TA L K I N G T E R M S Saintliness In Politics Cuts Both Ways Dileep Padgaonkar

In his speech in Parliament on Friday, was bang on the dot. Here is why. The exertions of Anna Hazare might well fetch the nation a robust Bill soon. In the bargain, however, we may have to contend with a lethal danger: saintliness in our public life. For, what Hazare has done is to act solely according to the dictates of his „‟, his „inner voice‟, to attain his goal. He places those dictates well above Parliament – the repository of the will of the people – and the Constitution – the touchstone of our republic. Like other claimants to infallibility – the Pope, the communist Commissar, the fascist ideologue, the jihadi theocrat – Hazare too appears to abide by what he believes are self-evident propositions. He alone can distinguish between vice and ; he alone knows the truth; there is only one path to reach it and that is the path laid by him. In other words, he alone is entitled to deploy his very own means to eradicate corruption. But this is not the only reason why he puts his critics and detractors on the defensive. What renders their task more difficult is the image Hazare projects: his meekness and humility, his austere demeanour, his home-spun homilies, his adherence to non-violence. Such trappings of saintliness have a wide and instant appeal in a country where religiosity has struck deep roots. Once you concede spiritual levity to anyone in order to cope with your own insecurities – as our middle class, abetted by hyper-moralistic sections of the media, does with abandon – yours is not to question why; yours is only to gawk and sigh. And yet we have sterling examples of individuals who refused to succumb to the soothing seductions of saintliness. The most eloquent warning against them by far came from B R Ambedkar in a speech he gave in the Constituent Assembly in November 1949 after it had completed its labours. If is to maintain democracy not merely in form but also in fact, he argued, the first thing that needs to be done is to “hold fast to constitutional methods of achieving our social and economic objectives. It means that we must abandon the bloody methods of revolution. It means that we must abandon the methods of civil disobedience, non- cooperation and ...Where constitutional methods are open, there can be no justification for them. These methods are nothing but the Grammar of Anarchy and the sooner they are abandoned, the better for us”. In the next paragraph, Ambedkar approvingly quoted ‟s caution to all those who are interested in safeguarding democracy: not to “lay their at the feet of even a great man, or to trust him with powers which enable him to subvert their institutions”. Ambedkar then went on to assert that this caution is especially relevant in India where the “path of bhakti (devotion) or hero-worship plays a part in politics that is unequalled in magnitude to the part it plays in the politics of any other country in the world”. In our country, he concluded, “bhakti or hero-worship is a sure road to degradation and to eventual dictatorship”. No one can deny the fact that Anna Hazare has raised public awareness about the need to combat the menace of corruption on a humongous scale. But when he seeks to emasculate Parliament‟s prerogative to legislate, when he refuses to grant that views on the Lokpal Bill other than his own deserve equal respect, when he fails to educate his followers about the complexity of addressing the issue of corruption and when he embarks on a fast that places his life in jeopardy to get his way then he opens a Pandora‟s box. Imagine what will be in store for the nation should others emulate his example to demand instant legislation to allow khap (in the name of custom), the destruction of places of worship (in the name of religious faith), the banning of a film (in the name of „hurt sentiments‟) or a shutting down of nuclear energy projects (in the name of ecological rectitude). Such zeal will take no time at all to give rise to a call for a muscular regime that will banish democratic politics into the wilderness.