Anna Hazare: What Academic Arguments Miss

Written by  //  April 8, 2011  //  National Politics  //  4 Comments

Taking contrarian positions on matters of significant public importance is the forte of the academic. Such positions often add value, providing a much-needed perspective, lest the dominant viewpoint be unquestioningly accepted as correct, or worse still, the truth. However contrarianism too has its limits. Reading Pratap Bhanu Mehta’s opinion piece ‘Of the Few, by the Few’ questioning the rationale, justification and the efficacy of Anna Hazare’s call for a fast-unto-death at Jantar Mantar, an action which has struck a chord with the entire nation, gives one the distinct feeling that those limits have unarguably been breached. Further, the eloquently expressed, albeit unconvincing arguments supporting Mehta’s view by several academics and aspiring academics on social networking sites, in stark contrast with the wider views heard in the mainstream media, point not only to the existence of a self-constructed ivory tower in which several academics reside, but also to a thinly disguised hubris of knowing better than the ordinary Indian who supports Anna Hazare’s protest. But when a contrarian opinion is based on misleading premises, false assumptions, weak argumentation, and turns a complete blind eye of the larger picture of an historic movement against corruption of endemic proportions, it deserves to be called for what it is: an intellectually supercilious obfuscation.

Mehta makes several points, the essence of which can be stated in two arguments: First, Anna Hazare’s call for protest against corruption, calling for an improved Jan Lokpal Bill is subversive of democracy; second, that it is premised on an institutional imagination of weeding out corruption by creating another guardian (the Jan Lokpal) to guard against the current guardians, i.e. the politicians, bureaucrats, police and the judges. Consider each of these arguments in turn.

The notion that a relatively spontaneous protest movement that has garnered wide support from people across all divides who make up India’s democratic polity, and their call for an improved anti-corruption legislation through greater citizen participation, is itself subversive of democracy is a curious one. In making it, Mehta bases his argument on two fundamentally flawed assumptions. First, that democracy means and only means representative democracy, where the government is accountable to the people only through their elected representatives. Second, that India is a fully functional constitutional democracy where such accountability can be an effective way of speaking truth to power. Nothing, in fact could be further from the truth.

A democratic system of government certainly involves elections as a key method for incorporating accountability. But that is not its sum total. Quoting Ambedkar’s words from the very same ‘Grammar of anarchy’ speech that Mehta adverts to “if we wish to maintain democracy not merely in form, but also in fact” it requires representatives of the people to serve the interests of the people, uphold social democracy and rule of law in the country. To ensure that they do this, there is a continuous process of checks and balances, not limited to periodic elections by which such accountability is imposed. Writing in the media, fighting the government in court, and assembling in public places to make one’s voice heard are crucial ways in which such checks can be exercised. This protest movement and its call for greater citizen participation in drafting the Jan Lokpal Bill is an extension of these methods. It is disingenuous to suggest that such citizen participation in law-making is exceptional— industrial lobbies, NGOs, think-tanks and subject experts play a key role in most legislations that are drafted. The difference between the present demand and the status quo is merely one of form and not substance, and need not be exaggerated.

At the same time, in making this assumption, Mehta tends to romanticise both the concept of an election as well as India’s ‘functional constitutional democracy’. It cannot be anybody’s argument that elections in India are spotlessly clean and facilitate the best candidates winning; on the contrary, elections are so fraught with murky dealings, candidate and voter intimidation and the need to get one’s hands dirty that the system doesn’t even allow the best candidates to take part many a time, let alone win. The fact, as Mehta notes, that an accountability discourse has developed, seeking accountability in ways other than periodic elections, is the surest sign yet of such failure. Insofar as India’s ‘functional constitutional democracy’ is concerned, it is almost as functional as a refrigerator is in making water boil. It would suffice merely to say that in an ideal system where legislators are above board, the government faithfully furthers national interest, courts dispose matters on time and anti-corruption authorities are themselves not corrupt, constitutional democracy alone, as Mehta understands it, can be a viable check on the government. But that doesn’t sound much like India in 2011 does it? So fanciful is this assumption that there is no need to labour this point any more.

The second permeating theme through Mehta’s arguments is the naïveté of the institutional imagination that pervades Anna Hazare’s movement. According to him, “We should not turn a complex institutional question into a simplistic moral imperative.” Of course we should not turn any institutional question, complex or otherwise into a moral imperative. But by assuming that the issue of widespread corruption in India and protests against it are concerned purely with an institutional question in the first place or should be, is missing the wood for the trees. Corruption and Anna Hazare’s simple call to respond to it are institutional questions only secondarily; primarily they are questions of justice. If as a result of a bribe, the 2G spectrum license goes to X and not to Y who had the better bid, Y has been unjustly treated; if the organisers of the Commonwealth Games gave a lucrative toilet paper contract to a relative, then all the other toilet paper manufacturers who bid for the contract have a claim of injustice, and if the country’s elected representatives gloss over these various injustices or selectively act on them, that in itself is an injustice of the highest order and every citizen of India can claim a violation of justice, to which they want to put a decisive end by rising in unison.

This is exactly what is happening in Jantar Mantar currently. The Jan Lokpal Bill, as Gautam Patel says is merely the vehicle to achieve this end. Several portions of the proposed Bill are problematic, as Mehta rightly points out. Even some of the drafters of the Bill, like the widely respected Lok Ayukta of Karnataka and former Supreme Court judge Justice Santhosh Hedge, think so. But the Bill is not intended to become law in toto. It is a negotiating text, to be read with the government’s own text, problematic on perhaps more counts than the Hazare draft, to arrive at a final law that is clear, coherent and effective in achieving its desired ends. And in proposing such a text, it is clearly not the intention of the drafters to create ‘a draconian new institution that diminishes everything from the Prime Minister’s Office to the Supreme Court.’ The office of a Lokpal, known elsewhere as an Ombudsman, operates comfortably alongside elected organs of government and courts in several other countries. There is no reason why they cannot harmoniously function in India as well. Besides, shoring up the malfunctioning institutions which exist and creating new ones which are necessary to take care of pressing new problems are not mutually exclusive tasks. To keep with Mehta’s educational analogy we need the M.A. not only because the B.A. is not good enough but because more people want more challenging standards of education in the arts than what the B.A. can provide.

As this piece is to be published, news is filtering in that the government has in part accepted Anna Hazare’s demands in relation to the Jan Lokpal Bill. This is a crucial first step in India’s fight against its own corrupt system. A fight, begun by a few good men and women. Which touched a chord with people everywhere.

Why did such a spontaneous uprising happen, rallying around a relatively little know activist, that too at a time when people could have been happily celebrating the World Cup victory? We may ponder over this question many years hence. But one fact is certain— there is something beautifully human about this protest in every sense. Vast numbers of people coming together in Delhi, even more pledging their solidarity and support by organising their own protests in cities across the world, the chaos, the frenzy, the disagreements about next steps, the patent flaws in the drafted statute, everything about the protest conveys the simple human emotion of standing up for what one thinks is right, without sophistry, nuance, or caveats.  And that’s something an academic argument, for all its sophistication, can never capture.

About the Author

Arghya is currently doing the doctorate in law at the University of Oxford. Dithering between academia and litigation for a future career but sanguine in Oxford with his current researcher status.

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4 Comments on "Anna Hazare: What Academic Arguments Miss"

  1. Rohit April 8, 2011 at 8:05 pm · Reply

    @Arghya

    I am unsure as to why you believe that only academics or aspiring academics have chosen to take a more critical stance than most on Facebook. Perhaps there is a sampling error as a result of who one is friends with :-)

    There is a great deal of justifiable fury at the system, and it is always inspiring to see people mobilize and participate in public debate. Kudos to that.

    I am little struck by your description of the ‘contrarian views’. These views (and these sentiments are expressed by a broad ideological sweep including right wing bloggers like Acorn, liberals like PBM and left leaning Hindi journalists like Dilip Mandal). These views you suggest belong to an ivory tower, because they are in “in stark contrast with the wider views heard in the mainstream media” and this is evidence of ” a thinly disguised hubris of knowing better than the ordinary Indian who supports Anna Hazare’s protest”.

    Given events of the last year, are we really suggesting that ‘mainstream media’ provides an authentic and unmediated representation of reality and the ‘real Indians’. Therefore to disagree with ‘mainstream media’ is to disagree with the ‘mainstream’. If that were the case, we would still be asking Nira Radia who?

    Most of us can only speak for ourselves. Therefore, I am little suspicious of claims of knowing what the ‘ordinary Indian’ wants, and of declaring certain figures as representatives of ‘civil society’. It is one thing to draft someone for their expertise in a field, like members of NAC or the Planning Commission or retired judges are, but quite another to invest them with some form of representativeness. To turn to the grammar of anarchy speech once again, Amedkar reminds us “The second thing we must do is to observe the caution which John Stuart Mill has given to all who are interested in the maintenance of democracy, namely, not “to lay their liberties at the feet of even a great man, or to trust him with power which enable him to subvert their institutions”. There is nothing wrong in being grateful to great men who have rendered life-long services to the country. But there are limits to gratefulness. As has been well said by the Irish Patriot Daniel O’Connel, no man can be grateful at the cost of his honour, no woman can be grateful at the cost of her chastity and no nation can be grateful at the cost of its liberty. This caution is far more necessary in the case of India than in the case of any other country”

    There are of course larger questions about the use of fast as a political weapon, the popularity of a certain fast as opposed to others, and the people/goals the protest seeks to promote. Anti-corruption is a wide platform that seems to have attracted even Lalit Modi and Pappu Yadav.

    Perhaps it serves to turn to history. In some ways Ambedkar’s suspicion is extraordinary. Why would a member of a persecuted minority uphold elected majoritarian democracy? Because it was precisely such a method wrapped up in a moral imperative that was used by Gandhi to force him and dalits to give up their demand for separate electorates. It is hard to defend minority rights by constitutional means, but it is harder when faced with an unconstitutional “moral imperative”. It is perhaps not surprising that two of the prominent legislation by hunger strike demands in independent India have been to enforce a ban on cow slaughter ( Shankaracharya in the 60s and Vinobha Bhave in the 70s).

  2. Arghya April 8, 2011 at 10:06 pm · Reply

    Rohit, thanks for your comment. I am certain that we all share a common frustration at the system which is great, since there are many who do not and as reasonable people disagree on how best that frustration can be alleviated. In response to your points, I have two things to say:
    1. The mainstream media- I am no fan of the mainstream media at all; I think what we get very often is reactive reporting, sensationalism and created stories. But I think there is something to be said in this case about a. sentiments expressed by several who are there at the site and their passion for the issue; b. the interest that the issue has generated in large sections across the country, across as you said, vernacular newspapers, blogs and other sources which do not immediately strike us as mainstream. And the fact that the government has had to sit up and take notice does show that it is not just a vacuous media creation; clearly no smoke without fire, no matter if the smoke seems suspiciously excessive.
    2. Representativeness- As a general principle I agree, we must be skeptical of those who claim to ‘represent’ civil society. As I think you yourself said in one of your posts as a member of civil society, you or I may not want Sri etc. Ravi Shankar to be my spokesperson. But there are two cases where the general norm may be departed from: a. when the issue demands that some positive action be taken as a measure of last resort and b. when the person herself is of integrity, who has been accepted across the board. I think both these situations are met in this case- endemic corruption being the worst scourge on India for as long as I can remember and the person Anna Hazare, a Gandhian of impeccable modern credentials whose motivations cannot be questioned. And I think testimony to this fact is the spontaneous support that he has received. I am not sure if it had been Dawood Ibrahim ( I take an extreme example only to give you a drift of my point) there would have been a similar reaction.

    3. Not surrendering one’s liberty at the altar of a benevolent do-gooder is certainly wise as a matter of course. And creating the lokpal as an institution which will be almost a supra-constitutional authority is unwise. The lokpal too must be within the checks and balances framework, its ambition must also be made to counteract with ambition of another without compromising its independence. It is a question of appropriate design which can be hopefully worked out as a compromise deal- given the polar nature of the drafts, it seems quite plausible.

    Finally, I love the example that the reason for a hunger strike in the 60s and the 70s was for cow slaughter. But did anything come out of it? That may be interesting to see if we can draw any comparisons.

  3. Rohit April 8, 2011 at 10:39 pm · Reply

    Arghya, I am sure you’ve seen this by now (http://kafila.org/2011/04/09/at-the-risk-of-heresy-why-i-am-not-celebrating-with-anna-hazare/), I think the anaology to the cultural revolution is a little far fetched but some things strike a chord, particularly, “..The tragedy that we are facing today is that the legitimate public
    outrage against corruption is being channelled in a profoundly
    authoritarian direction. In all the noise there has been a lot of talk
    about cynicism, and anyone who has expressed the faintest doubt has been
    branded as a cynic. I do not see every expression of doubt in this
    context as cynicism, instead I see the fact that those who cry hoarse” So I am suspicous about the smoke.

    I don’t think the problem is with Anna Hazare (who as he himself said is not keen on a formal position) but of elevating civil society leaders that we ‘apparently have all accepted’. Kejriwal, perhaps but Lata Mangeshkar, no? I agree with you on the Lokpal Bill, and look forward to reading your legislative brief on the same.

    In the cow slaughter case, the central government said it was a state subject. Finally, the Shankaracharya was successful and got a number of states to enact stricter laws, diluted the Hanif Qureshi judgment and set up a national committee on cattle development or some such. Kerala and West Bengal, both ruled by the Communists, held out against Vinobha Bhave, and politely suggested that they could make peace with his death. I believe he withdrew his fast. Bhave incidentally won both the Magsasay award and the Bharat Ratna

  4. Arghya April 10, 2011 at 8:42 am · Reply

    Yes Rohit, I agree. There is a genuine problem at a general level regarding civil society champions, who they are, how they are chosen. But there is a direct check, albeit not through elections, that is there right, i.e. the people will not support a movement by persons who they think are leading it for their own publicity and self-promotion. I think we shouldn’t discount that but should work with this framework and see how it can be strengthened so that we can keep publicity-happy self-proclaimed champions of civil society away. And that too keeping the fact distinctly in mind, that the protest’s legitimacy itself is contingent on how exigent the circumstances are.

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