Fasts unto Death

Medha Patkar has, by some estimates, spent a year of her life fasting

The hunger strike is possibly the only thing that unites Irish republicans, Turkish Marxists, Sri Lankan Tamils, the father of our nation, Andhra politicians with separatist urges and, more recently, retrenched rural veterinarians in Punjab, cable operators in Tamil Nadu and ‘harassed husbands’ in Jantar Mantar in New Delhi.

You might have chanced upon the newest additions to this list should you have flipped through channels over the past few weeks: an elderly gent in a Gandhi topi and a saffron clad baba whose talent for contorting his abdomen in strange ways would be the envy of any East European belly dancer.

The ‘hunger strike’ in India might have started as something which could claim unimpeachable moral authority, give or take a Poona Pact. But today, with the accompanying retinue of TV anchors following in most hunger strikers’ wake, the fast has turned into farce, and most fasters into curiosities intent on putting themselves on display.

Away from the glare of round-the-clock coverage, though, there are fasts whose ‘moral pressure’ is actually worth exerting. Like ex-IIT professor GD Aggarwal’s 2008 fast against the six hydel projects planned in the upper Ganges, which echoed those of environmentalist Sunderlal Bahuguna against the Tehri dam in 1995 and 1997. Then, activist Medha Patkar, who, by some estimates, has spent a year of her life fasting, has just concluded a hunger strike to protest the eviction of slum dwellers in Golibar, Khar, in Mumbai, from 150 acres of land which has been handed over to private builders without the residents’ consent. And, Manipuri activist and poet Irom Sharmila who has been fasting and is being force-fed by intubation since 2000 for the repeal of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act, which permits armed forces in ‘disturbed areas’ to torture and kill with impunity.

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