Birth Pangs of Swaraj

Birth Pangs of Swaraj

Arwind Kejriwals disruptive approach to reimagining Indias democracy has generated a major controversy in India. The extent of this controversy can be gauged by a sense of alarm expressed by President Pranab Mukherjees in his republic day address where he warned, "populist anarchy" cannot be a substitute for governance. The term "anarchy" refers to a society without a publicly enforced government. Used in this sense, anarchy may or may not be intended to imply political disorder or lawlessness within a society. Many anarchists have challenged attitudes similar to the one expressed in President Mukherjees address that an anarchy is synonymous with 'civil war.

What has escaped media attention is that there are forms of anarchy that attempt to avoid the use of coercion, violence, force and authority, while still producing a productive and desirable society. Gandhis concept of Swaraj is essentially an example of anarchy without coercion, violence, force and authority. Swaraj warrants a stateless society; according to Gandhi, the overall impact of the state on the people is harmful. He called the state a "soulless machine" which, ultimately, does the greatest harm to mankind. The raison d'etre of the state is that it is an instrument of serving the people. But Gandhi feared that in the name of molding the state into a suitable instrument of serving people, the state would

abrogate the rights of the citizens and arrogate to itself the role of grand protector and demand abject acquiescence from them. This would create a paradoxical situation where the citizens would be alienated from the state and at the same time enslaved to it which according to Gandhi was demoralizing and dangerous. The politicianpolice-criminal nexus Arwind Kejriwal was protesting against is in fact the anti-people manifestation of the state Gandhi had in mind. It is not surprising therefore that while mainstream media and some civil liberties and womens rights groups have focused on Somnath Bharatis behavior in allegedly leading a mob for a raid on alleged peddlers of drugs and sex trade racket in the Khirki area of Delhi, the local residents are coming out in support of Somnath Bharatis actions and AAPs exposing the nexus between the Delhi police and the criminals. I want to further add that the claims of African women have not been verified yet. The videos from the media and those released by the AAP do not support the claims of the women that Bharati led a mob or an assault on them. The matter must be investigated through independent and impartial judicial inquiry. Most local citizens attribute polices refusal to follow Somnath Bharatis orders to connivance between the police and local drug and sex trade. If, through proper inquiry Somnath Bharati or other people are proved guilty, they should face the legal consequences. Regardless of the outcome of the inquiry moral leadership and disciplined management of crowds is needed in grass roots activism.

In March 1918, Gandhiji led a Satyagraha for peasants of Kheda. While in April, he appealed for a nationwide hartal protecting the enactment of the barbarous Rowlatt Act. However violence broke out and for the first time Gandhiji had to suspend the Satyagraha calling it a Himalayan miscalculation. In 1920, Gandhiji was elected the president of the All India Home Rule League. He urged a resolution for Satyagraha campaign of non co-operation. Gandhiji decided upon an experiment of mass civil disobedience at Bardoli in 1922. He had to suspend the campaign owing to the outbreak of violence at Chauri Chaura. Gandhiji realized that a peaceful agitation could only be led by trained Satyagrahis. As the Aam Aadmi party pursues its mission towards replacing the current corrupt system of governance with a participatory model, it needs to engage resources in training its cadres and leaders in the morality, legality and discipline of bringing about change. I would consider Somnath Bharati case an aberration in a movement that is genuinely reflecting the frustrations and aspirations of millions of suffering Indians who see in the current political establishment an exploitative machine and an era of slavery that needs to be disbanded and replaced with a more participatory form of governance.

In his thesis Hind Swaraj Gandhi has clarified, In South Africa. I came in contact with every known Indian anarchist in London. Their bravery impressed me, but I feel that their zeal was misguided. I felt

that violence was no remedy for Indias ills, and that her civilization required the use of a different and higher weapon for self-protection.

Gandhi was a mass leader, a visionary, and had the capacity to invent symbols that would capture mass imagination and inspire people with a vision of a non-violent revolution. He inspired popular imagination by organizing Salt Satyagraha, inventing Charkha, propagating use of Khadi. He introduced into the popular vernacular concepts such as Satyagraha, Harijan and of course- Swaraj. Even his recommendation to make Mohamed Ali Jinnah the first prime minister of undivided India was a symbolic masterstroke that did not go well with the congress leadership.

The core of Gandhis vision resonated with the concept of anarchy. Being an expert in semantics, he was able to lend a positive affordance to the idea of anarchy by calling it Swaraj. Driving an entire nation towards an anarchist utopia required the moral stature, mass reverence, organizational discipline and conceptual palatability. Gandhis genius in crafting narratives could alone make anarchy palatable to the nations imagination.

The concept of Swaraj is also echoed in the idea of convivial society envisioned by another anarchist, Ivan Illich. In his book Tools for Conviviality (1973) Ivan Illich envisioned a modern society of responsibly limited tools. Illich believed that, Scientific discoveries can be used in at least two opposite ways. The first leads to

specialization of functions, institutionalization of values and concentration of power and turns people into accessories of bureaucracies or machines. The second enlarges the range of each persons competence, control and initiative, limited only by other individuals claims to an equal range of power and freedom. Illich believes that in a convivial society, People will rediscover the value of joyful sobriety and liberating austerity only if they relearn to depend on each other rather than on energy slaves. German philosopher Immanuel Kants description of four types of governance explains anarchy in relation to other forms of government. 1. Law and freedom without force (anarchy), 2. Law and force without freedom (despotism), 3. Force without freedom and law (barbarism), and 4. Force with freedom and law (republic). AAPs vision of Swaraj, contrary to the media projection DOES NOT subscribe to either despotism or barbarism. It aims at replacing the republic of India with Swaraj, where self-rule could be established without requiring the force of the government. The recent agitation in Delhi has brought to the surface establishments panic reaction the idea of Swaraj because it threatens control being currently welded by established political class and challenges their established methods of winning elections and governance. First of all, compared to many other street agitations, the agitation in Delhi was of a much smaller scale and a lot less threatening to the government. It is not unusual for political parties to engage in mass agitations to turn public opinion against the government of the time. To proclaim that the decision with regard to

bringing police under the command of Delhi government should have been discussed and resolved within the chambers of Delhi assembly or in consultation with the central government, and that the AAP was wrong in resorting to agitations is hypocritical of the Congress and the BJP. Agitations are necessary for forcing governments to open their eyes to pressing issues faced by people.

Jayprakash Narayan gave a call for Total Revolution in response to Mrs. Indira Gandhis totalitarian and corrupt rule. Sensing her predisposition to assume absolute power he even went to the extent of appealing to the armed forces to disregard her orders if she ordered them to resort to violence against the opposition. At the time, the congress government accused JP of treason. However, within a few weeks of this accusation, Mrs. Gandhi proved JP right by imposing a state of emergency and pushing India into a period of autocracy.

After the Janata Party Government assumed power, Sanjay Gandhi initiated back door manipulations to bring about a split in the Janata Party. At the same time, he resorted to street agitations to revitalize a demoralized congress party.

The Bharatiya Janata Partys Ram Janmabhoomi movement, especially the march to Ayodhya which led to demolishing of the Babri Masjid, is another example of a party resorting to the streets, and engaging in a criminal act (unlike the demonstration by Kejriwal

in Delhi) to capture power. While the AAP has the ultimate goal of transcending the vote bank politics with participatory democracy where every individuals regardless of his/her religion, caste, creed, color or gender had equal opportunity to participate in governance, both the BJP and the Congress party have gone to the extend of presiding over genocide (in 1984 and 2002) of minorities in order to consolidate power. In my view AAPs approach to Swaraj shows greater promise, over the discredited political class against which the youth have risen in response to the call for change first by Anna Hazare and then by the AAP.

Some people suggest that Arwind Kejriwal is taking India back. That he is bringing back socialist ideologies at a time when India has already embraced Liberalization and Globalization under successive UPA and NDA governments. The truth is- the suffering masses in India, even those from urban India, are flocking to AAP because they find Indias democracy being subverted to the interests of commercial enterprise in the era of liberalization and local capacities being undermined. Corruption has continued to grow while the new symbols of prosperity- Malls and Global Brands- induce people to follow their greed.

The youth is behind the AAP because they have a different worldview. They are not indoctrinated by old ideologies. They care less about vote bank politics. They have access to the Internet and have got accustomed to the Open Source model of contributing their

own ideas for a larger good. Crowd sourcing has become a reliable method of finding patterns in peoples needs and aspirations, more reliable than any expert opinion. In this background the youth are less loyal to centralized control and delivery mechanism and more tuned into the fuzzy space of collaboration and co-creation.

Eric Schmidt, Founder of Google describes this phenomenon as The Internet is the first thing that humanity has built that humanity doesn't understand, the largest experiment in anarchy that we have ever had. Anarchy works. It will challenge and disrupt the power centers but will unleash a new area of Convivial Society of Ivan Illich's imagination and turn India into a Swaraj of Gandhis dreams.

The real opportunity for the AAP is to put in place an HR mechanism that can help guide the participants of this revolution with a moral, disciplined and inspiring framework.