 |
Fasting to Fight Corruption in India
Fasting to Fight Corruption in India
He may be using a familiar nonviolent tactic to draw attention to his issue, but Anna Hazare's fast against corruption caught fire online.-
Activist Anna Hazare threatened to fast to death until the government took aim at India's rampant corruption. A few tumultuous days and more than 4 million tweets later, Hazare achieved what politicians couldn't do in decades – force the Indian government to draft a tough new anti-corruption law.
-
Hazare is a Gandhian who believes in nonviolent struggle - and these pictures of him fasting galvanised India.
-
Hazare ended his hunger-strike after four days with a sip of lemonade when the government agreed to create an anti-corruption panel.
-
See how many people signed the petition for Hazare on Avaaz.com here:
-
The Stream spoke with Shoma Chaudhury, Indian journalist and blogger, who followed the story closely on the Tehelka, an independent news site.
-
BrowseUpload Create AccountSign In You need Adobe Flash Player to watch this video. Download it from Adobe. Upgrade to Flash Player 10 for improved playback performance. Upgrade Now or More Info. This feature is not available right now. Please try again later. Uploaded by AJstream on Return to active list Your queue is empty. Add videos to your queue using this button: or sign in to load a different list.
-
Intellectuals, celebrities and ordinary people are calling Hazare's battle noble and selfless through tweets and blogs.
-
In a world where oppressed people, from Libya to China, are either violently struggling to emerge free or meekly remaining in line, Anna Hazare and his band of civil society leaders are trying to chalk out a unique path by non-violently challenging the established order and winning the first battle.
-
Here's what film actor Anupam Kher had to say to Hazare's critics:
-
All d pseudo Five Star Activists need to live just for a week d way ANNA HAZARE has lived his ENTIRE life before pointing fingers at him.
-
And there was support from model and actress Shilpa Shetty among others.
-
Anna Hazare has won:)Salute his gumption and selfless work..makes me feel very small..complete Respect!Now this is Democracy
-
Many ordinary Indians are also seeing light at the end of the tunnel.
-
#annahazare simple strong Gandhi of our times, was quite at ease explaining what nation requires from Govt. people understood! India awaken
-
But others think Hazare's methods are undemocratic and counterproductive and could set a dangerous precedent:
-
The current euphoria needs to be seen for what it is – a massive move towards legitimizing a strategy of simple emotional blackmail – a (conveniently reversible) method of suicide bombing in slow motion. There is no use dissenting against a pious worthy on a fast, because any effort to dissent will be immediately read as a callous indifference to his/her ‘sacrifice’ by the moral-earnestness brigade. Nothing can be more dangerous for democracy.
-
It is premised on an institutional imagination that is at best naïve; at worst subversive of representative democracy.
-
But even as the controversy rages... Is civil disobedience the only way forward in India? Share your views with The Stream on Facebook or Twitter.
Content on this website is for general information purposes only. Your comments are provided by your own free will and you take sole responsibility for any direct or indirect liability. You hereby provide us with an irrevocable, unlimited, and global license for no consideration to use, reuse, delete or publish comments, in accordance with Community Rules & Guidelines and Terms and Conditions.
YOUR VOICES
How would the U.S. State department delisting the MEK as a terrorist organisation affect US-Iran relations? Record a comment for Monday's show!
Record your commentFOLLOW THE STREAM
