Om Puri's uncivil talk lets down Anna's moral crusade

The strength of Anna Hazare’s crusade against corruption was always the moral force that he commanded. The man captured the imagination of an entire nation with his Gandhian protest – first in April and now for the past 12 days – and inspired lakhs of people across India, who normally don’t associate themselves with street politics, to come out and be counted. That moral high ground that he claimed as someone who is incorruptible is what compelled even his trenchant critics in the UPA government and the Congress party to offer grudging expressions of regret when they shot themselves in the foot with their intemperate remarks against Anna. It is what prompted even the head of the government that had him jailed in Tihar Jail to “salute” him from the floor of Parliament. [caption id=“attachment_70783” align=“alignright” width=“380” caption=“Actor Om Puri’s ill-chosen invective makes it difficult for Anna Hazare’s supporters to defend the movement that otherwise has much to be proud of. PTI”]  [/caption] Even those who disagree with the resort to fast as a means of political protest concede that his contribution to sharpening the national focus on setting up an anti-corruption agency is unmatched. And with his persistent calls to his supporters at Ramlila grounds to always remain peaceful in their agitation, Anna has in many ways rewritten the idiom of political protests. Yet, as his 12-day fast appears to be coming to an end – with Parliament set to debate the Jan Lokpal provisions today and perhaps pass a resolution that will address Anna’s three core concerns –Anna Hazare’s own band of enthusiastic supporters are, with their ill-chosen words, knocking him off the high moral ground he has thus far deservedly claimed for himself. Two particular speeches at the Ramlila Grounds on Friday – one by actor Om Puri and the other by Kiran Bedi – have drawn criticism even from supporters of Anna Hazare and forced Team Anna on the defensive. Om Puri, who has played many firebrand roles in films, appeared to be eager to feed off the popular disdain for career politicians, but crossed the line with his ill-chosen rhetoric . Among other things, Om Puri said of MPs and politicians: “Yeh anpadh hain… Aadhe se zyaada MP ganwaar hain…" (They are illiterate. More than half the MPs are country bumpkins.) “Yeh MPs kya karte hain? Paanch saal tak aish karte hain, lootate hain desh ko… main jaanta hoon inko, inke gharon mein kya hai” (What do the MPs do? They enjoy the five years, loot the country. I know them, I know what they have in their homes.) Om Puri then turned on mediapersons too, noting that some of them had been exposed in the Niira Radia tapes last year as people who were cogs in a monumentally corrupt political ecosystem. Somewhat bizarrely, he launched into a personal and distasteful (and wholly irrelevant) attack on NDTV editor Barkha Dutt. As an antidote for the entry of uneducated country bumpkins into politics, Om Puri suggested that anyone who aspired for electoral office should be made to take an exam – and only those who secured 60 per cent marks should be allowed to contest! Although diehard supporters of Anna’s campaign are celebrating Om Puri for “saying it like it is”, the response of many more people is one of disgust. Likewsie on Friday, Kiran Bedi – one of the core members of Team Anna – appeared to get carried away by her own rhetoric and virtually incited the crowd at Ramlila Grounds to hound out a couple of MPs who had come to the venue. (More details here.) Even other members of Team Anna were evidently embarrassed by Kiran Bedi’s motormouth indiscretions, and although she later claimed that her speech was a manifestation of the “frustration against corruption”, she was conspicuously missing from the team of Anna’s representatives who held a late night meeting with minister Salman Khurshid, who has been the interlocutor from the government side. Sure, all these are mere atmospherics, and shouldn’t detract from the larger campaign against corruption, which the government and the Congress appear to be doing their damnedest so derail – by shifting the goalpost away from an effective Lokpal Bill and putting the process on the slow track to nothingness. Yet, for a campaign that has much to be proud of in the way it conducted itself for so long, these outlier episodes are a sad pointer to the downward spiral in the level of rhetoric. They only end up limiting the space for middle-ground supporters to defend the methods of the movement.