Blame it On Anna Hazare

Image Source and Poem: Shivam Gupta
I am guilty of meddling with the title of the movie, ‘Blame It On Rio’ and giving the title Blame it On Anna Hazare, but my sentiments and feelings are quite pure, not muddled. I was trying to write a post every day and narrate here what I did to feel happy. But a series of Birthdays prevented me from writing anything here. When all the birthdays of March and April were over, and I was about to breathe easy, Anna Hazare happened. What A man Anna Hazare is.

When Anna Hazare started his movement against corruption, I was quite sure that I will resume writing my blog posts again. But when Anna Hazare’s movement against corruption started, I never thought that I will ignore everything, my home, my husband, my kid, myself and get involved in this movement on daily basis. But of course,that is Anna Hazare’s effect. And whole nation witnessed it.

Anna Hazare has refreshed the forgotten history, civics and politics lessons of school. We were taught about democracy in schools. We were also taught about the duties of a citizen in school books. But after leaving school, we never applied those duties in our lives. We thought REAL world is different, But Anna Hazare helped us turning into a awakened citizen. Anna Hazare taught us, democracy is not about exercising your power to vote, He taught us the forgotten lesson of being a watchdog to government’s actions. After casting your valuable votes, our duties don’t stop there. We have to be vigilant. We have to observe whether our elected representatives are performing their duties as expected. We need a Anna Hazare to revisit that civics lesson.

Anna Hazare taught us that demonstrations, protests marches, rallies, writing articles, formation of organizations are legitimate means to show your displeasure to the government. And we rose to the occasion. My nephew, my husband prepared posters for Anna Hazare’s movement. I distributed those posters at various public places and put on the notice boards of our society. We tried to do our bit for Anna Hazare’s campaign.

I can declare proudly and in all humility that Anna Hazare made me eat my words. And I am proud to eat my words. I often used to say and write that our people won’t come out of their houses to protest. I used to feel disappointed with youngsters. But Anna Hazare has done the impossible. He fired the imagination of youths and in large number they came out on the streets to protests. Even schoolchildren were out on the streets to protest against corruption. It is very difficult to bring Indian youths on the street to protest, but Gandhian follower Anna Hazare almost did the impossible.

How Anna Hazare proved me wrong. I wrote this post: Libyan Crisis, People in Pursuit of Happiness At the end of the post I was ruing that Indians won’t leave the confines of their homes to come out on the street and protest.But Anna Hazare has achieved the impossible. In the last para I have written, we don’t have a Gandhi to draw us out of our homes. But I was wrong. We too have our Gandhi, Anna Hazare, and WE REALLY ARE THE GRANDCHILDREN of Gandhi, whenever he calls, we leave everything and pay heed to that call. Thank you Anna Hazare for giving us a call.