To call Anna Hazare the 21st-century Gandhi, as some have started doing, is pure hyperbole, but many would see a similarity in their methods — in particular, in their resorting to fasts to achieve their objectives. This, however, is erroneous. Indeed, the fact that so many people consider Anna Hazare’s method to be similar to Gandhiji’s only indicates how little contemporary India remembers or understands Gandhiji. Gandhiji undertook 17 fasts in...

A Tamil economist, the late S. Guhan, used to say that Delhi was a capital in search of a country. I was reminded of that remark during the fortnight of May 29 to June 11, 2011. In that fortnight, if one watched the ‘national’ channels or read the ‘national’ newspapers, one would think all of India was involved in one way or the other with the ideas and practices of...

On June 12, Ravi Shankar Ratnam helped Ram Krishna Yadav resume eating after Yadav had fasted for a week. This wouldn’t have made the headlines of every Indian newspaper the next morning if it hadn’t been for the fact that both men had achieved a state of demi-divinity through the tried-and-tested process of Hindu name-inflation. Ram Krishna Yadav became Swami Ramdev when he took sanyas and after his extraordinary success...

There’s a bogey of news to show the complementary association of Anna Hazare and Baba Ramdev on the issue of corruption and black money. It seems as if both of them are fighting the same battle against the Congress-led regime and supplementing each other in their respective struggles. Both of them have emerged as the most visible faces of the contemporary civil society, pressurising the government to take crucial steps...

“Draft Lokpal Bill will be introduced in monsoon session of Parliament” Union Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee on Sunday accused social activists Anna Hazare and Baba Ramdev of trying to “dictate” terms to the Centre and “weakening” parliamentary democracy by threatening an indefinite fast to get their demands accepted. At a press conference here, Mr. Mukherjee also criticised the Bharatiya Janata Party for backing the anti-graft movement in a bid “to capture...