Hunger Games

IN THE POLITICAL firmament of Maharashtra, timed to the height­ening of the election fever of 2024 whose symptoms are beginning to manifest, a new personality no one was aware about even a few months ago has arisen. This is Manoj Jarange Patil and he is now spearheading the demand for reservations to Marathas, a powerful caste that any government antagonises at their peril. The issue itself is as old as Rip Van Winkle but the present agitation is somewhat different because there is now a face to it in Patil. And he became that face by the oldest weapon of the Indian politi­cal establishment—the hunger fast.

He had been on the unsuccessful edge of mainstream politics but, as with many politicians who keep grind­ing at the most competitive of arenas, the moment finally arrived after he recently went on a fast in Jalna. The police decided to break it up and there was violence and the issue snowballed propelling Patil as a leader in this issue. After two weeks of no food, he then an­nounced that there would be no water intake either and this total fast had just begun when abruptly it was called off by taking a glass of orange juice from the hands of Chief Minister Eknath Shinde. All in all, the fast lasted 17 days.

Patil says he has given one month’s time to the government to fulfil the demands and will remain in the venue till then so that he can do it all over again if necessary. Chances are nothing much is going to happen. Those who do fasting, even for health reasons, know that the human body can go without food for months and, in fact, come out healthier so long as you keep taking water. Long fasts only serve to capture the public’s imagination as a death-defying endeavour. But to abjure water is to die very fast and no one wants that, even Mahatma Gandhi, the reason why he took water during his fasts.

Patil upping the stakes and then stopping the fast was probably a tactical error because this is a weapon that becomes less effective every time it is repeated. The prime example of that is Anna Hazare who moved a nation during the India Against Cor­ruption movement with one fast, and then found eventually that there was no magic left until he all but gave it up. If the public are not convinced that the agitator is willing to go the full distance to death, then it ends up being just a symbolic action. But even so, the first one can still provide momentum and how one capitalises on it, is what separates instinctive politicians from activists. Arvind Kejriwal, for instance, used Hazare’s fasts to launch a political party and now governs two states, while Hazare himself is out of public consciousness. If there is someone with such instincts within the Maratha reservation agitators, then there can be long-term fallout even if the history of the movement so far is yet to make any such promise.

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