topical thoughts on civil disobedience, the Lokpal agitation

I think the Lokpal is a great idea, it would be of high value in an otherwise normally functional republic, I would congratulate each and every Indian who got off his behind and hit the streets, but the specific society of India has a unique historic legacy of divine right endogamous hierarchy enforced by state coercion to which the major political party/ies and the society in general adheres, and for the maintenance of which no other viable alternative exists except dynastic cronyism

the fight here is not for regime change, the removal of a tyrant or party, the fight is for the moral soul, the conscience of the nation, because an end to state corruption would simultaneously mean the end of the millennia-old business model of the aryan endogamous hierarchy - sadly, history provides no cause whatsoever to hope or believe that such an outcome is possible without the use of coercive force, that Sonia Gandhi is going to turn into Mayawati, Manmohan Singh is going to turn into Nitish Kumar, the state is going to become free of corruption because of "civil disobedience" - the myth that the british left India because of "civil disobedience" is a profound insult to the memory of those brave soldiers who mutinied in defense of their generals, the memory of the patriot generals themselves, Shah Nawaz, Dhillon and Sehgal, and above all, to the memory of the widely popular Subhash Bose, who had earlier been coerced into resigning the Congress presidency by Gandhi's paroxysm of petulance, before organizing a military strategy to oust the brits

for the agitation in India to become a real movement it needs ideological clarity and a specific objective/s (like 'swaraj') as cleaner government is hard to define and quantify, rather it is a reflection of the rule of law, a measure of the competence of the executive branch - what is "rotten" in this Denmark is not a single, rogue king but rather the whole dynasty and the whole ideology, the casteism that is its' bread, the violence that is its' wine, the human vileness at its' very centre; a single, dramatic gesture (Hamletian or Gandhian, makes no difference) cannot substitute for the principled humanism of Ambedkar's classical liberal ideology

Arvind Kejriwal, Kiran Bedi, the Swami, the Anna, these are people of impeccable intentions, so the question is not whether the civil society can get another law passed, rather can the civil society effect a revolution in the moral climate of government? without actually taking the reins of power the proper way? the honest answer is, no, not without understanding liberal economics, not without a locus of Indian humanism, not without becoming Ambedkarite in the process - the noblest of intent will be wrecked on the anvil of ignorance, the stoutest of morals drained by delusion, in the blind repetition of history not yet understood

Ambedkar challenged the bahujan majority of India to be patient but steadfast on the mission to capture state power in the constitutional way, in which cause this agitation of the civil society is beside the point because it is unable to add to the Ambedkarite theoretical understanding of why this state is immoral in the first place, why bolshevism so fascinates the upper castes, why rule of law was better under the brits, why liberal thought and Indian culture were thriving under the brits

that is why this is a last hurrah of Gandhism, regardless of the Lokpal bill's journey and outcome, and like all other Gandhism, in reality it will be of minimum impact for the poor, and maximum publicity for window dressing cases