substituted by "बहु जन हिताय बहु जन सुखाय" ("To the welfare of the majority; to the happiness of the majority"). Beware of the latter; when you are willing to accept some as outside the pale of welfare and happiness that leads to fascism. Also, let me throw in, right at the outset, those lovely lines from the Upanishads "असतो ..". On second thoughts that is for another blog. And I do not want to be mistaken for a devout Hindu. False identities, like false beards, were never my style.

And why write blogs? As Robert Frost said” Talking is like the water faucet on the lawn; Writing is like the one upstairs. If you open the faucet on the lawn too freely the one on the top will have no water to give”. I have always been a talker. From the time I remember life, I have talked my way through/at/with everything. Lewis Carroll had me in mind when he had Alice say, “How do I know what I am thinking till I say it?” And talking has stood me in good stead; given me fame when young, money when middle-aged and joy always. I have never been more alive than when I am speaking on-stage, or off-stage with good companions. Since I have been a good companion to myself for many years now (it wasn’t always so), I have very enjoyable conversations with myself. But, frankly, I do prefer, from time to time, other humans to converse with.

Nevertheless…I am a closet-frustrated writer. I wrote plays (2), short stories, poems (yes!), and such, and a 640-page tome, my proudest achievement. None of that has been sustained, and I have wanted to write with as much ease as I spoke. The time has now come to sing freely on paper…well, on the screen at least. And a blog is a creation meant for free, stream-of-consciousness prose. It is improv theatre. One can ad-lib and float it out there into cyber-space, like the proverbial bread cast on waters, arrows into the void. If there is a reader and she enjoys it, fine. But, she would be the second reader – I am the first. Writing is the fulfillment of a long-cherished dream. And I will not be denied it, thanks to the invention of blogs.

Back from wandering to the topics... I said the topics are ostensible because I am essentially a wanderer – wandering, sometimes purposefully, some other times, as we say in India, 'just like that' – between the worlds of the abstract and the concrete, reality and fantasy, intellect and imagination, fact and fiction, rational and irrational, and yes, sanity and the other. This blog, both in its content and style, will wander all over these worlds (with my readers' permission of course, all two of you, poor things, what choice do you have since blogs are protected by the First amendment). My epitaph, if there were one, would be: "he searched; he tried; he kept searching and trying till he found it or the end, whichever came first". Hence this blog will have prose, poetry (in whatever language the spirit so moves), proverbs, quotations (definitely). 

I have always been very fond of stories, metaphors, analogies, similies, and proverbs. (So much so, once my boss, when I was in my first and only job which had a boss, told me rather testily "Metaphor, Jai is not the Truth".) I get it, this fondness for proverbs etc., from my mother, Sheshamma, who will hence forth be referred to as Amma, to whom this first blog is dedicated. She always had the appropriate saying for the occasion. Jumping to mind at once are: "ಹೊಳೆ ದಾಟಿದಮೇಲೆ ಅಂಬಿಗನ ಮಿಂಡ"("Once you cross the river, screw the boatman," – to highlight the ingratitude of a relative; in the original Kannada this is far more colorful and risque!); "उदर निमिथं बहुकृत वेषं " (“To fill the belly many disguises” – Sanskrit; a trenchant comment on phonies or conmen). 

Amma knew just enough Sanskrit for devotional prayers, scores of them that she taught me to learn by heart. I still remember and recite them in certain moods, but don't tell anyone because I am, at worst, an atheist and, at best, an agnostic. (god help me, a small 'g' would do; I wouldn't want to distract the Big 'G' who hopefully is doing something about the mess She has created down here on this planet. I suspect it is a 'He' though; Men, my fellow-genderites, make such a mess. And my confession about lack of faith perhaps lost me the Fundamenatalist vote but gained me my two children's). Oh, many other proverbs for later blogs straight from Amma to the world.

...where was I? I wander; I meander. As my Professor, Arthur Shedlin (God rest his soul), told me once, “Jai, when I ask you what you had for breakfast, you don’t have to start with the origins of the universe”. I do not believe in straight lines. I think life is a helical spring, no beginning no end and you move through it one loop at a time, resting like a mountaineer in the evenings enjoying the sunset and burning golden snow-clad peaks and imagining the next day’s ascent. My writing and thinking is all directions but straight. So, I get lost sometimes when I have strayed far into a segue. Then I ask “where am I?” and someone always, bless their listening souls, tells me where I was. (I once climbed a hill on a rock face and got totally lost. Luckily, there was a shepherd on the next hill within shouting distance, and I would shout to him in Kannada: “Am I going in the right direction?” He would tell me right or left or ok, keep going. I arrived with as much glee as an explorer of a new continent.).

Ah, the topics. I have in my title for this blog "Leaders & Institutions". (Bear with me those of you who have come to this blog to read about these; I do intend to write about them, but just an indulgence for this time when I can sing the invocation to welcome you and tell you about the play to unfold).What is "Leaders & Institutions"all about? All my life (which sometimes seems very short – just yesterday I was a teenager and sometimes I am Methuselah,  present at the creation as the Lord's third valet) I have been a worker who works with leaders, potential leaders, aspiring ones, failed ones and phenomenally successful ones. I have known and been with factory foremen and the Chairpersons of Boards (Yes, Virginia; there are Chairwomen though enough to count on one hand), the bankrupt and the billionaires (5-6 of them give or take a few), young and old – a veritable Noah's Ark of leaders. All shapes, sizes, varieties and characters. As Shakespeare put it, approximately (any one remember the exact words?) "Some are born, Some attain, and on Some it is thrust upon". 

I was once in a golf cart with two men, one who is now an ex-President of India and at that time 6-months from the post, and another who is probably a future President of India. Introduced by the future Prez to the imminent Prez as a leadership expert, I was asked, "Do you really think leaders can be made? Don't you think they are born? Either you have it or you don't, isn't it?" Given that these were two self-made men who had achieved iconic status by the dint of their own mettle, by the sweat of their souls and some luck, the question was clearly rhetorical...and the right answer, in Their company, was: "Of course, Sirs. They are for sure born and not made". But the right answer, in your company, is a little more complicated...and a subject for another entry.