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Economic & Political Weekly EPW july 23, 2011 vol xlvi no 30 39

What Anna Hazares Movementand Indias New Middle Classes

Say about Each OtherVinay Sitapati

I thank without implicating, in alphabetical

order: Atul Kohli, Devesh Kapur, Dinsha

Mistry, Kanta Murali, Lawrence Liang, Madhav

Khosla, Ramachandra Guha, S Ganesh,

Sandipto Dasgupta, Satyam Viswanathan,

Sudhir Sitapati and T S R Subramanian.

Vinay Sitapati ([email protected]) is alawyer and PhD candidate at the Department of

Politics, Princeton University, the United States.

Anna Hazares hunger strike

against corruption in April 2011

attracted disparate intellectual

strands from within the Indian

middle class. These strands

brought complementary skills tothe table. The neo-Gandhians

conferred legitimacy; India

Shining provided energy and

nances; and Legal Activists

helped navigate the legislative

path. The movement also

attracted the opprobrium of the

Independent Left. Understanding

these intellectual strands helps

explain the Anna Hazare

movement. Equally, the

movement sheds light on Indias

new middle classes and their

forms of political engagement.

On 5 April 2011, a 73-year-old man

in central Delhi stopped eating.

The man in question was Kisan

Baburao Hazare, and he was protesting the

Congress-led central governments lacka-

daisical attempts to punish those guilty of

large-scale corruption.1 His specic demand

was that civil society should have a say

in drafting a stringent anti-corruption

law, the Lokpal Bill. The government draft

was an eyewash, he claimed; outside partici-

pation was the only way to ensure an anti-

corruption law with any teeth. Hazare,

Anna to his followers, was by no means

the only man on a hunger strike there.

But he was onto something. While the

government was drowning in a ood of

corruption scandals most prominently,

the 2G spectrum allocation controversyand the Commonwealth Games asco

Anna Hazares perfectly timed protest

managed to ride the wave. A throng of civic

activists, movie stars, and well-heeled

supporters from the urban middle classes

took his side.2 Though estimates of its

popularity are hard to gauge, it is fair to say

that the Anna Hazare movement spread

beyond Delhi and to the rest of urban

India, which is why the Congress Party

soon capitulated. On 8 April the govern-

ment agreed that ve members, chosen by

Anna Hazare, would be part of the Lokpal

Bill drafting committee.

Neither Anna Hazares methods nor the

cause were particularly original. Yoga guru

Baba Ramdev had previously fasted on the

corruption issue; he fasted again soon after

Anna Hazares fast ended. The move to

enact an effective anti-corruption bill also

has an old genesis. In the 1960s itself, the

idea of the Lokpal was suggested by the

rst Administrative Reforms Commission.Even before Anna Hazares fast, Aruna Roy

and other civil society members had been

involved in drafting an anti-corruption law.

Besides, as of this essays writing, the

gains from Anna Hazares fast are in

peril, with sharp disagreements between

government and civil society represent-

atives on the drafting committee threat-ening to imperil consensus over a Bill.

Yet, the fact that the movement got even

this far needs explaining.

Who did the Anna Hazare movement

consist of? The ve civil society members

on the drafting committee are lawyers

Prashant Bhusan and Shanti Bhushan (the

latter a former union law minister), (retired)

Supreme Court judge and current Loka-

yukta of Karnataka Santosh Hegde, Right

to Information (RTI) activist Arvind Kejri-

wal, along with Gandhian Anna Hazare

himself. All are middle class icons. Other

civic activists include former police ofcer

Kiran Bedi, and religious and spiritual

leaders Swami Agnivesh, Sri Sri Ravi

Shankar and Baba Ramdev. The foot-

soldiers of the Anna Hazare movement

were educated and urbane. The methods

used Twitter updates, SMS campaigns,

candlelight vigils and media management

also suggest that Hazare was able to

re the idealism of 21st century Indiasburgeoning middle class.

The Indian middle class is hardly mono-

lithic; its economic interests hardly homo-

geneous. A much cited study put the mid-

dle class at 50 million people, roughly 5%

of the population.3 More expansive deni-

tions show that 62% of all Indian house-

holds are middle class. If income is a ckle

way of measuring the middle class, focus-

ing on middle class values can also be

treacherous territory. An estimate using

higher education as a yardstick made by the

political scientist, Devesh Kapur, was that

30 million households, one-eighth of the

total population, were middle class in 2010

(Kapur 2010: 147). Another value-based

denition, by sociologist Andre Beteille,

focuses on occupation status and non-

manual work (Beteille 2002: 76). From the

many studies on the subject, it is possible

to tentatively conclude that the Indian

middle class comes from varied economic

backgrounds, constitutes a relatively smallpercentage of the population, and is slightly

easier to dene in terms of values.

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july 23, 2011 vol xlvi no 30 EPW Economic & Political Weekly40

This heterogeneity in income and values

results in a variety of intellectual strands

within the middle class. Differing middle

class activisms thus come with their own

visions, constituencies, and methods. The

Narmada Bachao Andolan, Justice for

Jessica campaign, and PIL activism are all

middle class-driven. Yet they differ radi-

cally from each other. What was unique

about the Anna Hazare movement was

that diverse middle class activisms were

able to craft a campaign that appealed to

all their interests.

This essay presents a typology of Indias

four middle class intellectual strands of

political activism (Figure 1). Three of them what I call Gandhigiri, India Shining, and

Legal Activism broadly endorsed the Anna

Hazare movement, even if some quibbled

over details in the draft law (Table 1). A

fourth middle class strand the Independ-

ent Left decried Hazare; they were lone

dissenters within the middle classes. This

by no means suggests that theirs was the

only critique; but other criticisms of the

bill were by lone intellectuals, not repre-

sentative of a middle class strand.

A few caveats: rst, this is less a story

about class, more an intellectual history.

For those unsure of the middle class origins

of these strands, the essay still stands as

delineating four intellectual strands of

civil society engagement in politics. Second,

this essay employs what German social

theorist Max Weber called an Ideal Type.

The point is not that every category is

hermetically sealed and all-explaining, but

that it is analytically useful. This essay is

also limited to political activism of themiddle class variety, making no claim to

the other mobilisations dalit movements,

to give the most obvious example. I hope

that an analysis of middle class intellectual

strands as well as the Anna Hazare move-

ment creates a virtuous cycle in which the

one helps shed light on the other.

Legal Activism

Two members of the Lokpal drafting com-

mittee are the lawyers Prashant Bhushan

and his father Shanti Bhushan; a third is

former Supreme Court judge Santosh

Hegde. It is also telling that nationwide

revulsion against corruption has been

converted into legal text, with debatesaround clauses and sections. When Anna

Hazare was accused of nepotism for

appointing a father-son duo, he argued that

At present, the committee needs [legal]

experts who can draft a stronger bill.4

This legal tinge to middle class political

engagement rst came about in the after-

math of the 1975-77 Emergency. It involved

middle class litigants and judges who

reinterpreted the Constitution to increase

the number of those who could access the

courts, the grounds on which they could

claim constitutional protection against the

State, and the range of remedies available

to the courts. I term this Legal Activism.

That movement, which begun in the early

1980s has now expanded to a point where

almost all political questions the Ayodhya

dispute, the 2G spectrum scam, or the

appointment of the central vigilance com-

missioner (CVC) nd their way to the

Supreme Court.

The Emergency is crucial to under-standing Legal Activism and the person-

alities of the three lawyers on the Lokpal

Bill drafting committee. The run-up to the

Emergency was a prolonged tussle between

the judiciary and Prime Minister Indira

Gandhi. The prime minister responded to

unfavourable court verdicts by superseding

Table 1: Summary of Middle-cla ss Intellectual Strands of Political Engagement

Middle- Class Strand Ideology Friend of Enemy of Weapons View on Anna Hazare Movement

Legal Activism Commitment to the All those who enjoy Violators of fundamental Writ Petitions Broadly supportive,

creation of rights through de jure constitutional rights Public Interest Litigation though may quibble over

the Supreme Court. rights Right to Information legal details Growth after the expansion Application

of socio-economic rights

by the Supreme Court

since the 1980s

India Shining Improvement in the Other middle class Ineff icient politicians, Facebook Strongly support

(Corporate delivery of services by the Indians who want this bureaucrats Candlelight vigils

middle-class) State; better governance SMS campaigns

Gandhigiri Stress on personal probity Traditionally rural poor, Evil, defined as a Hunger strikes

(Neo-Gandhians) and moral clarity now urban middle class personal vice Rural journeys

Broadly nationalist Dharnas

Rasta roko Support

Independent Left State is the source of all The marginalised of all State power Street protests Oppose

hegemony and domination identities caste, class, Blog posts

Disagreement within the gender, sexuality, etc

strand on whether toengage with the state or

discard it altogether

Conservative Judicial activities

judiciary

Nehruvian India Shiningmiddle class

Gandhian Gandhigiri

political vision

Marxist Left Independent Left

Shanti Bhushan, Prashant Bhushan,

Santosh Hegde, Arvind Kejriwal

Foot soldiers of the movement

Anna Hazare

Oppose Anna Hazares movement

Figure 1: Summary of ArgumentIndian middle class intellectual strands Anna Hazare movement

post-emergency

post-liberalisation

post-liberalisation

post-emergency

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judges she did not like. The rst superses-

sion occurred a day after a politically un-

favourable judgment on land reform and

judicial review.5 Indira Gandhi superseded

the three judges who decided against the

State, to appoint a judge who had decided

in her favour.6 One of the judges superseded

was Justice K S Hegde, father of SantoshHegde. On 25 June 1975, Indira Gandhi

declared an Emergency and suspended

constitutional liberties. From the excesses

that followed, some within Indias Inde-

pendent Left (described later on) learnt that

the Indian state must be whittled down.

Indias Legal Activists drew the opposite

lesson: that a powerful Supreme Court

and an elaborate rights infrastructure was

the best guarantor against state excess.

No one exemplies this more than Shanti

Bhushan. In 1975, Indira Gandhis election

was struck down by the Allahabad High

Court. In his book The Case That Shook

India, Lokpal drafting committee member

Prashant Bhushan makes the now un-

controversial point that this was the casus

belli for her declaring the Emergency

(Bhushan 1978). The lawyer who argued the

case against Indira Gandhi was father

Shanti Bhushan. Soon after the Janata

government took power in 1977, it was

determined to undo the effects of IndiraGandhis judicial squelching. They chose

Shanti Bhushan as their law minister, and it

was in this capacity that he shepherded

the annulment of the 42nd amendment

and passed the 44thamendment, providing

protection to the judiciary and the bed-

rock for the activism that was to follow

(Rudolph and Rudolph 1981: 3).Soon after the Janata Partys reversal of

Indira Gandhis attempt to squelch judicial

activism came two legal innovations. The

rst was the creation of public interest liti-

gation (PIL) as a procedural tool. Any per-

son could now le a writ petition on behalf

of a disadvantaged group, alleging the

violation of fundamental rights by the

State. This expanded the power of activists,

often prodded by a sympathetic judiciary.

The second way was substantive: an

expansive interpretation of fundamental

rights created a host of socio-economic

rights that are not explicitly stated in the

Constitution. For a sense of how detailedthey were: the innovations included the

right of pavement dwellers to shelter, the

right to clean air, and more recently the

right to education rights that are not

explicitly stated as fundamental.

To this arsenal that Legal Activists used

to expand their power, the 2000s has given

them another. The RTI Act, 2005 provides

citizens with the ability to demand infor-

mation from the State. Arvind Kejriwal,one of the members of the Lokpal drafting

committee, is a prominent RTI activist. In

just one year, 2008, the NGO that he runs,

Parivartan, analysed 52,000 queries sent

under the RTI Act.7

Middle class judicial activism extends

beyond class interests. The socio-economic

rights of the 1980s and 1990s were aimed

at the marginalised. Besides, an array of left

activists have built on Legal Activism. One

such was the lawyer and former president

of the Peoples Union for Civil Liberties,

K G Kannabiran. He often defended the

legal rights of individuals charged with

crimes associated with Naxalism. When

he met this author in 2005, he narrated an

incident in the Andhra Pradesh High

Court. He was defending two charged

Naxalites in court, and the judge asked him:

Mr Kannabiran, you cite these constitu-

tional provisions in your clients defence.

Yet your clients themselves dont believe

in the Constitution. Is that not hypocrisy?Your Honour, Kannabiran replied, the

Constitution is a testament to our values,

not theirs; the Constitution does not limit its

majesty to only believers. It applies to all.

Legal Activists bring a unique skill to

the Lokpal Bill drafting process: they have

done it before. To give just one example, in

1993, after sustained activist litigation,

the Supreme Court expanded the phrase

right to life in Article 21 to include free

and compulsory education for all children

below 14.8 The nancial cost was estimated

at between Rs 54,000 crore and 73,000

crore per year for six years (Sitapati 2009).

Yet, in 2010, the central government went

ahead with The Right of Children to

Free and Compulsory Education Act 2010,

claiming that it was to further the Supreme

Courts directive.9

Legal Activists are broadly in favour of

the Anna Hazare movement, even if they

critique the substance of the movements

version of the Bill and the hysteria of thecandlelighters. Legal Activists have little

sympathy for elected representatives, seeing

the Supreme Court as their way to pass

legislation on the sly. In this, they share

contempt for elected institutions with India

Shining (and even the Independent Left).

What many Legal Activists like about the

Jan Lokpal Bill is that it converts a popular

crusade against corruption into legislation

with clauses and sub-clauses which they candebate over. This is also the origin of the

biggest criticism that Legal Activists have

against the Bill shoddy drafting, the poor

display of legal skill.10 It is a criticism

mirrored by The Hindu, whose editorials

valued the movement but criticised the

angularities of the civil society version of

the Bill.11 Yet these specic criticisms in no

way take away from their broad support for a

legal solution to the malaise of corruption.

The success of the Lokpal Bill is critically

contingent on the Legal Activists involved.

India Shining

The Bharatiya Janata Partys catchphrase

may have misred in the 2004 general

elections (Pati 2004: 2082-83), but India

Shining captures a mood and a class that

is undeniably true. The birth of India

Shining as a middle class movement is

closely linked to the opening of the Indian

economy, rst in the early 1980s when

curbs on internal capital were reducedand then in 1991 when foreign capital was

allowed to enter India.12 I term this new

Indian-middle class, the most prominent

foot soldiers of the Anna Hazare movement,

India Shining. Unlike the BJPs all-

encompassing phrase, India Shining as

used here believes that corporate India

is shining and some of that shine can rub

off on Indias decaying state.

The corporate and privately-employed

members of India Shining are better under-

stood by contrasting it with its predecessor,

the Nehruvian middle class. The Nehruvian

middle class grew around the Indian state,

placed a high premium on education, and

was conspicuously austere in lifestyle.

India Shining has thrived outside of the

State, in the private enclaves of India Inc. A

2005-06 study found that of Indias current

middle class, 56-62% is privately employed

(Sridharan 2008: 2). Unlike its frugal pred-

ecessor, India Shining is conspicuously con-

sumptive (Fernandes and Heller 2006: 3),celebrating material wealth and success.

Paradoxically for a group so suspicious of

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the State, India Shining wears its national

identity on its sleeve. If the icon for the

Nehruvian middle class was the IAS ofcer,

India Shining icons are Indian companies

(Tata, Infosys, Wipro), manned by Indian-

educated professionals, that have thrived

post-1990. Their simple argument is that if

Indians can succeed in building top qualitycompanies, why cannot they rebuild Indias

moribund state?

India Shining virulently dislikes the

political class. This dislike has three causes.

The rst is governance. India Shining values

clean roads, regular electricity, and law and

order something that is not the forte of

the worlds largest democracy. The second

cause is that ever since the silent revolution

in which subaltern castes captured state

power in the 1960s in south India and the

1980s in north India (Jaffrelot 2002), India

Shining has felt disenfranchised from the

State. Third, given the widespread inequality

in the distribution of economic benets

post-liberalisation, political entrepreneurs

have made it a point to play up urban India

vs rural Bharat. The result is that India

looks outside politics to succeed.

Much is written about the middle class

capture of Indian institutions, whether the

media (Fernandes and Heller 2006: 3),

Bollywood or even foreign policy (Jaffrelot2009). There is some truth to this. A good

place to gauge what India Shining is think-

ing at any given point is through the pages

of The Times of India. Since the worlds

largest English-language daily prides itself

in its commercial acumen, it is nimbly in

sync with the aspirations of India Shining.

The Times of India is also the mirror to the

way mainstream English-language news-

papers are headed. Whether it is the

campaign to bring Justice for Jessica or

India against Corruption exemplied by

the Anna Hazare movement, Indias media

and lm industry increasingly mirror the

anxieties of India Shining.

The attraction of the Jan Lokpal Bill to

India Shining is obvious. India Shining prizes

efciency. Not for them is the abstraction

of a politics of dignity. The State is about

the delivery of goods, something which

corruption eats at. Since all of India Shining

pays income tax, they see corruption as

contractual violation, the theft of theirmoney. India Shining is also deaf to the

two biggest criticisms of the Bill. Since

they do not see politicians as legitimate to

begin with, the unrepresentative nature of

the Anna Hazare movement does not trou-

ble them. They are also not worried by an

all-powerful Lokpal. Critics see in this a

troubling acquiescence in authoritarian-

ism that harks back to middle class sup-

port for the Emergency (Vanaik 2002).India Shining is the least self-reective

of all middle class strands. The other three

are aware of their privileged origins and

claim to speak for a larger group. But India

Shining simply assumes that its interests

are shared by all Indians. What they lack

in subtlety, India Shining makes up with

energy. Many corporate executives have

devoted considerable time to the move-

ment. A telecom company volunteered to

set up a service in which if a mobile user

called a toll-free number, she would then

receive free alerts on the movement.13

From mustering up the energy to gather

around India Gate to organising money

and Facebook pages, the aws and am-

boyance of the Anna Hazare movement

presents a psycho-portrait of Indias new

middle class: India Shining.

Gandhigiri

The public face of the movement, Anna

Hazare, describes himself as a Gandhian.His social movement, centred in Ralegaon

Siddhi in rural Maharashtra, harks back to

Gandhis Phoenix farm and Sabarmati

ashram. Many of his campaigns, against

alcoholism or untouchability, make the

Gandhian connect between social reform

and political emancipation. He preaches

non-violence, is comfortable with religious

idioms (a portrait of Bharat Mata hungbehind him while he fasted for the Jan

Lokpal Bill),14 and makes personal probity

the centrepiece of the campaign. Yet, while

the movement claims Gandhis morals and

employs his methods, its political vision is

as far as can be from Gandhi himself. Ironi-

cally, this is what makes it so successful in

21st century India. Understanding this neo-

Gandhian activism, Gandhigiri is key to

understanding the Anna Hazare movement.

Two makers of modern India were quick

to distance themselves from Gandhis idea

of a state. As has been well chronicled,

Jawaharlal Nehrus vision of a modern,

centralised, powerful Indian state that could

bring about both economic prosperity as

well as social justice was anathema to

Gandhis union of village republics. Gandhi,

an early critic of modernity, was disillu-

sioned with the violence and illegitimacy of

the State. Independent India is a testament

to exactly the reverse impulse: of a central-

ised state driving large development projectsin the name of the greater common good.

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latest by 12

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The other maker of modern India deeply

critical of Gandhi was B R Ambedkar, and his

criticism was on substance as well as on

methods. Ambedkar saw the village as a

cesspool, a den of ignorance, narrow-

mindedness, and communalism, viewing

modernity with individual rights as the

sole guarantee of social justice in India. Inthis, he agreed with Nehru. Ambedkar was

also critical of Gandhian methods, argu-

ing in his famous Grammar of Anarchy

speech before the Constituent Assembly in

1949 that: ...we must abandon the method

of civil disobedience, non-cooperation and

satyagraha... where constitutional methods

are open, there can be no justication for

these unconstitutional methods. These

methods are nothing but the Grammar of

Anarchy... (Ambedkar 1949).

Yet, Gandhian activism survives at a

tangent to mainstream politics in India.

To give but the most prominent examples,

Vinoba Bhaves bhoodan movement in the

early 1950s, in which owners donated their

property to the landless, employed Gandhian

methods for land reform. Narmada Bachao

Andolan founder Medha Patkar self-identi-

es as a Gandhian, and both her vision

against development and methods of non-

violent protest evoke Gandhian satyagraha.

If these movements are any indication,middle class Gandhigiri sees reform as being

less about changing structure, more about

changing hearts and minds. As historian

Ramachandra Guha (2001) put it: Inside

every thinking Indian, there is a Marxist

and Gandhian struggling for supremacy.

Since Gandhigiri is motivated by a moral

vision, it focuses on the social space rather

than the political. Gandhigiri is also

attuned to rural transformation. As the social

psychologist Ashis Nandy (2001) argues, the

need to re-engage with his mythic rural

roots constitutes the Indians unsure journey

to urban modernity.

This ideal type prcis argues that

Gandhian activism works outside the State,

is less interested in corruption, and sees

little in common with Indias rising new

middle class. Yet, the Anna Hazare move-

ment does precisely the opposite. I argue

that this represents a new kind of Gandhian

movement, in which Gandhian techniques

(though not ideology) are used to representurban interests. This is best captured in

the Gandhigiri made popular by the lm

Lage Raho Munnabhai. It combines Gandhis

moral certitude with his public tactics,

leaving out his larger political vision. To

the extent the Anna Hazare and his move-

ment are Gandhian, this is how they must

be understood. What makes Gandhigiri so

powerful in 21st century India is its compat-

ibility with the agendas of India Shining.In return for the legitimacy and articula-

tion India Shining gets, it provides the foot

soldiers and the nances that Gandhians

have lacked. It also enables an urban middle

class anxiety to gain rural sympathy, in

much the same way Mohandas Gandhi con-

verted the elitist Indian National Congress

into a peasant-supported mass movement

in the 1920s (Chatterjee 1986: 85-131).

Independent Left

To these three middle class intellectual

strands that support the Anna Hazare

movement, a dissenting strand must be

mentioned. This is the Independent Left

unafliated with any party which arose

from party Marxism but is now critical

of both its theory and practice. Unlike the

Communist Party of India (Marxist), which

has given qualied support to Anna Hazare,

categorising the Independent Left is dif-

cult because there is considerable hetero-

geneity with the strand. At considerable riskof simplication, two variants can be iden-

tied, each resting uneasily with the other.

The primary one is academic, found in

humanities departments in India and the

United States.15 The other variant are the

civil libertarians on the left: the Mazdoor

Kisan Shakti Sangathan (MKSS), for instance.

As widely as they differ on the role of vio-

lence and democracy, both variants unite

in their suspicion of the State, sympathy

for a variety of consciousness other than

class, and sharp criticism of party Marxism.

The growth of the Independent Left is

linked to the crisis with the Indian Left,

culminating in the Emergency. The Emer-

gency destroyed any remnants, in the middle

class mind, of the Nehruvian utopia of a

modern developmental state a moment so

wonderfully captured by the lmHazaaron

Khwaishein Aisi. As the political scientist

Rajni Kothari (1984: 216-24) writes, the

early 1980s thus saw a period of sustained

disillusionment with Indian democracy. Ifthe gaps in classical Marxism were exposed

in the 1970s by the horrors of the Emergency,

changing strands in electoral politics also

played a role. This period saw the emer-

gence of Other Backward Classes (OBC)

and dalit political movements (Heller

2000: 484-519), in addition to the move-

ment of Muslims away from the Congress.

Marxist thought found it hard to account

for why the marginalised chose to mobi-lise around identities other than class.

Another reason for the growing popularity

of the Independent Left in the middle

class imagination is the emergence of

post-structuralist thought within south

Asian studies in the US. Sociologist Vivek

Chibber (2006: 378-83) argues that this in

turn inuenced the Indian academy.

The Independent Left, in both their

original European as well as Indian avatar,

are exclusively of the urban, educated,

middle classes. In the 1970s, a sizeable

middle class attitude in India was Marxist.

Today, few in the middle class preach

or practise orthodox Marxism. The Inde-

pendent Left, untainted by the compro-

mises of electoral politics and catering more

directly to contemporary middle class

anxieties, is more attractive.

Amidst a middle class that vocally

supports the Anna Hazare movement, the

Independent Left is a lone voice of dissent.

Their rst criticism of Anna Hazaresversion of the Bill is that vesting so much

police power in the Lokpal risks misuse.

Second, some within the Independent Left

are suspicious of any activism against

corruption as an attempt to correct state

inefciencies instead of looking beyond

it. Third, the Independent Left hates India

Shining as the selsh ill-informed utter-

ances of a ruthless bourgeoisie. Lighting

candles at India Gate is the very picture of

glib middle class activism that repels them. 16

Conclusions

This essay tells us why the Anna Hazare

movement was so potent. It was able to

employ Gandhian motifs to popularise an

urban middle class worry that has had,

until now, less currency in the rest of

India. The strong legal tinge to the move-

ment and the legal credentials of the

activists in the movement ensures that it

is able to suggest tangible legislative changes

in terms of clauses and sections. The energyand acumen of India Shining gave the

movement its media-savviness and heft.

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PERSPECTIVES


This has some parallels with the Indian

national movement where lawyers were

able to navigate the tricky path to consti-

tutional democracy, the professional middle

class provided organisational skills, and

Gandhi was able to spread the liberalism

of the hitherto urban, elite Indian National

Congress to the peasantry. The unique-ness of the movement can also be judged

by the public reception to a subsequent fast

by the yoga guru, Baba Ramdev. Neither

backed by legal expertise nor by India

Shinings expertise and media savvy, his

movement zzled out as quickly as it began.

Intellectual Strands

The essay also tells us about middle class

intellectual strands in 21st century India.

First, it demonstrates the growing potency

ofLegalActivism. The tendency for demo-

cracies to convert political problems into

legal troubles has been chronicled else-

where (Hirschl 2004). The 2G spectrum

allocation and Commonwealth Games were

not plagued bythe absence of laws, but by

the absence of political will. Yet, the Anna

Hazare movement was able to use the

groundswell of public outrage these scams

generated to present a legal solution. Per-

haps, the middle class is most comfortable

with the rule of law solutions because itcircumscribes political discretion much as

the Supreme Court has demonstrated this

tension between the rule of law and politics.

Second, the Anna Hazare movement tells us

that India Shining is the most potent, most

effective kind of middle class strand that

exists in India, supplanting the values of

the traditional Nehruvian middle class.

With the growing economy, it is this mid-

dle class that will expand. The challenge

for those put off by their self-interest is to

convert their enthusiasm into something

larger. Third, the movement shows us that

far from being a traditional Gandhian of

the likes of Vinoba Bhave, Anna Hazare is

a neo-Gandhian, employing Gandhigiri.

He uses Gandhian motifs and methods,

without the Mahatmas political imagina-

tion. This means that Gandhigiri can be

harnessed for the demands of the urban

middle class, making it that much more

potent, if that much less legitimate.

Doubtless, the Anna Hazare movementtapped into an India weary with corrup-

tion, and it is unfair to reduce its support

to enclaves in urban India. Yet, the middle

class strands supporting the movement

give us pause. None of them have any

problem with the unrepresentative nature

of the movement or the draconian powers

given to the Lokpal. No matter how ear-

nest, Indias middle class has yet to view

the political class as legitimate, the partysystem as the main way to achieve pro-

grammatic changes. Until that happens,

middle class activism will be consciously

set up in opposition to electoral politics,

rather than as a potent force within it.

Notes

1 Associated Press, India: Hunger Striker ClaimsVictory, The New York Times, 8 April 2001.

2 For a representative sample of gushing news reportsat the time, see Anurag Kotoky and Henry Foy,Government under Pressure over Anna HazaresFast,Reuters, 7 April 2011; Durgesh Nandan Jha,Its a Fight to the Cinish for Citizens Rights:

Anna Hazare, The Times of India, 6 April 2011.

3 The denition they used was based on a disposableincome of Rs 1,00,000 to 2,00,00 a year, See TheBird of Gold: The Rise of Indias Consumer Market,

Mckinsey Global Institute (2007) available athttp://www.mckinsey.com/mgi/reports/pdfs/india_consumer_market/MGI_india_consumer_execu-tive_summary.pdf (viewed on 4th January 2010).

4 Agencies, Anna Hazare Contradicts Ramdev onLokpal Bill, The Indian Express, 10 April 2011.

5 Kesavananda Bharati vsState of Kerala, AIR 1973SC 1461.

6 The superseded judges were justices J M Shelat,K S Hegde and A N Grover. In the Kesavananda case, all three judges had held that there were basicfeatures of the Constitution which were not amend-

able by Parliament. Prime Minister Indira Gandhiappointed justice A N Ray in their place, a judgewho had taken Parliament s side in the judgment.

7 Times News Network, 33% Compliance to RTIOrders, The Times of India, 13 August 2010.

8 Unni Krishnan & Ors vs State of Andhra Pradesh, AIR 1993, SC 217.

9 Times News Network, RS Shows Its Concern forHistoric Right to Education Bill, The Times of

India, 21 July 2009.

10 Seema Chishti, Why the Hurry and Do We ReallyNeed More Laws Ask Legal Luminaries Activists,The Indian Express, 17 April 2011.

11 Editoria l, The Stand-off over Corrupt ion, TheHindu, 8 April 2011.

12 For the states pro-business drif t in the 1980s, seeAtul Kohli, State-Directed Development (CambridgeUniversity Press), 2004, 277-85. For a general over-

view, see D Rodrik and A Subramanian (2004), FromHindu Growth to Productivity Surge: The Mysteryof the Indian Growth Transition, unpublishedmimeo, Harvard University (http://ksghome.har-

vard.edu/~ drodrik/ IndiapaperdraftMarch2.pdf).

13 Seema Chishti, Jantar Mantar Core Group LostOut Last Year, Struck Back with Anna, The Indian

Express, 9 April 2011.

14 Press Trust of India, Hazares Associates Close toBJP, Says Digvijay,Deccan Chronicle, 15 April 2011.

15 This attitude was nurtured amidst the ruins ofwestern Europe in the aftermath of second world war.This disillusionment grew starker after the horrorsof the Stalinist state, long seen as the global vehicleof Marxist thought, were exposed. This intellectualcrisis within the Old Left grew to a full blown theo-retical response in the gay cafs of Paris with the

writings of deconstructionist Michel Foucault. By thetime of the student uprisings of 1968, the intellec-tual Left was moving away from orthodox Marxismto a post-modern, post-structuralist attitude. Two

ideas of the this New Left, constructed in oppositionto the Old Left, had crystalised: a deep suspicion ofthe modern state, and a move away from Marxs un-sexy focus on just class to the legitimisation of allkinds of marginalised/subaltern identities.

16 The Independent Left is by no means the onlyintellectual critique against the Jan Lokpal Bill.The political theorist Pratap Mehta is critical of themovements open scorn for electoral democracy(Mehta 2011).This liberal-constitutional position,best articulated by B R Ambedkars Grammar of

Anarchy speech referred to in this essay, also holdsfasting to be coercive and anti-democratic. AmongstEnglish-language papers, The Indian Expresseditorials were in line with this view (disclosure: I

was previously employed byThe Express). Yet thisargument rubs against the middle class grain; it

will be representative only when the Indian middleclass grows comfortable with the foundationallegitimacy of democratic politics. Until then, theIndependent Left will remain the Indian middleclass loudest and most articulate critique of itself.

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