The man and his deputy

On the face of it Anna Hazare's refusal to start a political party of his own reflects a much-needed desire to separate the role of the social reformer from that of the politician. The greatest Indian social reformers, from Basavanna to Raja Rammohun Roy to Narayana Guru, may have had an impact on politics but that was always secondary to their impact on the social norms of their time.

When these norms changed, the society would itself force a political transformation . But when the social reformer takes on the role of a politician the task of changing social norms is left unattended to. And as the khap panchayats repeatedly remind us, any change that is brought about entirely in the realm of the legal and the political could quite simply be ignored in social practice.