A Gandhi Model Galvanizes India

Source: WSJ

Fasting, White-Clothed Hazare Was Tapped by Anticorruption Activists Looking for an Icon to Put Spirit Back in Fight

NEW DELHI—Last fall, a group of leading anticorruption activists in India had reached a dead end. Their appeals to authorities to crack down on graft after a wave of high-profile scandals were going unheeded. They needed a figurehead to galvanize the masses and shame the government into action.

One of the activists traveled to a rural outpost in western India to enlist Kisan "Anna" Hazare, a military veteran best known for turning a village that was stricken by drought and hooked on alcohol into a model of economic development. In Mr. Hazare, the movement tapped a leader whose austere lifestyle and history of nonviolent protests, including fasts, recalled the spirit and tactics of modern India's most iconic founding father, Mohandas "Mahatma" Gandhi.

In the ensuing months, Mr. Hazare has achieved much of what his backers hoped, harnessing Indians' rage and disgust over corruption to create an unprecedented standoff between civil society and the government.

The 73-year-old Mr. Hazare is now heading into the second week of a hunger strike that has turned into a massive spectacle, drawing tens of thousands of supporters to a protest site in central New Delhi over the weekend and blanket TV coverage. The turnout has stunned the government, especially since so many of the protesters hail from the urban middle classes—the social strata that has benefitted hugely from years of rapid economic growth.

Mr. Hazare's immediate demand is for the government to create a "Lokpal," a powerful new independent agency to investigate and punish corruption in public life. Under pressure, the Congress party-led government of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has come out with its own Lokpal proposal, but Mr. Hazare says it is too weak. He has demanded that his version be passed into law by Aug 30.

Evoking Gandhi in his style and approach has helped Mr. Hazare turn a policy debate into a moral one. "Gandhi had no idea when he started whether anyone would listen to him; he just did what he felt was right and people rallied to him. Anna has done exactly the same thing," said Prem Shankar Jha, a Delhi political analyst.

Like Gandhi, who was jailed several times and once led a 250-mile march to protest a British salt tax, Mr. Hazare has proved to be a master of political theater, repeatedly wrong-footing the government.

He was arrested Aug. 16 for pledging to hold his large protest without police sanction. Even though he was quickly granted release, he chose to stay in jail for an extra two nights until the government relented and allowed Mr. Hazare to stage his fast at a public site in central Delhi called the Ramlila.

Mr. Hazare's blatant invocation of Gandhi has revived the potency of one of India's towering historical figures. Gandhi's advocacy of simple, village-centric life holds little sway amid contemporary urban India's glitzy shopping malls and rampant consumerism. Yet the organizers of this protest gambled that Mr. Hazare's Gandhi-inspired moral standing would channel public ire over corruption after a string of scandals, from an allegedly rigged telecom-spectrum allotment to a bribery scandal in the country's mining sector.

At the Ramlila, Mr. Hazare sits cross-legged on a stage 20 feet above the crowd, with a giant portrait of Gandhi hanging behind him. He occasionally sips water, but doesn't eat, and rests in a room at the back of the stage. Doctors check his health roughly hourly; two ambulances are on standby.

Behind Mr. Hazare, the hunger strike is being run like a disciplined political campaign by a team of activists and volunteers known as "Team Anna." They are led by Arvind Kejriwal, a 43-year-old former engineer and bureaucrat who has become the anticorruption movement's chief spokesman. The team uses Twitter and Facebook to communicate with supporters and tries to keep tight control over their message to the media. The day starts with a meeting of volunteers at dawn where the group hashes out everything from major strategy moves—whether to start picketing at the homes of leading Congress party politicians—to minor logistics.

At Sunday's 6:45 a.m. meeting, which a Wall Street Journal reporter was allowed to attend, the group of about 40 volunteers, most of them 20-something college graduates, sat in a circle on green felt mats. "Don't let in any more volunteers at this point," Mr. Kejriwal said. "Some of them could be journalists posing to get access and could write negative stories."

At around 8:20 a.m. that day, Mr. Hazare emerged, wearing his trademark cotton white suit and traditional Indian cap. He waved slowly before joining his palms together in the Hindu greeting of Namaste. "Hail Mother India!" he said. (He wasn't available for an interview.) The crowd broke into the chant that has become the signature of Mr. Hazare's push: "Keep your struggle going, Anna, we're with you!" An electric guitarist and singer performed patriotic and religious songs.

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Supporters of Indian anticorruption activist 'Anna' Hazare wave Indian flags at the venue where the 73-year-old is heading into the second week of a hunger strike in New Delhi on Monday.

Sambhu Varma, a 36-year-old employee at a metal-forging company in Haryana state, came to the protest carrying a big portrait of Mr. Hazare. "Gandhi gave us freedom from white colonial rulers, but they were replaced by brown masters who continue to loot us and our country," he said. "Anna is today's Gandhi because he is trying to free us from these brown masters."

Mr. Hazare, whose nickname "Anna" means "elder brother" in his native tongue of Marathi, is the son of a poor farmer. He began his career in the Indian army in 1963. After retiring at 38, determined to dedicate his life to public service, Mr. Hazare returned to his home village of Ralegan Siddhi in Maharashtra state. The village was suffering water shortages so severe that wells several hundred feet deep were empty. Farmers struggled to grow one reliable crop and 70% of the population lived below the poverty line. Liquor businesses had popped up to fill the void. Street vandalism and domestic violence were rising.

Mr. Hazare set up an informal village assembly that instituted an alcohol ban and enforced it with a mix of community pressure and coercion. At least once, he flogged drunk villagers with his army belt, according to several news reports and people in the village who worked with him.

Mr. Hazare's critics play up how tough he was in enforcing prohibition—including the flogging—as evidence that he is not quite a new Gandhi. The villagers who worked with him say Mr. Hazare resorted to such actions only when warnings didn't work and that his "army method" of disciplining people was necessary for the village's transformation.

His approach transformed the village in ways that thousands of Indian villages are struggling to emulate today. To improve rainwater harvesting and make water usage more efficient, Mr. Hazare organized infrastructure projects including the construction of drains, canals and wells. Within a decade, water levels had increased dramatically and so did agricultural productivity and per capita income.

Mr. Hazare's involvement with the Delhi activists began in October when Mr. Kejriwal ventured to the village to try to enlist his help. The two had worked together on the successful effort a few years before to introduce a new law similar to the Freedom of Information Act in the U.S. Mr. Kejriwal and other activists were frustrated that the law was unearthing corruption but the government was slow to punish the corrupt. "There's a huge leadership crisis in the country, both in the spiritual and political domain," Mr. Kejriwal said in an interview. Mr. Hazare "had a great blend of those qualities."

In April, Mr. Hazare launched a five-day fast that forced the government to agree to draft a bill creating a Lokpal with input from Team Anna members as well as cabinet ministers. But the effort dissolved in disputes: Chiefly, Mr. Hazare's team wanted the agency to have powers to prosecute sitting prime ministers and the judiciary and wanted civil society to have a strong say in who would run it. The government balked but introduced its own Lokpal bill in Parliament earlier this month, leading to the current standoff with Mr. Hazare. Prime Minister Singh on Monday signaled that the government was prepared to be flexible, saying in a speech, "We are open to reasoned debate on all these issues." But so far no agreement between the two sides appears in the offing.

Critics of Mr. Hazare say he has shut out alternative viewpoints, even of other activists who have long fought against corruption. "Gandhi would not refuse other people's right to have a discussion with him," said Dilip Simeon, a historian who has studied Gandhi.

Others note the fundamental differences between Gandhi's struggle to throw off colonial rule and Mr. Hazare's push to influence the legislative process. "This isn't a replay of the dynamics leading up to independence," said Mira Kamdar, a senior fellow at the World Policy Institute. "This isn't Mahatma Gandhi redux." Still, she said, Mr. Hazare has proved to be a "master strategist" who can mobilize the masses, as Gandhi was.

And his efforts have inspired those fed up with the corruption that plagues daily life. Gaurav Bakshi, a 34-year-old who was running a social-development nonprofit, decided to join Mr. Hazare's campaign as a senior volunteer after a run-in with a bureaucrat who demanded a bribe in order for him to finalize adoption papers for his stepdaughter. He didn't pay the bribe and was assaulted, he said.