Hazare Embarks on His Next Movement

Nicole Bengiveno/The New York Times Anna Hazare, the anticorruption campaigner who rattled India’s political establishment two years ago, after an interview at The New York Times in Manhattan on Tuesday.

Two years ago, public disgust over the depth of corruption in India boiled over into huge protests led by the longtime social activist Anna Hazare. His nearly two-week hunger strike brought out hundreds of thousands of people and forced lawmakers to support his legislative proposal to create an independent anticorruption agency, known as Lokpal.

Today, Mr. Hazare’s disciple, Arvind Kejriwal, has risen to fame, shattering an alliance with “Team Anna” and eclipsing his mentor’s movement with his own Aam Aadmi Party. Battles over the strength and shape of the Lokpal bill ended in January 2012, when the bill reached the upper house of Parliament but was tabled for the year amid an ugly political spectacle.

Now, Mr. Hazare is trying to reinvigorate the public in time for national elections in 2014, by persuading voters to support candidates, not political parties. He is making rounds across India and currently in the United States to try to build an international network of support, with stops including marching in India’s Independence Day parade in New York over the weekend with the Bollywood actress Vidya Balan.

On Tuesday, Mr. Hazare, 76, wearing traditional white cotton clothes and his signature Gandhian cap, spoke to The New York Times about his future plans.

He said he had received a letter from Prime Minister Manmohan Singh 10 days ago assuring him that a draft of the Lokpal bill would be reintroduced in Parliament this year â€" one that would satisfy Mr. Hazare’s demands.

Mr Hazare’s main complaint was that under the government’s version of the bill, India’s top investigation agency, the Central Bureau of Investigation, would be out of the purview of the independent Lokpal.

He issued an ultimatum: “If the government doesn’t bring the Lokpal again in the next Parliamentary session on Day 1 - if there is a betrayal again - we will go back to agitation at Ramlila Maidan.”

“I have done 16 fastings in my life,” he quipped. “That’s why I’m confident that I can do it for two more days this time around.”

The question is whether Mr. Hazare can gain the same public backing and news media attention that he did two years ago at the public grounds in New Delhi, given the new competition from Mr. Kejriwal, a media magnet feared by the political establishment, who will make his debut in local politics this November.

“On a personal level, we are friends, but I have nothing to do with his political party,” Mr. Hazare said of his former confidant.

Mr. Hazare says he does not believe that current political parties can make a difference in India, a country that has been lurching from one crisis to another, not least an economic one. When asked to name a few candidates that exemplify his message, he did not name one.

Mr. Hazare, who was born in rural Maharashtra and served 15 years in the military, has been a social activist for more than two decades. Skeptics say his time in the spotlight has come and gone, but for Mr. Hazare and his supporters, his message speaks to ordinary people whose lives are being affected by corruption throughout the world.

“On Sept. 16, 2011, when I was fasting,” he recalled, “there were revolutions in several places around the world. I expect that when my agitation starts, people around the world will stand up again.”