Political landscape in India is populated by people who are skilled in the art of impression management. What marks a leader today is his speech and the theatrics, write Shashank Chaturvedi and Amit Chaturvedi
In the light of rhetoric and theatrics around narbhakshi, pishach, shaitan, brahm rakshhas, how can one conceptually engage with the political climate of the country todayIJ What kind of political actors and processes has this climate nourished and what kind of leadership styles has emergedIJ Is the political leader of our day an individual who is in many significant ways, starkly different from the kinds of leaders India had at the time of independenceIJ
In trying to answer some of these questions, one may choose to use the notion of liminality to argue that amidst an uncertain predicament, the Indian political landscape has been populated by individuals quite skilled in the art of impression management.
Resorting to a new grammar of politics, political leaders of the new age are particular about their overall look and attire; they have an oratory that is aimed at entertaining, rather than convincing the masses of an ideology.
In fact, language has emerged as a critical factor that differentiates a contemporary Indian politician from his/her predecessors. What marks a leader today, is his speech and the theatrics employed in its delivery in front of a real and virtual audience.
It should not, therefore, be surprising if the Indian political landscape today is teeming with tricksters like Hardik Patel, masquerading in the imagination of the ordinary voter as the new age leaders.
last year, India decisively voted out for a ‘silent Prime Minister’ and it seems as if people are increasingly anxious about the silence of its new Prime Minister on allegations of impropriety and corruption.
“Why is the Prime Minister silentIJ” goes the outcry of the Opposition. Not a day has passed in the recent years, when a row over the statements of our elected representatives has not been reported in the Press.
A familiar plot unfolds quite predictably in most of these episodes. A leader makes a statement which is seen as objectionable by the audience and is most often made to retract with explanatory templates such as “I was misquoted”, “I have been quoted out of context”, “It was not intended” or “In case someone was hurt, I take my words back”.
If the claim is that of degeneration in the quality of rhetoric, a comment on where is it degeneration ‘from’ is only in order.
The rise of identity politics brought the new phase of transition and adhocism in the functioning of the democratic rites and it was here that the phase of liminality began to set foot.
What gradually replaced the earlier phase was a wave that made attempts at taking politics closer to the masses. The phase currently we find ourselves in, is indeed a phase of liminality.
As scholars have shown, liminality is the in-between phase where the usual order of things is suspended. In this ‘betwixt and between’ situation, the past is momentarily negated and the future course of action is not yet certain.
In the phase of liminality, the social order appears to be in transition. The liminal phase witnesses tricksters who emerge on the scene as charismatic individuals. They are the ‘archetype’ (unconscious energy) of the transformation and liminal. They flare up the space provided by this phase through their metaphorical speeches and symbolism.
In this context, one may recall the entry of film stars in Dravidian politics and in north India, the vice president of a national political party is sleeping in a Dalit hamlet, the president of a national political party riding a chariot wearing a crown and carrying a bow and arrows or the champion of social justice wearing ganji (vest) over his kurta, to symbolise the growing dominance of Dalits over upper castes or a ‘tough administrator’ asking for maro jute chaar.
Tricksters have the immense capacity to magnify the point of crises for the inhabitants of the liminal phase. With an enthusiasm of the peeling away of the facade of ‘secularism’ and ‘social justice’, the trickster rides the ladder of fame by ‘exposing the vulnerabilities of the given’ and by promising to create a new social order where the ‘wrongs of the past’ would stand avenged and corrected. At times these individuals appear as negotiators through their ability to communicate.
A sense of uncertainty and suspension of belief in structures and institutions is quite palpable in contemporary India. The last three decades have witnessed intensified contestation over ideas like individual rights and group representation, entitlement to social justice along with claims over cultural symbols and national figures.
Political pundits have analysed and bracketed this phase and the exciting contestation using phrases such as ‘democratic upsurge’ ‘reinventing India’ and ‘India’s silent revolution’. In the context of the changed notion of politics, especially so in the post 1980s, rhetoric gained prominence in the public imagination to the extent that it surpassed all other possibilities of ‘doing’ politics.
Either you perform through learning the new age tricks or perish. The symbolism of rhetoric took the form of rath yatras, road shows, cycle rallies and rickshaw rides. These tricks are necessarily tied to a new language of rhetoric and symbolism.
The discourse analysis of the speeches and comments of the champions of social justice, of contractors of national pride and defenders of secularism is indicative of monotones in national politics.
The heated duels in Bihar centering around derogatory terms shed fresh insights first, these instances are a feature quite in accord with liminality and secondly, politics in India has thrown new sets of tricksters in the arena of contestation for power.
The reach of the new age media and leaders of this phase born out of the social media revolution seem capable enough to embrace the emerging yugadharma of our time.
This new yuga dharma of emerging India is that people remember the USP and the brand and not so much the content. How best to capture the collective memory of the group becomes the sole mantra of the new-age politics in the ongoing liminal phase. language and images had certainly a very crucial role to play in this.
(Shashank Chaturvedi teaches in University of Delhi. Amit Chaturvedi is a research scholar at the Delhi School of Economics)