Anna Hazare and Swami Nigamanand: A tale of two hunger strikers

Here's a tale of two hunger strikers.

The first guy, Swami Nigamanand, went on an indefinite fast in February to demand a ban on mining in his home state of Uttarakhand.  He slipped into a coma and died in May.

The second guy, Anna Hazare, fasted for a good while this summer to garner support for an anti-corruption ombudsman, which the government is even now trying to create. But he says the government's corruption cop will be too weak, so he went on a fast again this week — only to stop when hardly anybody turned up and doctors told him his health was in danger.

But this is the good part.  It's taken until now for an investigation to determine that Nigamanand was not poisoned, but died of malnutrition related to his hunger strike, according to the BBC.  And Marathi-language media is claiming that Hazare's chief lieutenants in the anti-corruption movement — Arvind Kejriwal and Kiran Bedi — actually tried to force him to keep fasting, according to India Today.

Meanwhile, across the country in Manipur, Irom Sharmila has been fasting — or trying to fast — for 10 long years to try to convince the government to withdraw the Armed Forces Special Powers Act in her state.  

So far, mining has been stopped in Uttarakhand and the government is trying its darnedest to get some sort of anti-corruption law passed.  But for Sharmila, all they've offered is force-feeding.  

That's gotta be a gender thing or a Northeast India thing… Probably the latter, since India only acknowledges that the Northeast is part of the country when it's trying to put down separatist movements or wrangling over borders with China.