Is India’s Anna Hazare ‘Gandhi Lite’?

INDIA: He may dress, talk and fast like his hero Mahatma Gandhi, but critics say anti-graft activist Anna Hazare has only managed to co-opt the style, not the substance, of India’s independence icon.

The figure of Gandhi looms large — and literally — over Hazare’s anti-corruption campaign, with a giant photograph of the apostle of non-violence providing the backdrop to the 74-year-old’s public hunger strike.

Hazare’s speeches are peppered with Gandhian references to a “second freedom struggle” and his own diminutive, bespectacled appearance, and preference for simple white clothing, all serve to reinforce the link in the public mind.

If the effort to embrace Gandhi’s legacy is sincere, it is also conscious and calculated, and observers say it has paid dividends by tapping into a national yearning for an inspirational leader.

“Hazare has clearly appropriated symbols connected with Gandhi, from sitting on a stage with Gandhi’s picture behind him to using terms like ‘civil disobedience’ which most Indians associate with Gandhi,” said Yamini Aiyar, senior fellow at New Delhi’s Centre for Policy Research think-tank. “It’s helped him capture the public’s attention, since Gandhi still commands the popular imagination in this country,” she told AFP.

Suhel Seth, a Mumbai-based brand management expert with Counselage India, said Gandhi provides a comfortable, nostalgic reference point for many Indians at a time of swift and sometimes difficult change associated with rapid economic growth.

And that includes young Indians — the bulk of the population — who know the Mahatma (“Great Soul”) through images rather than his political philosophy.

“They understand the visual symbols associated with Gandhi, not necessarily his ideas. So it makes sense that they are buying into this phenomenon... they trust Anna,” Seth said.

“In an environment where so much seems hopeless as far as corruption is concerned, people clutch at straws, and here the straw is a 74-year-old man, which is rather ironic for such a young democracy,” he added. AFP