Ben Doherty
Anna Hazare, a social activist of decades' standing, faces the media during a hunger strike to protest against India's pervasive corruption. Photo: Reuters
MAHATMA Gandhi knew the power of his fasts, but he also saw the danger.
In 1918, as he embarked on a hunger strike in solidarity with striking mill workers, a pamphlet issued in explanation said: ''If this is to become a common practice to secure rights, it would be impossible to carry on the affairs of society.''
Ninety years on, fasts are common practice. They are effective, they draw public attention and force opponents to act.
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But critics of modern-day fasters allege many of the new generation have abandoned Gandhi's non-violent ideals, that their protests are coercive and aggressive, and that they are attempting to blackmail governments.
Subhash Kashyap is a former secretary-general of India's lower house of Parliament, the Lok Sabha.
''Gandhi was fighting against the British imperial forces where the people had no elected representatives, where the people had no say in their governance,'' he told The Saturday Age. ''Now you have an elected Parliament, you have elected representatives of the people.''
While fasting, in penitence and in protest, is ancient in India, Gandhi's hunger strikes - he undertook some 30 in his lifetime, including three pledged until death - garnered worldwide attention.
Since that time, the image of the humble ascetic defying authority has held a special place in India's political firmament.
India is home to the world's longest-running hunger strike, that of Irom Chanu Sharmila, who has not eaten since 2000 in protest against military powers in her home state of Manipur. She is kept alive by a tube authorities have forced into her nose that feeds her glucose and water.
And only this month, 34-year-old Swami Nigmanand died on day 115 of his hunger strike against illegal mining that has been polluting the holy River Ganges.
Anna Hazare and Baba Ramdev, India's two current celebrity fasters, are very different men.
Mr Hazare is a social activist of decades' standing. Small and neat, he wears white and a Gandhian cap. Wild-haired Baba Ramdev appears swathed in saffron robes, bearded and barefoot. He runs a multimillion-dollar yoga empire, built on his own satellite TV channel.
Both are fighting India's pervasive corruption, but their critics say that while their cause is noble their actions are not.
Mr Hazare is not only protesting for an anti-corruption bill to go before Parliament, he wants to help write it. He sat down in central Delhi in April and refused to eat until his demands were agreed to.
A truce was called after four days, but talks with the government have since foundered and he is threatening another fast.
''That is outright coercive, and he is not the representative … of the people of India,'' Dr Kashyap says. ''The job of making laws is that of the legislature.''
Baba Ramdev's fast this month in Delhi, where he was joined by 40,000 supporters, ended in his arrest after just one day. His aggressive rhetoric since and threats to form an army of women to defend him are not in the spirit of Gandhi, Delhi University history professor Mahesh Rangarajan said.
Open magazine recently published a piece on Mr Hazare headlined ''This man is not your hero'', while Baba Ramdev has been described in newspapers as ''a symbol of India's anarchy''.
Gandhi was disliked in his time, too. In 1943, British viceroy Lord Linlithgow said hunger strikes were ''a form of political blackmail''.