So when is ANNA PART III?

Shayad woh galtiyon ka ehsaas kar raha hai
Peeta nahin lahu ab, 'upvaas' kar raha hai
Nafrat ke jism par hai 'sadbhavana' ka chola
Hum jaante hain zalim bakwaas kar raha hai... 

This four-line epic penned by London-based physician and poet, Dr Nadeem Zafar Jilani, published in Outlook, and circulating among millions across India and the world on the net, is both a caricature and a critique of the air-conditioned farce that was the State-sponsored Sadbhavana Mission at Ahmedabad. If the upvaas meant to eliminate memories of the bloodbath in Gujarat 2002, with RSS pracharak Narendra Modi at the helm, and thereby turn a Frankenstein’s Monster into a media-manufactured Prophet of Peace, it brazenly failed. How much more perverse can it get in a country where the majority goes hungry, despite Montek Singh Ahluwalia’s fantastic, fanatic poverty lines? 

Still suffering from the partisan 24/7 pukish bulimia of Ramlila Ground, our mentally anorexic TV channels yet again jumped onto this divine moment of Moditva redemption. Media observers say, there was wall-to-wall to coverage in some channels – often, with no ads! How come? Was it ‘paid news’? 

At its most perverse, pathological portrait of anti-catharsis, the sadbhavana farce sprinkled salt on all the simmering wounds of the multiple massacres, systematically designed and executed by VHP-Bajrang Dal-BJP mobs, with active collusion of the police and administration, and tacit support of the BJP-led NDA regime in Delhi. It triggered painful memories, infinite tragedies, eye-witnessed brutalities, the hackings, rapes, mass slaughter, children and adults burnt alive, thousands rendered homeless, turned second-rate citizens and refugees in their own homeland – the innocent blood of Indian citizens splattered all over, and on this nation’s ‘secular’ conscience for all times to come. Sadbhavana? 

Ironically, the muscle-flexing ‘Team Anna’ (TA) has been surprisingly silent on this expensive Modi melodrama, even while they relentlessly shoot off letters to the PM, file or threaten to file defamation suits, hold evangelical TV discourses, repeat the same morbid threats –Do it, or else...etc. Hello! Was it Rs 50 crore, or more, in this morbid Modi show? Who paid for it? If it was government money and infrastructure, is this not open corruption and loot? 

So why is TA’s India Against Corruption so stunningly speechless? 

Indeed, much that is uncannily happening in Indian politics – with the corporate media and TV channels playing partisan, and a discredited, corrupt UPA-II under siege by the Rightwing – is a historical consequence of the TA campaign. Surely, there were many ordinary faces and voices, disgusted with corruption. But the core of this movement was backed by the RSS, as Hardnews has documented from ground zero in its August and September issue. And they will now want their pound of flesh! 

Anna Part I at Jantar Mantar. Ramdev Part I at Ramlila Ground. Anna Part II at Ramlila Ground. Sadbhavana Farce, Ahmedabad. And now, the LK Advani rath yatra. 

Plus, BJP anti-corruption yatras from Varanasi and Mathura, the two communal polarisation landmarks for the Sangh Parivar – after Ayodhya. Remember the VHP/Bajrang Dal slogan at Ayodhya, December 6, 1992: Ek dhakka aur do. Babri masjid tor do… Yeh to kewal jhaankihai. Mathura,Kashi baaki hai...

Join the dots. 

Partition. Thousands butchered. Rise of RSS and Hindu Mahasabha. Assassination of Gandhi. Both these outfits did not participate in the freedom movement. Instead, they glorified Adolf Hitler’s holocaust. 

(So what if Hitler’s ghost sits on a SS-sponsored sadbhavana fast: can the Gestapo whitewash the Holocaust?) 

JP’s Sampoorna Kranti. The RSS, till now a pariah, used the political space to grow, enter, subvert institutions. They discovered political legitimacy, riding on the crass opportunism of rump ‘socialists’. So why is ‘beautiful mind’ Nitish Kumar – Lohia and JP loyalist – compulsively hanging on with the fascists, from Gujarat Genocide 2002 to Advani Rath Yatra 2011? How beautiful is his mind, really? 

Ditto, post anti-Mandal. The Sangh used the chaos to push BJP centrestage. They backed Advani’s vicious rath yatra, demolished Babri Masjid, followed by mass killings acrossIndia, including theBombaypogrom of Muslims, 1992-93. Another edited version of a beautiful mind, is it? 

My Country, My Life? 

How come they have such high moral ground on their own organised corruption and infinite injustices in BJP-ruled states like Karnataka, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh? Why do they pump themselves all the time? 

The signs are all there. If there is one dubious joint family that is milking TA’s dubious politics, it is the Sangh Parivar. This was bound to happen. History repeats: first as fast, then as farce. Can’t you see the parasitic links? 

Post Script: Waiting for Godot: So when is Anna Part III?