Why freedom fighter Harohalli Srinivasaiah Doreswamy's mission is still not quite complete

The year was 1942. The Quit India movement had been launched by Mahatma Gandhi against the British. Even in laid-back Bangalore, its repercussions were felt, with many youngsters responding to the call. Among them was a 24-year-old student, Harohalli Srinivasaiah Doreswamy, who was present when the police arrested Bombay Provincial Congress Committee president KF Nariman from Banappa Park. Incensed, Doreswamy and his friends organised a protest the very next day in their college against the high-handedness of the government. As the slogans of "Bharat mata ki jai",'Mahatma Gandhi ki jai' and "Down with the police" resounded through the college quadrangle, the police rushed in and a lathicharge ensued.

That was HS Doreswamy's first protest. But even at the venerable age of 99 years, he shows no signs of pausing in the quest for the true freedom he and his contemporaries fought for all those years ago. "We had our dreams. We thought poverty would be eradicated immediately after Independence. We felt there would be no casteism. But, even today, 30% of our population live below the poverty line," says the deceptively frail-looking figure whom politicians in Karnataka can ignore only at their own peril. Such is Doreswamy's reputation that state Energy Minister DK Shivakumar, who was raided by the I-T department last week, was initially kept out of Chief Minister Siddaramaiah's Cabinet reportedly at his recommendation. "Mr Doreswamy is someone of unimpeachable integrity, who has fought for the freedom of this country, and was a prisoner during the Independence struggle.

Whatever he says is for the benefit of society, not for himself. So naturally his views carry a lot of weight when it comes to public affairs," says Santosh Hegde, former Supreme Court judge and Karnataka Lokayukta.

Doreswamy's last major protest took place as recently as November, when he travelled all the way to Belagavi, 500 km away, when the Assembly was in session there, to pressure the government into distributing land to the poor. Siddaramaiah had then met him and assured him of action. But with no further progress after this, the indefatigable nonagenarian is now getting ready for his next protest. On September 20, there will be protests in all the district headquarters against this," he says. Would he be going? "Of course! There will be one in Bengaluru, too." The question, it would seem, was redundant.

He considers a protest by itself to be insufficient. It is not enough for the papers to publish my picture the next day X that is self-aggrandisement. We need to find a solution, and I take up only those problems for which we can find solutions."These include redistributing government land for the poor and ending indiscriminate dumping of Bengaluru's garbage in nearby Mandur. "When I was told the garbage was from Bengaluru and that we had been dumping 300 tonnes of it every day for the last seven years, I felt I too had to atone," he says.

That protest ended when the authorities submitted a written agreement to the protesting villagers that the dumping would cease and the waste removed over three years. These methods are markedly different from the days when he used to put time bombs in postboxes outside government offices to disrupt the Colonial regime, which earned him a 14-month prison term.

At the Stroke of Midnight Doreswamy is currently recovering after a few days of hospitalisation brought on by breathing trouble, which is why he has cut down his activities, the khadi-clad Gandhian explains, while declining an invitation for a school's Independence Day celebration. But he assures the visitors he will come by later to talk to the high school students about the freedom struggle. Once they have left, he explains with a conspiratorial smile, "It will be a gala day for the children. I will be an intruder."

The recent illness also means he is mostly in bed, at his double-storey home in Jayanagar in south Bengaluru. There is a landline on the window sill, which he picks up promptly when it rings. Much of the day is spent perusing the day's newspapers. Books and magazines are stacked up next to his bed, while another window sill has piles of empty medicine cartons.

His memory belies his age, whether it is discussing current events, a recent protest or the day India celebrated her independence for the first time. "Over a lakh of people had gathered at Dharmambudhi tank (which is now the Majestic bus station). Every house, every shop had the Indian flag and Nehru's speech was broadcast on Akashvani," he recalls. Significantly, there was no official hoisting of the Indian flag because the then-ruler of Mysore was holding out against joining India. Still, two of Doreswamy's acquaintances managed to give the clerks in the High Court the slip, nip upstairs, pull down the flag of Mysore and hoist the tricolour."The clerks were in a quandary because they could not admit they were distracted and hence allowed this to happen. Nor could they allow the tricolour to continue flying at the cost of the flag of Mysore," he chuckles. Doreswamy and other Congress members then launched the Mysore Chalo movement to protest the maharaja's decision to boycott accession.

Disillusionment, and Hope
In the years following Independence, Doreswamy was active in the Congress party but did not join the government, though his brother became mayor of Bangalore. Inspired by Gandhi, he wanted to devote his life to social work. When I was in fifth form, I had read Gandhi's book, My Early Life, where he wrote that a social worker should hug voluntary poverty. That line, he says, stayed with him. To live up to his ideals but not starve, Doreswamy started a publication, ran a newspaper, wrote articles and joined Vinoba Bhave's Bhoodan Movement, where he would get Rs 100 a month, so that he could "manage two square meals a day". His wife, Lalithamma- who declined to be interviewed citing ill health- would look after the household while he was away on protests.

He quit the Congress when Indira Gandhi came to power, writing her a scathing letter in which he informed her: ¡§You are ruling in the name of democracy but you are acting like a dictator." At a protest, he was arrested but the courts cleared him of the charges, saying he had every right to criticise the prime minister. After leaving the Congress, he renewed his focus on social work and holding the government of the day accountable.

He is disillusioned with the successive politicians who came to power and run the country, across parties. ¡§The first three regimes were alright because they were people who had fought for our freedom. Now, there are only crorepatis in power. We patronise only the wealthy and neglect the poor, he says. He feels there is not much to choose between the different parties today. ¡§All the old ideologies of the Congress have been thrown away while other parties act as if freedom means the freedom to loot. There is no people's candidate, he says. The electorate, he complains, goes to sleep after voting every five years. Yet, that disillusionment does not stretch to cynicism about the future of the India he had fought and been imprisoned for. We are a fighting race.

Our successors will not give up. There are already many silent rebellions simmering-they just need to join together.