Another piece I wrote on Baba Ramdev had similar reactions, but the sense one could make is that Anna is more popular among those who are tuned into the anti-corruption campaigns. There is a general discomfort among the “educated and intelligent sections of the civil society” (Kiran Bedi’s description in an unrelated context) that Baba Ramdev is not good company. Anna is confused – he wavers between supporting and criticizing the Baba.

Speaking to several people in different fields, I have formulated a comparison between Anna and Baba.

Both Anna and Baba display shocking ignorance of the working of a representative democracy. Both want death penalty for the corrupt, a savage demand, given the fact that capital punishment is a highly controversial debate world over. Both lack proper formal education. Both are ambitious, trying to use the name and success they earned in their respective areas of activity to claim a national profile, far beyond their intellect and capabilities.

Anna could command more credibility perhaps because all of us like our leaders to be old, pious and poor. Baba is young, rich, stylish in his own way and flamboyant – the combination that suggests an instant scam. Things that we secretly aspire for, but loathe in others, especially in our leaders.

But I like the Baba more than Anna. Anna has achieved something extraordinary in his village. But he has failed or did not bother to scale it up to other places. He drifted from one issue to other and finally landed up in the alien territory of lawmaking. He had the backing of international agencies and media.

The Baba is self-made man who became an international figure in just 15 years flat after he left his village. Puritans deride his yoga, but he is a genius as far as discovering the market potential of the ancient practice is concerned. But for his ill-informed adventure into politics, Baba Ramdev is one of the biggest successes of free market India.

The case went to SC and as we all know, the highest court has termed the appointment illegal. The SC, however, upheld the government’s right to vote out the LoP in the committee.

The SC’s assertion that it can carry out judicial review of government appointments can have far-reaching implications. The SC judgment is emphatic that it does not question the government’s authority to make appointments, but is only bothered about the legality of the appointment. But it is going to be difficult to keep such demarcation. Moreover, the SC has also gone in some details, outlining the procedure for appointing CVCs in future.

In a sense, the government brought this upon itself. The original sin is the government’s decision to push ahead with Thomas, even after Swaraj declared that anyone but Thomas was acceptable to her. That brings us to the question of the role of the LoP in the selection.

If the PM and HM choose to defeat the LoP through a 2-1 vote, what is the whole point of LoP being there in the committee? The purpose of the LoP being part of the committee to select the CVC, to my mind, is to ensure bipartisan support for the country’s corruption watchdog.

I therefore believe that regardless of Thomas’s qualifications or lack of it, the moment the LoP opposed his candidature the government must have withdrawn his name from the panel. Even if he was an angel, he should not have been made, as long as the LoP was not agreeing to his name. That would have avoided so much of embarrassment for itself. And would have denied the judiciary yet another opportunity put the government on the back foot.

Indian public has by and large learnt to live with corruption when it happens in smooth flow – like when you grease the palm of the traffic constable or give away a percentage to the taxman for accepting a slightly fraudulent IT return. When corruption turns into a spectacle, our collective morality suddenly surges with a vengeance, with the fury to consume anyone who is more powerful.

In the fast-growing crony capitalism of India, avenues of corruption had increased manifold compared to the license-quota Raj and everyone has been having fun. But the scams that hit the UPA-2 are such spectacles that the coziness of material comfort of the Indian middle class has been shaken. Their dormant but deep cynicism about politicians has become strident. The privileged are unhappy.

The underprivileged are unhappy too, primarily due to rising prices. They have intrinsically connected corruption in the government to their sorrows – which can only be partly true, at best. However, the perception has stuck.

A government that spends unprecedented amounts of money on welfare schemes – and has been reasonably popular until recently – suddenly has lost its soul.

The UPA-2 has severely failed in managing the public perception. There has not been a coherent articulation of what the government or the prime minister is trying to do, to combat corruption. Each minister and each Congress leader is spinning individual stories, often contradicting each other. Each one is trying to boost his/her own image, even when – indeed by – causing disrepute to colleagues.

The only authentic message in such chaos could be what the PM personally delivers. Those too often vacillate between despair and promise. With the collective thrust of the party and government completely lacking in the rescue efforts, the arrest of A Raja has only bludgeoned the image of the government further. Everyone in the government seems to be hedging the bets, in anticipation of the next job, even if it is with the BJP.

Well, since the point is about Hindus, let’s stay with it. I think it is more or less accurate to suggest that Hindus are by and large tolerant. They don’t easily turn to violence. Hinduism, as a religion, even doctrinally promotes diversity. Hindus have thousands of Gods – and Goddesses. Many worship nature, rivers, mountains, the sea and the sky. It’s philosophy in general is pacifist- the glorification of wars in some texts, the caste system and the status of women notwithstanding. Compared to monotheistic religions that caused unimaginable bloodshed through human history, no war has been fought for Hinduism, though Hindus may have fought and killed. Let’s therefore concede the point that Hindus are tolerant.

Gadkari’s mandate is to get the BJP back on track, in disarray after two successive election defeats. He could raise a question vital to the success of BJP. Why is BJP not winning the hearts of Hindus? Is it because the majority of Hindus – who constitute 83 percent of the country’s population, are tolerant? The BJP claims itself to be champions of Hindus, but evidently most Hindus are not conceding that status to the party.

The question is relevant, not merely for the BJP, but also for the survival of India, as a country and as an idea. The question is also urgent seeing what we do in our neighborhood, Pakistan. Salman Taseer, the governor of Pakistan’s Punjab governor was shot dead, because he was tolerant. More shocking than the killing has been the expression of joy about the murder. A huge part of the country feels that he deserved to be killed.

Intolerance of both the majority and minority are equally condemnable, but when it comes to the dangers involved, they are not the same. If a majority among the majority turns intolerant, the country fails and the society degenerates – that’s what we see in Pakistan.

Borrowing BJP’s vocabulary, the party has been appeasing only the minority — among the Hindus. BJP must now try to appease the majority among the Hindus. BJP could then rightfully claim to be a Hindu party.

Sense of fairness and justice would require us to suspect the police charges. The arguments built by the police and accepted by the court do not add up. Though I am not in a position to vouch for Sen’s involvement or otherwise with Maoists, I am not convinced of the reasons cited for declaring him guilty. In other words, I feel, he should be freed immediately and be allowed to continue his medical practice among some of the most neglected people of India.

However, I am rather amused by the utter lack of reason that some arguments being put forward by some who have usurped the public space in Sen’s support. Some say, it is government’s message to all dissenters that they either shut up or go to jail. Some say, since Sen has been a do-gooder, he CANNOT be a Maoist. Some say this episode proves that attempting any peaceful social change is a waste of time and therefore the state and social system must be overthrown through an armed revolution. Some say, there are many crooks out there, why punish Sen. Some went to the extent of arguing that even Narayan Sanyal – a politburo member of the banned Maoist party – who has been convicted along with Sen is an innocent old man, against whom there are no specific charges. I am, therefore, convinced that many people are using Sen as a shield to push their pro-Maoist agenda.

When well-meaning people fail to frame the problems in the right manner they arrive at bad conclusions and even get used by vested interests. And more unfortunately, they fail in their mission.

The history of India’s civil society activism is replete with such chaotic arguments and sub-optimal achievements. Arguments against illegal and inhuman displacement of people, unsustainable exploitation of natural resources, environmental degradation etc soon get collapsed into a cacophony against industrialisation, urbanisation and even modernisation. Arguments against human rights violations and excesses of the state, often get taken over by anarchists, supporters of terrorist groups and people who generally want to create whatever chaos they can.

Some supporters of Sen do not help his cause. In fact, some don’t mean to help him.

Last week, I had argued for differentiating what could have been corrupt in A Raja’s decisions from the policy decisions he had legitimate powers to take. Here I am arguing that making corruption the centre point of politics is bad and counterproductive politics. Important as it is to tackle corruption, making that the ONLY issue, takes us away from several other issues that are of immediate concern.

Corruption is the most apolitical of all issues one can imagine. Let me explain.

Corruption as an issue can be raised by any party, any time in history. BJP can raise it against Congress, Congress can raise it against BJP. Nobody is For corruption; everyone -from Shiv Sena to SIMI, RSS to Maoists – is AGAINST corruption. What a wonderful sense of responsibility that our opposition parties have suddenly acquired in forgoing all their differences and making an alliance, the reason for which is that it is against corruption.

Far from heralding a new era of accountability, this could slide the country into yet another round of cynicism, conflicts and negativity. I say yet another, since what see today is dangerously similar to two periods of our recent history – the 1974 JP movement and 1988-89 V P Singh movement. Both made an alliance of desperate, frustrated and unimaginative groups – each of which had its own agenda, many a time dangerous- for fighting corruption. Did the Janata regime that replaced Indira Gandhi and the V P Singh government that replaced Rajiv Gandhi provide better governance than their predecessors?

Corruption, therefore, has turned out to be a convenient excuse to stall the functioning of democratically constituted, legitimate institutions of governance. If the opposition has the popular support to overthrow the government they should do so in the next general election. The fight against corruption cannot be fought outside the constitution of India. Just 18 months after they lost the elections, the opposition is not letting the winners to function by physical disruptions. This is certainly no way to fight corruption. That, anyway, is not the opposition’s intent.