Whose Anna Hazare

Anna Hazare

Anna Hazare, the 73-year-old activist at the center of the standoff between India’s government and civil society over the terms of an anti-corruption law, draws inspiration from a leading light of India’s spiritual renaissance in the late 19^th century, Swami Vivekananda.

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Mr. Hazare is leading the anticorruption movement that demands establishment of a stronger ombudsman than envisioned by the government.

An online official biographytells the story of a young Mr. Hazare from Ralegan Siddhi village in the western state of Maharashtra who joined the Indian Army in 1963 heeding patriotic calls by the government after Indian forces were defeated in a border war with China.

During his 15-year army service, Mr. Hazare sought for a purpose in life, even contemplating suicide, the biography says. He was influenced in his search after accidently coming across a book by Swami Vivekananda at a New Delhi railway station. “The book revealed to him that the ultimate motive of human life should be service to humanity. Striving for the betterment of common people is equivalent to offering a prayer to the God, he realized,” the biography says.

In 1965, Mr. Hazare narrowly escaped alive from a Pakistani air attack on an Indian border post, which killed all of the other servicemen at the spot. He views that, the biography says, as a turning point in his life, and he took an oath to dedicate himself to public service.

At the age of 38, Mr. Hazare took voluntary retirement from the army and returned to his native village. Over the next few decades, he gained wide acclaim in his home state and at the national level for transforming his once drought-prone, impoverished village to a prosperous “model village” by encouraging sustainable farming and rural life as envisioned by Mahatma Gandhi, the Indian Independence leader often referred to as Gandhiji.

“Building concrete jungles does not mean development as Gandhiji had rightly said,” the biography quotes him as saying. “Surely, one needs to live for oneself and the family but simultaneously one owes something to your neighbour, your village and your nation too.”

Mr. Hazare lives on his pension from army service in a room in the temple in his village and says his campaigns are financed by voluntary donations by his supporters. He is always seen in white clothes with a traditional Indian cap.

“The dream of India as a strong nation will not be realised without self-reliant, self-sufficient villages, this can be achieved only through social commitment & involvement of the common man,” he is quoted as saying.

Such nationalistic calls and his record of espousing integrity and honesty in public life have endeared Mr. Hazare to India’s growing middle class, which frequently reviles its political leaders for the corruption that permeates everyday life. That has also thrust Mr. Hazare to the forefront of national movement against corruption following his public fast in New Delhi in April.

He has termed the current civil society’s movement against corruption as “India’s second freedom struggle,” and has asked all Indians to participate. Critics say he is using anti-democratic methods of moral coercion to force his will on the elected government.

In the 1990s, the federal government awarded Mr. Hazare with the Padma Bhushan and Padma Shri awards, the nation’s third and fourth highest civilian awards respectively, for his social work.