Actors Shreyas Talpade (left) with Celina Jaitley at a pro-Anna Hazare rally in Mumbai (Picture: www.ibnlive.com)
Content warning: Unless you have a shallow mind like mine, which leaps from idea to idea, some of the content here might offend you.
Watching some of the television images of the crowds at Anna Hazare’s fast in Delhi and a support rally in Mumbai, I keep getting this weird sense that the whole thing might abruptly morph into an IPL game with cheerleaders prancing around on the sidelines wearing boat caps and very little else.
The branding, quite like the IPL (Indian Premier League), is already happening. The white boat shaped Gandhi cap has become a chic emblem of this freshly baked nationalism. Incidentally, “Gandhi cap” is a bit of a misnomer since it was not necessarily invented by him and he did not wear it nearly as much as perhaps Jawaharlal Nehru did.
When actor Shreyas Talpade wears the boat cap with the top two buttons of his designer white shirt carefully undone and attends a pro-Hazare rally in Mumbai with Celina Jaitley by his side (also wearing the cap), you know that a genuine peaceful revolution is afoot. I see nothing particularly wrong with trendifying and eventually even merchandising a revolution. Why not market everything in life if you can find a buyer?
If the boat cap is the emblem of this revolution, then “Lao ya Jao” (Bring forth or Quit) is its war cry. It is appropriate that Hazare or someone close to him has coined a war cry that could be used in a large number of situations in India even after the revolution has accomplished its purpose of pushing its own version of a Lokpal bill (Ombudsman bill). For instance, you could be at a restaurant in Delhi or Mumbai or wherever and ordering the waiter, “Lao ya jao.” You could also be home watching the revolution unfold on television and telling your servant to Lao (dinner) or Jao. Once you get past the crass pithiness of the term, it is quite effective. It reminds me of the elegant phrasing of a song from “Shootout at Lokhandwala Complex” where a bunch of Mumbai bhais sing “Ey Ganpat chal daru la.”
Gandhi had his “Quit India -- Bharat Chhodo” and Hazare has his “Lao ya Jao”. Lao ya Jao has a clear echo of “my way or high way” to it, which has generally been the approach people with messianic certitude have taken throughout history. I do not point this out as a value judgment but merely as an objective fact. Whether or not I agree with it is irrelevant here.
Speaking of the Quit India movement, it is perhaps fortuitous that Gandhi made his famous speech at the August Kranti Maidan in Mumbai on August 8, 1942.
It began thus: “Before you discuss the resolution, let me place before you one or two things, I want you to understand two things very clearly and to consider them from the same point of view from which I am placing them before you. I ask you to consider it from my point of view, because if you approve of it, you will be enjoined to carry out all I say. It will be a great responsibility.”
There is no ambiguity in Gandhi’s statement. “…you will be enjoined to carry out all I say” is how he puts it. It is either all he says or well…To Gandhi’s credit he did not say that his was the only way. He says further down in his speech, “I want you to know and feel that there is nothing but purest Ahimsa in all that I am saying and doing today. The draft resolution of the Working Committee is based on Ahimsa, the contemplated struggle similarly has its roots in Ahimsa. If, therefore, there is any among you who has lost faith in Ahimsa or is wearied of it, let him not vote for this resolution.”
At the start of this post, I said I do leap from idea to idea. I think I kept that promise. It has no particular theme to it other than a tone of mild mockery.
