Food for thought: Why Baba Ramdev really wants to starve

When Bollywood starlets starve, it’s a diet. When our leaders do the same, we call it satyagraha. Size zero may be out in Tinseltown, but it’s back in vogue in Indian politics thanks to the runaway success of Anna Hazare’s recent hunger strike. As of now, anybody who is a somebody seems to be starving for a cause. Baba Ramdev is planning to kick off his malnourishment show in Delhi on 4 June. Anna himself is  threatening a return to his anorexic ways if the government dares to deny his most whimsical demands. Uma Bharti has been on an intermittent “indefinite fast” in Haridwar to protect Ganga mata, but no one seems to care. A reason perhaps why she plans to relocate her starvation antics to the capital, to Jantar Mantar, no doubt. In politics as in real estate, it’s all about location, location, location. Just ask Irom Sharmila who has been wasting away in protest of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act in distant Imphal for the past 11 years. [caption id=“attachment_18197” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“Baba Ramdev is planning to kick off his malnourishment show in Delhi on 4 June. Image: Reuters”]  [/caption] Over the past months, various Hazare naysayers have condemned the hunger strike as an immoral form of activism. “There is something deeply coercive about fasting unto death. When it is tied to an unparalleled moral eminence, as it is in the case of Anna Hazare, it amounts to blackmail,” wrote Pratap Bhanu Mehta in the Indian Express. In a widely circulated essay, Shuddhabrata Sengupta went further:

The current euphoria needs to be seen for what it is – a massive move towards legitimising a strategy of simple emotional blackmail – a (conveniently reversible) method of suicide bombing in slow motion. …The force of violence, whether it is inflicted on others, or on the self, or held out as a performance, can only act coercively. And coercion can never nourish democracy.

But much of this adjective-rattling misses the point. Did anyone seriously think Hazare was in serious mortal danger? That he would indeed waste away into nothingness amidst the sundials? Hunger strikes are the weapon of the important. They are less about suicide than wilfulness: I’m not going to eat! That kind of threat works only when it’s pulled by a toddler or a VIP.  It assumes the presence of an interested audience – be it of concerned parents, adoring supporters, or harried authorities — who care about when you had your last meal. Lots of nameless people go hungry in India; a number of them even die. But no one cares about the death of statistics. This is why ordinary people in dire circumstances rarely go on a hunger strike.  No one cares enough to stand around watching them die, or rather threaten to maybe, possibly die — but only if everything goes terribly wrong, and as a very last resort. To merit any kind of attention, the common man has to go the whole hog and actually kill him or herself. Hence, while Ramdev, Hazare et al threaten starvation, a Tariq Ahmad Rather sets himself, his wife, two sons and mother on fire at the Press Enclave in Srinagar: [caption id=“attachment_18194” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“Tariq Ahmad Rather set himself, his wife, two sons and mother on fire at the Press Enclave in Srinagar. Reuters”]  [/caption] “I have been driven to the wall. I have nothing to support my wife, mother and two sons. I had a shop in Lal Chowk from where I carried on a travel agent’s business for the last 15 years. I was evicted by the government and given alternative accommodation inside the tourist reception centre in the city but travel agents there did not allow me to enter there. I have been starving since then,” Rather said before trying to immolate himself and his family. The poor man was already starving, and not by choice. A hunger strike was, therefore, hardly likely to help. Committing suicide was the only remaining option, and not a good one at that. As the news report notes, “Immediately after the local photographers doused the flames, police arrived on the spot and arrested the five.” See how this works? When our leaders merely threaten suicide, it’s satyagraha. When ordinary Indians kill themselves, it’s just a crime. There are more criminals in the making in Katesar, a village in Uttar Pradesh being threatened by Mayawati’s ambitious development plans. The Varanasi Development Authority plans to acquire 121 hectares for a “cultural city” that will house “museums, private universities and complexes promoting art.” Desperate to stall this lofty vision that threatens not just their land but also their way of life, the farmers are threatening self-immolation. Is this emotional blackmail as well? A coercive violation of democratic norms? Or merely an acknowledgment of the obvious: their lives will never ever matter quite as much their death. The buzz in Delhi is that the  government is eager to appease Ramdev in an attempt to head off a sequel to the Jantar Mantar melodrama. He, however, seems determined to have his ‘satyagraha’ moment. God forbid he be denied the cinematic experience of hunger: up on a banner-strewn dais, surrounded by acolytes, devotees, and of course cameras. Starving is a lot more fun when you’re Baba Ramdev. The good baba certainly has no plans to immolate himself.