Fasts, Hunger And Hunger Strikes
By Anand Teltumbde
05 July, 2011
Countercurrents.org
“Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear.”
Even Harry S. Truman, the 33rd President of the U.S., the author of the infamous Truman Doctrine to contain Communism had this advice to the governments!
Fast and Hunger
It is amusing that the country having a dubious distinction of being a home to world’s most hungry people should be shaken by the threat of hunger by a few. But that is what has been happening since Mahatma Gandhi forged them into a weapon. Interestingly, he referred to it as fast, not hunger strike, which it actually was. Fast has a religious undertone, as Ed Cole, the founder of the Christian Men’s Network in the U.S, candidly stated: “A fast is not a hunger strike. Fasting submits to God’s commands. A hunger strike makes God submit to our demands.” It has class connotation too. For elites it is fast, for the commoners, it is hunger strike. After all how could elites go on strike? They need to be differentiated from the working classes whose business it is to strike. One is not sure but one commonly confronts this differentiation in practice. Bhagat Singh and his comrades had gone on hunger strike in Lahore jail in which Jatin Das became a martyr on 82nd day, marking the limits of human endurance and resolve in the longest hunger strike in the world history. On the other hand, fasts, ‘indefinite’ or ‘unto death’ were undertaken by Gandhi and Gandhians many times. The very label of fast, as it appeared, assured that it would not be stretched to death and would be concluded before long. But if it is a strike, one could not be a sure.
Mere use of labels would not however work. The system identifies what you are by the issue you espouse. Take for instance the case of Irom Sharmila from Manipur, who has entered the incredible eleventh year of her fast unto death. A poor soul, she thought, she was following Gandhian method and declared her protest as fast unto death whereas what she actually did was a hunger strike. Because, the issue she raised was the repeal of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA), which has virtually reduced the entire North East into a military state for the last five decades. It was too radical a demand for a fast; it had to be a hunger strike. The state understood and responded commensurately. While it has taken care in maintaining its Gandhian façade by not letting her die (the state has been force feeding her), it has never heeded her demand. Sharmila shames India for its pretentions to be a democratic republic. And she is not alone; there has been a long saga of struggles of Manipuri people, notably women of her ilk. In 2004 in the wake of rape and murder of Thanglam Manorama, these brave women had publicly unclothed themselves before the army headquarters with placard “Indian army, rape us”! Even such a shaming protest failed to move the government to stop AFSPA atrocities on hapless people.
Anna, Medha, Ramdev
During the past couple of months there have been four protest fasts led by three notable persons- Anna Hazare, Medha Patkar, Baba Ramdev and the repeat by Anna Hazare in condemnation of the government’s highhanded demolition of Ramdev show at Ram Leela maidan in Delhi. Of these Medha Patkar’s fast has been the least known despite being in the media savvy Mumbai. Medha Patkar, a veteran social activist who has been the face of non-violent peoples’ struggles for over the last two decades would certainly stand taller than Anna Hazare, despite media’s euphoric projection of him as our second Mahatma and certainly an upstart Baba Ramdev, whose antecedents are getting murkier with every passing day. Hazare’s first fast of 97 hours and second one from 10 am to 6 pm at Rajghat was painted by the media as the national movement. Ramdev had still more impressive start, the UPA’s senior ministers, Pranab Mukerjee and Kapil Sibal, having gone to the airport to receive him and almost yielding to his demands within hours from the start of the fast. However, the moment the Congress sensed the Saffron game plan behind Ramdev, it decided to demolish the drama in most unbecoming and shameful manner.
Medha’s fast was in process of the continuing movement against eviction of slum dwellers in the name of redevelopment. Mammoth slums are being demolished without slum dwellers’ consent under the controversial clause 3K of the Maharashtra Slum Areas Act. Taking up this issue being agitated against by the residents of Golibar slum, the second biggest in Mumbai, against the Shivalik ventures, she began her fast demanding immediate cancellation of the Golibar project and all other projects sanctioned under the Clause 3K along with the clause itself. This is the concrete issue that directly hit more than half the population of Mumbai metropolis that live in slums and arguably one of the major sources of corruption. As against this, Anna’s band has abstracted the entire issue of corruption reducing it to the lack of constitutional institution of a Lokpal. It has effectively diverted the public outrage over successive corruption cases to the parleys for drafting the Lokpal bill. Ramdev’s has been clearly a populist show, full of rhetorical noises, echoing saffron hyperbole, but carefully avoiding to point at the policy framework, shared by all the political class that gives rise to black money.
Magic of the Media
It is interesting to see how media differentiated them. While the media went gaga over the fast of Anna Hazare and Baba Ramdev, it had almost ignored Medha’s although the issue it had raised related to life and death of the slum dwellers in Mumbai in contrast to the surreality of corruption or abstraction of black money, the formers blew up. All of them were Gandhian in their approach but they differed in their appeal. Medha’s fast being in support of poor slum dwellers was against the development vision of the growing middle class, which constituted target readership or viewership of the media, and hence had to be ignored. On the other hand, the campaign against corruption and black money has basically risen from these classes who are eager to see India as superpower but see it being thwarted by the politicians. The abhorrence of the latter is really a reflection of their loathing for the majority of people of the lower classes, who are seen to shape the politics. Naturally, media was all out to promote it to maximize their gain.
Media is ultimately a business and cannot ignore its business interest. But the timeframes with which various businesses envisioned their missions being long in earlier times, they appeared different. The globalization paradigm has compressed not only geographical space but also time and hence every business appears nakedly driven by short term profit. Media was always manned by middle class people but they had to transcend their class boundaries to be credible in their long term business interests. Today, they are conditioned by their own class vision as their customers, having disposal incomes are also of their own class. In process, media actually recreates the middle class world for you, which has little relation with the reality. With advanced technologies, media has become so powerful that it makes and unmakes the world for you, thereby shaping and conditioning politics too. It is therefore that peoples’ movements are marginalized; Maoists and Muslims are black-painted; and Dalits are stereotyped. The implication of this change in media to peoples’ politics has been ominous. For instance, civil rights movement, which is predicated on media to project instances of civil rights violations to the world and thereby create pressure on the state finds itself in vulnerable situation with increasing ignorance from mainstream media.
Might of the State
The above episodes of Gandhian fast also differ in the state responses they received. Medha Patkar’s fast had just reiterated the continuing demand of the movement ‘ghar bachao aandolan’, which was consistently ignored by the government. When she went on fast along with some activists from the slum, there was no response from the state, despite their having documentary proof that Shivalik Venture had forged signatures of people and indulged in many other frauds, the crime for which its functionaries should have been summarily arrested. On the eighth day, when her health showed sign of deterioration, the government yielded and constituted committees to review its decisions. In Anna Hazare’s case, the government’s response was much faster, in salvaging situation by constituting the drafting committee for the Lokpal bill. In Baba Ramdev’s case the government was embarrassingly receptive to start with and had reached some secret understanding with him. It only had a fascist somersault when it sensed uncongenial political angle in it and unleashed its police to tear gas people and forcibly drive them out of the Ramlila ground at the dead of night. It rightly invoked condemnation from every corner.
Notwithstanding the character of these episodes, there cannot be a doubt that they were peoples’ peaceful protests well within the constitutional framework. The argument dismissing these protests as disruptive of the parliamentary system is spurious because it would amount to giving blanket license to the so called parliamentarians to loot the country. The state should have ways and means to deal with any kind of protests in democratic manner. If it violates its boundaries and clamps down on peoples’ protest, it actually provokes people to try out their might in anyway they like. People, unless driven to desperation by the arrogant state, cannot challenge the might of the modern state. The fact that many peoples’ movements had to take up arms to express themselves should impel the state to introspect its behavior. The manner in which the media deals with peoples’ protests and the way the state patterns its responses, as exposed by these episodes surely puts the question mark on peoples’ democratic movements.
Dr Anand Teltumbde is a writer, political analyst and a civil rights activist with CPDR, Mumbai
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