A counter to Sholto’s post…

Sholto’s post made me think… Are we in Kerala really supporting Anna Hazare and his movement? Well, I am confused…

Is it really the popular kind of support that is generated elsewhere in India that we see happening in Kerala too?

Cynic that I am I feel it’s not so. Here it all seems to be party-centric, planned and implemented by various political outfits, politically motivated students organisations, trade unions etc. Average Malayalees, who have trained themselves to be indifferent to such ‘goings on’ and have got used to dismissing vices like corruption, injustice, dowry, casteism, female infanticide and foeticide etc. with a mere shrug of the shoulder and at times even finding words to justify such things as ‘practically good’, seem not much bothered about what Anna Hazare is fighting for and what the Lok Pal bill means in principle. They are too concerned about the practicalities of life that they don’t have the time to stop and think of principles. Principles, who cares?!- that’s the attitude. Be hypocritical, you’ll be respected in Kerala, be genuine, you’ll be ostracised. I remember how a couple of people were asking me, when Anna Hazare began his first hunger strike and people were going to light candles here in Kochi to support him, whether I was also going to join in. I said a firm ‘no’ because I still don’t believe in the genuineness of these candle-lighters from Kerala. The very same people, I have seen, engage in things illegal and corrupt in their personal lives. (Well, they got justification for that; it’s all ‘small things’. They forget it has to begin with ‘small things’!). Well, I can’t name people and make a list of things and explain how they are violating the very same things that they pledge not to violate by lighting candles in support of Anna Hazare. I will earn more enemies in the process, I already have many!!

So, are we genuine in supporting Anna Hazare? The students who kept away from colleges, do they respect people like Mahatma Gandhi or Anna Hazare and try to understand them and their ways even to a small extent? The guys who are likely to observe a hartal or two (well, they lost a chance now as the Delhi cops have yielded and Anna Hazare is all set to go fasting), do they understand that hartal is another variant of ‘Satyagraha’, which was used by one Great Man( ‘Great’ is now a word that we use to praise undeserving people and to even write about the doings of marketing companies and hence is shorn of all its ‘greatness’), whom we call Mahatma (a word that we don’t understand the meaning of nowadays), to promote things for a society and not for any political party. People who discuss the pros and cons of Anna Hazare’s fight and the Lok Pal bill and then sit back to ‘watch and enjoy’; do they understand that if people like Mahatma Gandhi and Anna Hazare had done the same, nothing would have happened.

Well, it now seems to me that perhaps Sholto hinted at this when he used the phrase ‘typical Kerala style’ (“Kerala citizens have been demonstrating in support of Hazare in typical Kerala style…”)…

Yes Sholto, we are indeed supporting Anna Hazare, in true and typical Kerala style. Let’s hope public property is not destroyed and buses not burnt; that would be too much of support, I guess!!