An extract from my autobiographical memoir, On the Loom of Time p. 480 (see the Homepage of www.shivakantjha.org)
‘In my considered view Anna would experience greater odds in course of his struggle to free our society from corruption than what Mahatma Gandhi had experienced to free our country from the British yoke, or what Jayaprakash Narayan had faced in the struggle against Emergency. I cannot commit the folly of comparing Anna with Gandhi, or J.P. But the problems they had faced were easier for many reasons. To some extent, Anna’s movement reminds us of the struggle Jesus had carried on against the powerful Herodian establishment’s ‘evil or oppressive economic power’, and had worked against the unjust social and economic order of the time. The beneficiaries of that corrupt system considered Jesus ‘political’ and ‘social’ rebel (see Chapter 20 of this Memoir) sufficiently dangerous to the persons in power. Anna’s struggle is even more difficult. The gains of corruption are enjoyed by the persons in power, and the corporations who cast their spell on the way we live and think. Anna’s fight against corruption seems to me more difficult than any struggle for any public cause about which we have read in recent history. All the beneficiaries, of ‘corruption’ are bound to flock together from all the spheres to devise strategies and hone their Mephistophelian logic, in protecting their illicit gains. They know how to collapse their differences to promote their secret agenda. But let us see what happens in this land of Krishna and Gandhi, Shivaji and Laxmibai. We believe that, in the end, Dharma is always triumphant, Justice always prevails, and Truth always wins. Our society never lost hope, and it shall never lose it in future.’
Shiva Kant Jha 