On Tue, May 26, 2009 at 7:42 AM, ravi <ravi at platosbeard.org> wrote:
>
>
>> End of arrogance - The Hour of the Untamed Cosmopolitan
>> ASHIS NANDY, Social Scientist
>> From Tehelka Magazine,
>> Vol 6, Issue 21,
>> May 30, 2009
>> http://www.tehelka.com/story_main41.asp?filename=Ne300509the_hour.asp
>>
>> Ashis Nandy (born 1937) is an Indian political psychologist and social
>> theorist and a leading social, cultural and political critics in
>> contemporary times. A trained sociologist and clinical psychologist,
>> his field covers a vast area of thinking such as public conscience,
>> political psychology, mass violence, nationalism and culture.
>>
>> Bred on radical diversity and an epic culture, the voter makes a
>> reckoning of Narendra Modi, Prakash Karat, Mayawati and the politics
>> of excess
>>
>> AFTER ALMOST two decades, in many ways, the election of 2009 was a
>> normal election. No overriding consideration drove the voting across
>> the country. Diverse configurations in diverse places determined the
>> fate of different candidates and parties. Different regions had
>> different logic even within a given state. Still, underlying the
>> diversity there were some common themes.
>>
>> First, I think people were looking for ways to lower the temperature
>> of politics. High-pitched politics has reigned in our polity for
>> nearly 15 years now. My suspicion is people were a bit tired of this.
>> For example, the past two elections showed that in Uttar Pradesh, only
>> one percent of the electorate was interested in Ram Janmabhoomi. The
>> BJP probably played down the issue this year because their internal
>> assessment showed the same thing. Except in West Bengal, nowhere did
>> the election involve an emotional arousal of the kind we have come to
>> routinely expect.
>>
>> There are reasons for this. In our society, we live with radical
>> diversities — diversity that is not based on tamed forms of
>> difference. The US is a perfect example of tamed diversity. You get
>> every kind of food and dress and cultural activity in America. You
>> think you are very cosmopolitan if you can distinguish Huaiyang food
>> from Schezwan food, or South Korean ballet from Beijing opera, or Ming
>> dynasty china from Han dynasty china in a museum. This is diversity
>> that is permissible, legitimate, tamed.
>>
>> Radical diversity is when you tolerate and live with people who
>> challenge some of the very basic axioms of your political life. Like
>> most of South Asia, Indians have an old capacity to live with such
>> diversity. A powerful example is Sajjad Lone contesting the election
>> this year. Nobody objected that a secessionist wants to take an oath
>> of allegiance to the Constitution. Everyone spoke of it glowingly. I
>> consider that a tolerance for radical diversity. In such a society,
>> all excesses are ultimately checkmated.
>>
>> In India, we live in a country where the gods are imperfect and the
>> demons are never fully demonic. I call this an ‘epic culture’ because
>> an epic is not complete without either the gods or the demons. They
>> make the story together. This is a part of our consciousness, and
>> ultimately, I think it influences our public life. People go up to a
>> point with their grievance, then get tired of it. They realise that to
>> go further is a dangerous thing because it destroys the basic
>> algorithm of your life. They say, enough is enough, let us go back to
>> a normal life. This election represents something of that
>> consciousness. We probably need this kind of interregnum in politics.
>> They have a soothing effect on our public life. This is what most
>> Indians feel.
>>
>> The second underlying theme is that people were searching for a sort
>> of minimum decency. Negative campaigns, excessively personal attacks,
>> hostile slogans — all of this seemed to upset the voter. When the BJP
>> and the Left targeted Manmohan Singh, making him the butt of jokes and
>> accusations, Singh became a hero for the very qualities people joked
>> about. His weakness, his absence of a political base, his
>> susceptibility to pressures of the Congress high command — instead of
>> looking like liabilities, these things suddenly began to look like a
>> marker of a genteel type of politics. I think that paid dividends.
>> Contrasted with their shrill opponents, Sonia and Rahul Gandhi’s
>> conduct too paid dividends.
>>
>> (I asked a waiter at the India International Centre in Delhi what he
>> felt about the election results. “It’s been very good,” he said. Was
>> he a Congress supporter, I asked him. “It’s not that, sahib,” he
>> replied. “That Sardarji is a good man. He is educated, he is not a
>> thief, and he is a newcomer to politics. Still, they got after him,
>> calling him weak and scared. Who can enjoy watching that? I am just
>> happy that this election result has shown there is a god watching
>> above.” I quote the waiter verbatim because I think the idea of “a god
>> above” might have been a consideration with many other people as
>> well.)
>>
>> THE THIRD and interlinked theme this election was the voter’s desire
>> to bring down the arrogant. The way Mayawati has lost, in what was
>> once thought an inelastic support base, points to something very
>> significant. Many people did not like the way she threw her weight
>> around; her ostentation; the dozens of statues she is erecting in her
>> likeness, her assumption that even if she did nothing to serve it
>> further, history was waiting for her. Others did not like Narendra
>> Modi. Yet others, Prakash Karat. Arrogance of style. Arrogance of
>> ambition. The arrogance of neglecting the people. All of this was
>> punished by the voter.
>>
>> Narendra Modi has marginalised all possible opposition within the BJP,
>> and sidelined the RSS, Bajrang Dal and VHP. They cannot really muddy
>> things for him easily anymore. He is a man looking for power and he
>> has used and discarded them. He has a solid support base in West
>> Gujarat and among middle-class Gujaratis, so there is no question of
>> him fading away, but this election doubts have been planted about his
>> capacity to emerge as a pan-Indian leader. He was billed as a star
>> campaigner for the BJP, but the Indian voter has sent back a strong
>> message scaling him down.
>>
>> Controversial leaders rarely make it to the top job in India. Modi is
>> determined not to talk of communities, determined not to apologise or
>> even make a gesture towards the Muslim community to atone for the sins
>> of Gujarat 2002. His refrain is that he is the leader of
>> five-and-a-halfcrore Gujaratis, implying he is also the leader of
>> Muslims. But this election should teach him some lessons in humility
>> and modesty. It should give him some access to the language of
>> politics in India. He will learn his lesson. Indian politics has
>> taught humility to lots of people from Indira Gandhi to Mayawati. It
>> will teach humility to Narendra Modi also.
>>
>> Unfortunately, there is a big similarity between Prakash Karat and
>> Narendra Modi — however unpleasant that thought might be. They are
>> both men who do not understand the wisdom of accommodation and cannot
>> stomach the dilution of ideology.
>>
>> Like Modi and Mayawati, this election has scaled down the arrogance of
>> Prakash Karat, but the debacle of the Left Front points to a deeper
>> malaise.
>>
>> IN BENGAL, the party had been in power too long. In a society like
>> ours, when any political party is on an ascendant, all gangs, thugs
>> and extortionists gravitate towards that party. In UP, this mafia
>> element was first attached to the Congress; then it moved to the BJP;
>> then the SP; then the BSP, mirroring their rising political graphs. In
>> Bengal, 32 years into power, all anti-social elements had become
>> entrenched within the CPM. The party’s coercive might was enormous. In
>> village after village, people from other parties were prevented from
>> campaigning. That arrogance and control has not loosened very much,
>> but it has started to crack. In the long run, I think Prakash Karat
>> has done a lot of good to Bengal. These three decades of continuous
>> rule had rotted the system to the core. If you miss power once in a
>> while — however bad the Opposition may be — it keeps people and
>> parties on their toes.
>>
>> (For instance, I believe it is good the BJP got a shot at winning
>> power at the Centre one time. Not only did it limber up the Congress,
>> it also allowed the BJP to get a sense that it can come to power if it
>> gets its formulas right. This is very important to keep the rabid
>> fringe like VHP, Bajrang Dal and Shiv Sena in check. When you have
>> legitimate power, you don’t have to use street power. You rein them in
>> because it’s counter-productive and you want respectability.)
>>
>> But criminality and arrogance is not the only reason for the Left
>> Front’s rout in Bengal and Kerala. The trouble is, their kind of
>> Leninism has not survived anywhere in the world except in Cuba, Bengal
>> and Kerala. Chandan Mitra would add tartly, “And the People’s Republic
>> of Jawaharlal Nehru University.” This ideology has such an Edwardian
>> ring to it, I am surprised it even captivated so many in India. The
>> point is, this sense of a vanguard of the proletariat, this whole
>> position is protected by middle-class activists. This is why despite
>> 32 years in power, the truth is that the kind of revolutionary changes
>> in social structures that have swept across India have not even
>> touched West Bengal. Everything there is still controlled by the upper
>> castes, and in some senses, it is the most casteist society in India.
>> West Bengal is one state in India, for instance, where you cannot even
>> dream of having a dalit chief minister. In contrast, in south India,
>> the whole thing has opened up. So much new energy has been released.
>> But has Bengal produced an AR Rahman? Or his guru, Illayaraja? Genius
>> flowering from the bottom of society. Such release of energy from the
>> non-brahminic castes has absolutely no parallel in Bengal.
>>
>> There are similarities between Karat and Modi — however unpleasant
>> that thought might be
>> There is little hope that the churn of this defeat will bring in any
>> fresh thought into Marxism in Bengal. It cannot, because this is the
>> last remnant of a colonial culture. That is why our Marxists are
>> locked into their textbooks. That is why they haven’t picked up
>> anything from Latin American Marxism or European Marxism, that is why
>> there has been no new indigenous innovation.
>>
>> In such an intellectual world, rethinking comes through only two
>> things: death and retirement. Once people start retiring and dying, a
>> new generation will come in. Then it will be easy. They will just not
>> bother with what has gone before. Ideas like this die out of neglect
>> and carelessness, not through dramatic confrontation.
>>
>> The other important trend this election has thrown up, is the return
>> of support to larger national level parties. One could read this as
>> the start of a significant course correction. With the extreme
>> proliferation of smaller parties and interest groups, perhaps the
>> fragmentation of electoral power has stopped yielding dividends.
>>
>> The interesting thing is, though the pitch has been scaled down, one
>> cannot read this election result as a post-Mandal era of politics.
>> Many of the Congress’ traditional vote banks — the dalits and Muslims
>> in UP, for instance — had moved away from the Congress to more
>> ‘specialist parties’: the dalits moved to the BSP, the Muslims to
>> Mulayam Singh. In Bihar, they moved towards Lalu. The attraction of
>> these parties was that, being smaller, they were much more captive to
>> the demands of their vote base. In a large, national party like the
>> Congress, others’ demands checkmated your demands. Ironically, the
>> movement back towards the Congress is a sign that the specialist
>> parties like SP and BSP have become too big and bloated with ambition,
>> and so less responsive to their vote banks. In effect, the Congress is
>> now the new small party trying to build a new support base. People
>> feel it might be more responsive to their needs.
>>
>> There are other reasons why it would be premature to read this
>> election as a post-Mandal era. In India, except in very small, modern,
>> urban pockets, the unit of mobility is not the individual; the unit of
>> mobility is caste. The lowest common denominator for any party
>> decision on their choice of candidates is caste — all other
>> considerations of aptitude and intention come after that. In fact, we
>> cannot reach a post- Mandal era of politics yet because entering
>> politics from the periphery is still a very crucial instrument in
>> Indian politics.
>>
>> In effect, the Congress is now the new small party trying to build a
>> new support base
>> Some of the parties lay less emphasis on it because their
>> constituencies have arrived in the mainstream. The Marathas, Patels,
>> Vokkaligas, Lingayats, Jats. Yadavs too talk less about it because
>> they have just arrived. Perhaps, with Nitish Kumar, Kurmis too will
>> feel more secure. But there are still hundreds of communities who are
>> not well represented. Now that the big communities have organised
>> themselves and reaped the benefits, the smaller ones want a slice of
>> the pie. Just as the Kammas emerged in the 1970s and 1980s through
>> NTR, the Kapus have emerged this election through Chiranjeevi. These
>> are much smaller communities. Earlier, they would have voted under
>> larger umbrellas. Now they think they can carve out a smaller, more
>> targeted domain or space in the political arena.
>>
>> Recently, the Gujjars began to lobby violently for Scheduled Tribe
>> status — as if a mere Parliamentary decree can turn a group into a
>> tribe. This sort of misuse, battles for quotas, unreasonable demands
>> for affirmative action, and other forms of vote bank wheeling-dealing
>> will continue to happen. But in the long run, all of this will be good
>> for India.
>>
>> As representations in the system give different communities larger
>> space, everybody’s stake in the democratic system will increase. In
>> the long run, there will be so many crosscutting configurations, the
>> problem will take care of itself. There is a big difference between
>> caste groups angling for 35 or 40 Lok Sabha seats like Mulayam or
>> Lalu, and a caste group contesting for eight or ten. Chiranjeevi, for
>> instance, just has four or five seats. The scale is going down because
>> we have already accommodated a lot of people. The next generation will
>> not face this. They will inherit a much more inclusive world.
>>
>> FINALLY, a last word on arrogance. The Left parties may have been
>> defeated this election, but the leftist impulse is intact in our
>> society. In fact, it is an imperative. It would be a big mistake if
>> the UPA saw this victory as a mandate for unbridled liberalisation.
>> Some care for the bottom of the society, some belief that the poor
>> should be a priority focus is vital for this society to survive and
>> retain its idea of itself as a humane society. You cannot pay Rs
>> 12,000 for a meal for two people in a five-star hotel and come out and
>> throw Rs 10 to a boy competing with a dog for the garbage and think
>> you have done your duty. Neither can you wait 200 years for the
>> so-called trickle down effect that never comes.
>>
>> It is no accident that the real factor that won the UPA this election
>> is its NREGA scheme and loan waiver for farmers. Even if 90 percent of
>> this money is pilfered, it permeates into the countryside. Not all of
>> the corruption is in Delhi and Bhubaneswar. A lot of the siphoning
>> happens lower down the chain. Even those who rob, must spend. This
>> boosts the local economy. This pays electoral dividends. India’s poor
>> always vote. That is India’s best checkmate for arrogance.
>>
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-- My humanity is in feeling we are all voices of the same poverty. - Jorge Louis Borges