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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Satyagraha vs nuisance

Satyagraha vs nuisance

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published Published on Dec 29, 2011   modified Modified on Dec 29, 2011

-The Indian Express

The Bombay high court delivered a telling summary of all that’s wrong with Anna Hazare’s India Against Corruption, as it refused their request for a discount on the rent of the MMRDA grounds in Mumbai, where they have planned a public fast over their dissatisfaction with the Lokpal bill.

The court spoke up for the primacy of Parliament in clear, clinching terms. “We cannot allow parallel canvassing” when the Lokpal bill is still in Parliament — and if they did so, it would be undermining Parliament, said the bench. It pointed out that nobody knew what final form the bill would take, given that it was still to be discussed and refined by Parliament. What, then, was the point of agitating now? The court said that Hazare was free to spread his message from home, instead of demanding the MMRDA grounds as though it was his due. It also punctured the IAC’s grand and self-important rhetoric, asking how the nation’s interest was involved in their highly specific complaints. “It might be satyagraha for you, but for some other faction, it may be a nuisance,” it said — in other words, for all their delusions, Team Anna is not larger than any other citizen group in this diverse nation. And if anyone has the right to speak of the national interest, it is a freely elected legislature and government.

The court’s rebuke got to the nub of the issue — the gulf between Team Anna’s magnificent concept of itself and their rather limited agenda, their conviction that their own grouse should be heard over everyone else’s, and their casual disregard for the rules that bind everyone else. Whether it is Arvind Kejriwal’s extended study leave and debts owed to the government he abandoned, or IAC’s insistence that they should get a throwaway deal on a public maidan, they seem to think that they can bend the rules because they are in service of some higher call. Demanding free run of the grounds, Team Anna had argued: “They (MMRDA authorities) cannot equate us with rock concerts and exhibitions. This is an irrational classification between an unequal and an equal. We are not for profit-making but for the fundamental rights of the people of India.” The Bombay high court’s remarks get at this very “more-elect-than-the-elected” delusion, as it told IAC that they were free to express their perspective from their own platforms, but the “people of India” speak through the lawmakers they voted in.

The Indian Express, 26 December, 2011, http://www.indianexpress.com/news/satyagraha-vs-nuisance/891957/


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