In this centenary year of the hunger strike, India’s founding father Mahatma Gandhi would have squirmed had he seen the debasement in his homeland of the utilitarian nonviolent political weapon he made globally popular. In India, where the fast as protest finds mention in the 5,000-yearold epic, the Ramayana, it now takes just a minor grudge to pull off a public fast.
Sample this. Sassy starlet Rakhi Sawant, known for her ease in shedding clothing, phoned in from a deluxe restaurant to a popular radio station saying that she would be going on a fast because the moral police of the government of Maharashtra state, home to the mainline Indian film industry, had booked her for obscenity. Her show remained cancelled and it is not known whether Sawant went without a single meal, but it made headlines alright.
