Pankaj Mishra:
"Gandhi’s greatest contribution to the arsenal of political activism, however, is his theory and practice of bringing together great masses of highly motivated and disciplined protesters in public spaces. Here his spiritual beliefs were crucial: the assumption, in particular, that, regardless of the regime people lived under—democracy or dictatorship, capitalist or socialist—they always possessed a freedom of conscience, an inner capacity to make moral choices in everyday life. As his mass campaigns often proved, and the recent Arab uprisings have affirmed, such strongly self-aware individuals acting cooperatively in the spotlight of the world media could come to wield an astonishing amount of moral authority—the “authentic, enduring power” of people that, as Hannah Arendt wrote in her analysis of the Prague Spring of 1968, a repressive regime or government could neither create nor suppress through the use of terror, and before which it must eventually surrender."
(May 2 2011, The New Yorker)
Some people say Anna Hazare is a product of Indian electronic media...they say he manipulates media or media manipulate him... Or both.
As Pankaj Mishra argues, 'the spotlight of the world media' was central to Mahatma's activism. And so is to Anna Hazare's.
Before I go to media aspect, let me discuss Mr. Mishra's 'disciplined protesters in public spaces'.
Joseph Lelyveld writing on Quit India movement of 1942:
"...Gandhi's last campaign hadn't achieved anything like his standard of nonviolent discipline...By the end of the year, nearly one thousand persons had been killed in clashes with the police...Indian nonviolence had always been imperfect, "limited in both numbers and quality," he coolly told American correspondent- that is, in the availability of trained satyagrahis who could be relied on to make the requisite self-sacrifice- but "it has infused life into the people which was absent before." He isn't threatening or justifying violence, but assuming for the moment the position of a detached observer, a realist, he seems to be suggesting that this time it couldn't be ruled out. This Gandhi sounds like the pre-Mahatma of 1913 who warned the South African authorities he might lose control of his movement."
('Great Soul Mahatma Gandhi and His Struggle with India', 2011, page 287)
Now to media.
Lelyveld on Gandhi's days in Noakhali 1946:
"...A pioneer in the art of press manipulation, Gandhi insisted the journalists file not on the words that had actually come out of his mouth but on versions he "authorized" after his own sometimes heavy editing of the transcripts..." (ibid, page 298)
On this blog, I have written about P L Deshpande's (पु ल देशपांडे) very poular play 'Tujhe Ahe Tujapashi', 1957 (तुझें आहे तुजपाशीं). There is a character of Acharya facing off with character of Kakaji.
Acharya in the play pauses to say something 'profound' so that his followers get a chance to take out their notebooks and pencils to note it down. He even repeats it for their convenience!
I was told that Acharya was not a caricature of Gandhiji but some of Gandhi's followers.
I am not so sure after reading Lelyveld.
Launched on Nov 29 2006, now 2,100+ posts...This bilingual blog - 'आन्याची फाटकी पासोडी' in Marathi- is largely a celebration of visual and/or comic ...तुकाराम: "ढेकणासी बाज गड,उतरचढ केवढी"...George Santayana: " Everything in nature is lyrical in its ideal essence, tragic in its fate, and comic in its existence"...William Hazlitt: "Pictures are scattered like stray gifts through the world; and while they remain, earth has yet a little gilding."
मेघदूत: "नीचैर्गच्छत्युपरि च दशा चक्रनेमिक्रमेण"
समर्थ शिष्या अक्का : "स्वामीच्या कृपाप्रसादे हे सर्व नश्वर आहे असे समजले. पण या नश्वरात तमाशा बहुत आहे."
G C Lichtenberg: “It is as if our languages were confounded: when we want a thought, they bring us a word; when we ask for a word, they give us a dash; and when we expect a dash, there comes a piece of bawdy.”
C. P. Cavafy: "I’d rather look at things than speak about them."
Martin Amis: “Gogol is funny, Tolstoy in his merciless clarity is funny, and Dostoyevsky, funnily enough, is very funny indeed; moreover, the final generation of Russian literature, before it was destroyed by Lenin and Stalin, remained emphatically comic — Bunin, Bely, Bulgakov, Zamyatin. The novel is comic because life is comic (until the inevitable tragedy of the fifth act);...”
सदानंद रेगे: "... पण तुकारामाची गाथा ज्या धुंदीनं आजपर्यंत वाचली जात होती ती धुंदी माझ्याकडे नाहीय. ती मला येऊच शकत नाही याचं कारण स्वभावतःच मी नास्तिक आहे."
".. त्यामुळं आपण त्या दारिद्र्याच्या अनुभवापलीकडे जाऊच शकत नाही. तुम्ही जर अलीकडची सगळी पुस्तके पाहिलीत...तर त्यांच्यामध्ये त्याच्याखेरीज दुसरं काही नाहीच आहे. म्हणजे माणसांच्या नात्यानात्यांतील जी सूक्ष्मता आहे ती क्वचित चितारलेली तुम्हाला दिसेल. कारण हा जो अनुभव आहे... आपले जे अनुभव आहेत ते ढोबळ प्रकारचे आहेत....."
Kenneth Goldsmith: "In 1969 the conceptual artist Douglas Huebler wrote, “The world is full of objects, more or less interesting; I do not wish to add any more.”1 I’ve come to embrace Huebler’s ideas, though it might be retooled as “The world is full of texts, more or less interesting; I do not wish to add any more.” It seems an appropriate response to a new condition in writing today: faced with an unprecedented amount of available text, the problem is not needing to write more of it; instead, we must learn to negotiate the vast quantity that exists. How I make my way through this thicket of information—how I manage it, how I parse it, how I organize and distribute it—is what distinguishes my writing from yours."
Tom Wolfe: "The first line of the doctors’ Hippocratic oath is ‘First, do no harm.’ And I think for the writers it would be: ‘First, entertain.’"
विलास सारंग: "… इ. स. 1000 नंतर ज्या प्रकारची संस्कृती रुढ झाली , त्यामध्ये साधारणत्व व विश्वात्मकता हे गुण प्राय: लुप्त झाले...आपली संस्कृती अकाली विश्वात्मक साधारणतेला मुकली आहे."
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