What Anna Said

Plainspoken and unguarded, Anna Hazare spoke at some length with India Ink contributors Lydia Polgreen and Hari Kumar during their visit to Ralegan Siddhi last week. He expressed surprise that his fast had stirred up such passions, and spoke candidly about the difficulties of managing such a diverse coalition of prominent civil society leaders.

On Wednesday, his comments were picked up by many Indian news outlets, including several who used the remarks as a springboard to speculate about the unity of “Team Anna.” Late Wednesday evening Mr. Hazare released a statement in Hindi claiming he had been misquoted, and accusing India Ink of attempting to break up his civil society movement.

These news reports have made much of Mr. Hazare’s comment that there were “ego problems” among the government’s top people handling the crisis his fast created and among his own team – one article quoting the interview appeared on the front page of the Indian Express today. These tensions, of course, were the subject of reams of newspaper coverage and endless hours of television debate as the agonizing negotiations dragged on. They should surprise no one.

It appears from Mr. Hazare’s statement that the matter of greatest concern is the notion that he planned to “change” his close ally, Arvind Kejriwal, who has harshly criticized the prime minister, and Prashant Bhushan, a tough critic of economic liberalization.

About the two, we quoted him saying:

“I will try to change them. There were some ego problems. From the government side it was Chidambaram and Kapil Sibal. From our side also there were some issues. I was not getting the right feedback, nor was the prime minister. That complicated the issues. Later, Vilasrao Deshmukh and another minister got involved and direct contact with the prime minister was established. I have an old relationship with Vilasrao. Then the issues were resolved.”

He added: “[Mr. Bhushan and Mr. Kejriwal] are good people. I need to change them. I will change them.”

Mr. Hazare’s statement asserted that this implied he was considering ejecting them from his movement. Our understanding, and what he apparently meant, was that he planned to get them to change their thinking.

“This journalist has wrongly interpreted and inserted his own interpretation that I will replace Arvind Kejriwal and Prashant Bhushan,” Mr. Hazare wrote in his statement. “This is a complete lie and I deny that.”

Actually, India Ink did not interpret his remarks at all. From the coverage of his remarks though, it seems that many journalists did.