In May 2017, H S Doreswamy joined the efforts of the Namma Bengaluru Foundation to save the lakes of Bangalore. He was aware the Foundation was an initiative of BJP’s Rajya Sabha MP Rajeev Chandrashekhar, a party whose ideology he staunchly opposed. But for Doreswamy, having worked throughout his life to protect people and their right to commons, and of course to protect commons for posterity, the dismal state of Bangalore’s lakes left him with no alternative but to walk with Chandrashekar to protect lakes. However, on every other platform, he spared no words in exposing and attacking BJP’s bigotry.
For Doreswamy, bipartisanship was a midway step in the long gait of democracy. His ability to work across the spectrum notwithstanding, the clarity with which he communicated his politics was cardinal to his approach.
There was no obtuse intellectualisation. He communicated with simplicity so rare that complex subjects would be accessible to everyone. This way the clarity and depth of his message were residual in the minds of young and old alike, the simple thinker and the intellectual.
3. Doreswamy: A Man of Many Struggles
There is not a struggle for justice and ecology in Bangalore that Doreswamy would miss supporting. Be it against corruption, for protecting lakes, against the encroachment of commons, stepping in against displacement of urban poor, questioning the reckless promotion of useless infrastructure (think elevated corridors), Doreswamy would be there, right in the front. His resistance to irrational and undemocratic development was clear. He would argue that the promise of fundamental freedoms for all only began with the Constitution and that such freedoms could only be actualized by constant struggles of and by the citizenry. Therefore, any development that was not built on the inclusive aspirations of people and evolved through deeply democratic decision-making was problematic.
Doreswamy was clear that India’s prevailing path to development was not what was promised in Article 39 of the Constitution. As Ambedkar had argued, Doreswamy too would articulate how the massively disproportionate accumulation of wealth in the hands of a few, extracted from the labour and hardships of the majority, is clearly an anti-national agenda pursued by the Government of India. In that sense, his argument against the UPA or NDA was that their policies were opposed to the Constitutional mandate.
It is this kind of thinking that threw Doreswamy into multiple struggles over time. He was opposed to big dams, as he was against reckless mining and loot in Bellary. He joined Shivaram Karanth against the nuclear power plant in Kaiga and was there with any issue that challenged the emboldening of the hegemonic State. Joining the struggle for deeper democracy through genuine Panchayat Raj launched by Mahila Samakhya in 2012, Doreswamy was unsparing in his criticism of the government of the time and bellowed: “We might as well simply lock the representatives in the Assembly. All they are doing there is sitting around bickering with each other.”
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