The politics of gherao

We’ve certainly come a long way—backwards. Forty years ago, our rulers weren’t the remote, security-ringed figures they are now. In Mumbai of the early 1970s, it was routine to gherao a minister. Those doing so weren’t hardened trade unionists but mostly poor and middle-class housewives. Detained for a few hours, they came back for more till the government gave in to their demands.No minister was beaten or had his face blackened though the women were armed with rolling pins. Page One cartoons regularly lampooned the situation—one memorable one showed a minister being rolled by a woman with a rolling pin till food grains started coming out of his mouth.
Compared to this, Anna Hazare’s call to gherao MPs’ homes to get them to support the Jan Lokpal Bill seems tame. Yet, it has provoked anger from the unlikeliest quarters—a number of liberals and Leftists. While Anna was fasting, his followers did gherao MPs’ homes and even the PM’s. No MP seems to have come to harm. Yet, the call is being condemned as weakening democracy and strengthening ‘mobocracy’.
Why? “Well, asking MPs to support a bill they may not agree with is an undemocratic demand to start with,” says trade unionist N Vasudevan. Writer Rohini Hensman adds that MPs can be “persuaded” but by gheraoing them, one is exerting physical force to restrain their movements till they agree, which, according to her, smacks of intimidation. Veteran journalist Dinoo Ranadive agrees, saying that it might be better to talk to their party chiefs. Vasudevan also points to the possibility of violence if the MPs’ supporters react or agents provocateurs are planted.
Perhaps such alarmist reactions can be ascribed to the parallel histories of the gherao. Mumbai itself has seen two very different kinds of gherao—that led by the Shiv Sena, always violent; and the other led by socialist Mrinal Gore and communist Ahilya Rangnekar in the early ’70s, as part of their anti-price rise movement, demanding the supply of essentials through ration shops. The latter gherao was a mass-based, non-violent pressure tactic that brought relief to Mumbaikars. Additionally, says Gore, it showed ordinary women that they could force the government to listen.