Everyone these days seems to compare with the Anna Movement with the J.P movement of the 1970's. Is that correct???? I dont't think so....nopes...Anna and J.P. are poles apart with thier movements....
I decided to write this down...because...I had an argument with a friend of mine from Bihar...who thought Anna was just aping J.P......This made me wonder and dig into the history books a little......Dunno if its doing justice...and I am pretty sure...none of my friends..who sometimes read my blog....will find this readable....Anyways.....a writer's got creative freedom...to dish out loads of shit.... ;-)
Anna is like anyone of us....a common man...with an ability to not take NO for an answer.....a guiding force....the neighbourhood elderly patron...who thinks good and doles out good advice to everyone. J.P. on the otherhand was already a larger than life political leader...okay, larger than life...seems to generous a praise...but nevertheless J.P. was a popular leader even before the political turmoil which got rechristened as the J.P. Movement. Anna is like the rudder of a ship and is even portrayed as that while J.P. on the otherhand was like the ships steering wheel...leading from the front....(although he wasn't exactly that....more on this below)
The J.P. Movement, as we know it, was never started by him....it was just rechristened in his name...in other words...credit was gobled up as usual by a politician..... The movement or struggle...or political turmoil....call it what you may....was actually the angst of some engineering students.....Yes..u heard it right...engineering students....from Ahemdabad, Gujrat. Those were difficult times...the 1970's....with food rationing....black marketing....and red tapism...and a larger than life Indira Gandhi....treating the country as its own fiefdom....It was a situation tailor made for a matchstick to strike fire....things tipped over when canteen food prices in the Engineering colleges were increased....the students started agitating all out against this.....There was a Congress government in Gujrat....the CM being Chiman Bhai Patel.....and as was the norm those days...all congress states...deemed themselves invincible because of the larger than life Indira Gandhi....the Gujrat government looked the other way...hoping the winds on the sails of the studen agitation would not be strong to carry too far forward....Boy!!!!...were they in for a suprise....the student agitation was quickly lapped up by the common man....who were having a hard time making ends meet......then politics took over....but this time for good.....The opposition parties...somehow seeing an opportunity at wresting control of Gujrat from the congress ....decided to throw thier backs behind the student protests.....Voila!!!...what began as a student agitation for price rise in canteen food....became a national issue.....and J.P. came to the fore front of this movement...and his ever eager supporters thinking that they were on the verge of re-writing history (and getting thier own names etched in history)..........rechristened the movement as the J.P. Movement.....The students who had started this...were relegated to history....no one remembers them now
The Anna campaign on the otherhand was something which was championed by Anna himself.....he was a man of guts....who thought of raising his voice himself against the current situation of the country...which if you look under a watch glass is pretty much the same as it was in the 1970's...what with rampant corruption....high inflation....high oil prices...et.al....Anna was joined in his movement by other social activists like Arvind Kejriwal and Prashant Bhusan...and Kiran Bedi......who propelled the movement to stratospheric heights....
On the education front...J.P. was head and shoulders above Anna.......I am not sure, if people know this, because....J.P. was considered to be a rustic villager or rabble rouser as called by his critics.....J.P was an alumuni of the University of Berkeley and a well read man.....J.P. nevertheless his education...was attracted towards communism from the start. Anna on the otherhand is not well read in the typical sense of college education....he did not even complete his schooling...but as happens with such people...he was a self -read man.....
Anna's Campaign has always been non-violent....except from some stray incidents by over excited supporters....where as the J.P. Movement had its roots in violence....When Railways Minister Lalit Mishra was assassinated on a visit to Bihar in the January of 1975, the Congress Party accused Narayan of unleashing a "cult of violence, intimidation and coercion." The assasination was never pinned down on J.P., but the personal views of J.P. never discounted the use of violence as a tool to bring down the mighty government....
The last and probably the most glaring difference between the two mass movements is something which one cannot be seen clearly yet...but one which I am praying will ultimately be the clincher.......J.P. Movement was sprinkled with violence....as a result the Iron Lady Indira had to come down on the movement with what else...an iron hand...to end it...On the other hand...the Anna Campaign has been free from violence till now....so the ruling government cannot justify any violence against the campaign.....and so maybe it cannot be snuffed out......
Hope my wishful thinking in my last paragraph comes out true..... :)
