Thirty-three years ago, we were shepherding your favourite English newsweekly through its infant days when all hell broke loose in Delhi. Bharatiya Kisan Union leader Mahendra Singh Tikait and his faithful had besieged Delhi. This was before news portals and 24 x 7 breaking news. We carried quite a few stories on Tikait’s face-off, and one memorable sentence jumped out at me today from a special story in the issue dated November 19, 1988: “The [rally] by the BKU had a spontaneity that would be the envy of any politician….”
How were we to know then that the same sentence would aptly describe another agitation that would be held two decades later in this very Delhi—the India Against Corruption (IAC) movement of 2011. And as I write this, yet another farmers’ movement led by Tikait’s son is banging on the gates of Delhi. History repeats itself, and how!
In 1988, one of the weapons employed by the Delhi Police was rock music. The police—who did not want to chase the farmers off or cut off water supply to the Boat Club, the main protest venue—played it to discomfit the rugged farmers through ahimsa, but fat lot of good that did. Imagine playing ‘Summer of ’69’ or something similar to Tikait & Co! But Bryan Adams beats water cannons, tear gas and spikes any day, I say.
Coming back to the IAC movement, I must say that it had an organic feel that very few agitations have had. Though it was later alleged that the BJP and the RSS did a lot of the work in the background, in that moment it felt so real, so true. From Maharashtra’s Ahmednagar district came the figurehead, Kisan Baburao Hazare, fondly called Anna. The onlookers always cheer David, never Goliath.
Thought it was pitched as an anti-corruption movement, its political fallout was much bigger. This issue looks at the agitation and its aftermath on its tenth anniversary. Senior Special Correspondent Soni Mishra has spoken to most of the key faces, if not all. They all share varying thoughts about what happened then and what followed. The only one I know personally among them is Arvind Kejriwal, whom I have found to be quite humble and down to earth. I also know that some of his erstwhile comrades do not share my views.
The jury is also out about what the IAC actually achieved. The mainstay of the IAC’s battle was the demand for the formation of the Lokpal. But many IAC pioneers feel that the office of the Lokpal is a shadow of what it was supposed to be. It is true that there has been no news from the Lokpal’s office. Should we think that the silence marks the total absence of corruption? That is difficult to believe, is it not?
Anna Hazare started his first fast on April 5, and it was an April that, as an editor, I will never forget.