Big breakfasts and lunch breaks make a mockery of Indian hunger strike tradition
Successors to Gandhi trivialise what was once independence leader ’s greatest weapon, writes Samanth Subramanian
It is a tradition Mahatma Gandhi used as a tool of non-violent protest against British oppression. The father of the nation’s longest fast lasted 21 days, quite a stretch compared with the 24 hours that Narendra Modi will go without food and drink today.
But the prime minister will nonetheless become the most important participant in India’s ongoing season of competitive fasting.
Mr Modi, who will be joined in his daylong fast by other parliamentarians of the Bharatiya Janata Party, said he would be protesting against the opposition Congress party’s behaviour in parliament.
The Congress, the BJP has claimed, disrupted proceedings so thoroughly during a recent budget session that it became the least productive since 2000. Just 1 per cent of time was spent on legislation in the lower house, and 6 per cent in the upper house, according to figures compiled by PRS Legislative Research, a New Delhi institute.
Mr Modi’s fast follows those by politicians over the past few weeks. Once Gandhi’s most potent weapon against the Raj, fasting has since become more of a gimmick, critics said.
On Monday, Rahul Gandhi, the Congress president, embarked on a daylong fast at Rajghat, Mahatma Gandhi’s memorial in Delhi. The fast, Rahul Gandhi said, was to protest against “the BJP’s oppressive ideology” and its violent policies against lower castes and minorities.
Last week, the cadre of the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK), the party that rules Tamil Nadu, observed a day-long fast to demand the state’s share of water from the Cauvery river flowing from Karnataka, to the north.
On Friday, politicians from Andhra Pradesh began an indefinite hunger strike in New Delhi, part of a campaign for the state to receive more financial grants from the federal government.
Between 1918 and 1948, Mahatma Gandhi fasted at least 15 times, in the hope that his moral force would quell religious riots, support striking mill workers, or protest against actions of the British.
The frequent use of the fast by Gandhi and other freedom fighters impressed itself upon the Indian imagination. The fast was non-violent and easy to organise, and Gandhi linked the rejection of food to the selfabnegation of his own ascetic lifestyle.
In those years, however, Gandhi had few political options. Circumstances in independent India, particularly for politicians who hold enormous power, are different.
“I take the view that [the protest fast] is not a legitimate form of political agitation when there are constitutional methods available,” said Nitin Pai, director of the Takshashila Institution, a Bengaluru think tank. Mr Pai recalled the statement of another freedom fighter, B R Ambedkar, the architect of India’s constitution.
After India became independent, Ambedkar argued that fasts and other techniques of protest belonged to the past. “These methods are nothing but the grammar of anarchy and the sooner they are abandoned, the better for us,” he said.
The daylong fast that has become a gambit for modern politicians is also markedly different from Gandhi’s indefinite fasts, during which he subsisted on only water or diluted lemon juice. In comparison, over the course of just one day, a fast becomes an exaggerated way to skip lunch.
Politicians have ensured that they are well fuelled nonetheless. Photographs showed several Congress officials tucking into a heavy breakfast before joining Rahul Gandhi in his fast on Monday. In Tamil Nadu, newspapers reported that AIADMK protesters were seen snacking surreptitiously; in one town, they even broke for lunch.
“It starts to become ridiculous,” said Mytili Kumar, a Chennai hydrologist who studies the state’s river systems and the use of their water. “The objective should have been to press the Modi government to release water from the Cauvery, as it’s supposed to.
“Instead, with this kind of fast, it has been turned into a sideshow,” she said. “It does nothing at all to put any sort of pressure on anyone.”
The objective should have been to press the Modi government to release water from the Cauvery, as it’s supposed to. Instead, with this kind of fast, it has been turned into a sideshow
MYTILI KUMAR
Hydrologist