Gandhi has an echo, and his name is Anna Hazare. The elderly social activist has just completed a 96 hour hunger strike to focus India’s attention on the issue of corruption - as if it may have slipped unnoticed between the sofa cushions had he not been around.
Last weekend, on a rickety stage in the capital New Delhi, the 72 year old rallied thousands in support of the proposed Jan Lokpal (Citizen’s Ombudsman) bill. After having been recruited by a motley group of NGO activists under the banner ‘India Against Corruption’, Hazare is now being spruiked as the face of a new, corruption-free India.
The national media, never one for quiet and considered reflection, has wasted no time in comparing him to the illustrious Mahatma Gandhi. However hunger strikes raise some important ethical questions. Just because Gandhi did it, doesn’t make it right.
Journalist Pratap Bhanu Mehta has roundly condemned Hazare’s choice of action, if not the cause he represents. Mehta notes the coercive nature of a ‘fast unto death’ and adds that ‘when it is tied to an unparalleled moral eminence, as it is in the case of Anna Hazare, it amounts to blackmail’. He goes on to assert that ‘in a functioning constitutional democracy, not having one’s preferred institutional solution to a problem accepted, does not constitute a sufficient reason for the exercise of such coercive moral power’.
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Hazare’s fast unto death was uncharacteristic of a typical hunger strike in a number of ways. Not least of which being that he was, under no circumstances, ever going to die. This was a political stunt; Hazare is a veteran campaigner. Winner of the prestigious Padma Bhushan, a prize awarded by the Indian government, for his work establishing a ‘model village’ in Maharashtra state, this is his third fast unto death against corruption since 2003.
As Hazare is still alive, he may appear to be quite the success story. Yet as many a wearily outraged Indian will tell you, corruption remains rampant. His protest comes in the wake of a series of corruption scandals that are impressive even by Indian standards. A despairing Supreme Court recently exclaimed, in language not usually found in judicial rhetoric, ‘What the hell is going on in this country?’
Hunger strikes seek to strategically exploit the complex and oft contradictory significance of food. Congruent to its role as vital nourishment, food also augers hospitality and charity, and is exalted