Anna versus the Idea of India

 “India is Anna, Anna is India.” This slogan, reeking of the memory of Indira-imposed Emergency — “India is Indira, Indira is India” — tells you how much of what is now on display is about democracy
Badri Raina Delhi 

Bliss is it in this dawn to be alive,
But to be old is to be doubting.
(With apology to William Wordsworth)

Maha Kumbh

These are heady days in India. An orgy is underway in many parts, as angels of virtue shriek holy imprecations, ostensibly, to exorcise the demon ‘Corruption’, a word that has a nice Biblical-postlapsarian ring to it. This inventively constituted Ravana of our times, embodied, we are told, chiefly in the conjoint body of the politicians of the day, especially of the ruling Congress party, is now faced with the equally inventively constituted Ram in the person of Anna Hazare. Suitably, this crusader, although he wears the pristine white, topped with a Gandhi cap, opposes the demon in hues which are increasingly more and more saffron as the hours go by (see ‘Is Anna’s Crusade Changing Colour?’HindustanTimes, August 19). No wonder that some electronic channels seem to have nothing better to do than to pour incandescent ablutions of fuel into the corruption-Kumbh, in the full knowledge of the politics they seek to advance. 

The Anna Crusaders

Well-endowed citizens who think nothing of doing their bit of corruption day in and day out — in sale and purchase of properties, in tax-evading clevernesses, in getting their job done, whatever the job and whatever it takes (after all, the Shastras do say that you may employ any one of the principles of Saam, Daam, Danda, Beid —where Daam stands for inducement, aka, bribery), including by flaunting their ‘connections’ with ‘high-ups’, not to speak of corporates (those chief corruptors of national life who find no mention either in the government’s Lokpal Bill or in the alternate Anna draft, called the Jan Lokpal Bill) — dip their complicit hands in the Anna-Ganga, certain that all the spots will wash off. 

Unlike in Semitic faiths, Hinduism provides Uppai (remedial ways out of any sort of ill-fortune or sin committed, depending crucially on the price paid to the Purohit, except of course in the case of Brahm Hatya, namely the murder of a Brahmin). So, if only Lady Macbeth had been a Hindu, her “damned spot” may not have been as intransigent. Unto each our fate. 

Anna’s faithfuls thus wish the powers-that-be to bring back illicit wealth from foreign tax havens back to India, but have not yet asked any serious questions about the unaccounted monies within the country that constitute a parallel economy to the official one, of equal proportions or more. Not to speak of the obscene volumes of wealth stashed away in temples across the length and breadth of the land. These are not exactly suicidal revolutionaries, after all.