New Delhi, April 22 (IANS) Criticising Anna Hazare for his alleged affiliation with right-wing Hindu groups, filmmaker Mahesh Bhatt with historian K.N. Panikkar and activist Shabnam Hashmi Friday questioned the social reformer’s anti-corruption campaign that had unfolded like a Bollywood ‘movie script’.
Likening the whole drama of Hazare’s fast-unto-death anti-graft protest earlier this month and the government’s swift capitulation to the climax of a ‘Hindi movie or an Indian television soap’, Bhatt said: ‘This will raise TV TRPs but won’t solve the problem (of corruption).’
The trio strongly objected to the ‘authoritarian’ attitude adopted by Hazare in his anti-corruption campaign.
Hazare observed a hunger strike in Delhi April 5 against large-scale graft at the national level. The fast ended April 9, the day after the government accepted all his demands on formation of a joint committee of government and civil society to draft an effective anti-graft Lokpal Bill.
The five civil society members in the panel are Anna Hazare, former judge Justice N. Santosh Hegde, former minister and lawyer Shanti Bhushan, his son and advocate Prashant Bhushan and activist Arvind Kejriwal.
Bhatt, Panikkar and Hashmi expressed their reservations over formation of the panel and the way Hazare ‘dictated’ his conditions to formulate its terms and references.
They claimed the Lokpal Bill was inherently flawed because the ombudsman that the proposed legislation seeks to create was like creating ‘a permanent state of emergency in the country’.
‘It (the bill) militates against democracy. A legislation may be necessary to prevent corruption in the country but the Lokpal Bill cannot do that,’ Panikkar, a renowned historian, told reporters.
‘The Lokpal is likely to function in a social vacuum as a super judicial authority, undermining and subversive of the judicial system. It is an escapist institute. It also provides the state a safety valve to get out of the crisis,’ he said.
He said the anti-corruption campaign launched by Hazare has been hijacked by right-wing Hindu activists.
‘RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh) activists have been participating in the movement. And the attitude of Anna has been one of justifying the past history of Hindu communal forces,’ Panikkar said, referring to Hazare lauding Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi’s developmental efforts.
He alleged that Modi has in the past targetted the Muslim minority of Gujarat. ‘Development is comprehensive and you cannot have a section kept away from the process.’
Bhatt too objected to some people comparing Hazare with Mahatma Gandhi and Jaya Prakash Narayan. ‘You cannot claim to be fighting against corruption but neglect communalism. Being apolitical, Anna could praise Modi for development, but ignored his moral problem.’
Shabnam Hashmi, who had earlier also objected to Hazare’s praise for Modi, alleged that the literature distributed near Jantar Mantar where the social reformer was on fast was anti-minority.
‘One wonders if this (campaign) has been launched with an ulterior motive. Suddenly the talk of the Sangh terror network has disappeared.’
In a joint press statement issued later, they noted that there was nothing that the Lokpal would bring to bear in the form of greater sense of transparency and accountability in the system ‘than what the existing institutions have achieved or not achieved’.
‘For that, a necessary condition is the creation of a social consciousness which would decisively disapprove and reject the culture of favouritism and nepotism.’
