NEED TO EVOLVE A NEW PARADIGM OF POLITICAL ACTION Author - VT Joshi

“IF THEY ATTACK AGAIN WE WILL CALL FOR ‘ASIA BANDH’, NEXT WE WILL GO FOR ‘EUROPE BANDH’ AND THEN….” This is a telling satire in a cartoon in a prominent Bhopal newspaper on the menace of bandh politics. Its latest manifestation was the thoughtless calls for Gujarat bandh by the Congress party followed by Bharat bandh by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, Bajrang Dal and Shiv Sena to protest against the horrendous terrorist attack on the famous Swaminarayan temple in Ahmedabad. A surprisingly welcome feature was that, in its belated wisdom, the ‘reigning’ Bharatiya Janata party dissociated itself from the bandh calls, apparently convinced that these tactics have long outlived their popular utility and are counter productive in a maturing democracy.

However hopes of an early end to the obsession with of bandh politics have been dashed to the ground by every other political outfit continuing to resort to calls for bandh every now and then on the flimsiest of excuses to protest against any untoward incident anywhere to exhibit their nationalism which they seem to wear so lightly on their sleeves.

Apparently Pakistan also seems to have devised its own forms and variations of destructive protests like in India, although for different reasons and in different contexts. Participating in the popular BBC weekly programmes, “Question Time Pakistan”, from Islamabad a former Supreme Court Judge suggested the other day a refreshingly new approach to demonstrate public anger against wanton death and destruction. He said ten thousand people should go to the victims’ families to commiserate and sympathize and to express their solidarity with them, and to protest against the killings of their fellow citizens and human beings, irrespective of sectarian, casteist or any other bigoted considerations. Justice Naim Hasan’s sane suggestion came in the context of the frequent bouts of attacks on Churches and killing spree of Christian (and other) minorities or in the mosques by rival gangs of Sunnis and Shias in Pakistan.

This is a far more effective and humane method of expressing national resentment and solidarity than for self appointed, ill-motivated partisan groups to indulge in destructive bandhs invariably resulting in loot and plunder, mayhem and murder by anti-social elements and mafia gangs virtually encouraging terrorist anarchy. Much to the agony and harassment of the common people everywhere.

Protests, peaceful demonstrations and strikes have long been hailed as the inalienable democratic rights of the people. In the early decades after Independence genuine efforts were made by their organisers to ensure that they really passed of peacefully. With the passage of time however they lost their appeal. Disruption of the even tenor of normal life was deliberately brought about routinely through coercive forms of aggressive agitation for “impact”, and very often through violence or threats of violence.

Thus quite fashionable became resort to mass casual or mass sick leave and contrived work stoppage amidst vociferous slogan shouting. Ludicrous forms of agitation were invented like, for instance, half- day fasts and “relay” fasts that eventually degenerated into hunger strikes between breakfast and lunch and then till dinner time. Traffic jams, threats of self-immolation, indefinite strikes, gheraos, bandhs and the like. The latest manifestation of madness of a group of farm leaders of Karnatak was their crazy plunge into the Cauvery river and one of them inevitably met his watery grave – a macabre improvisation of Narmada bachao campaigners’ frequent threat to drown themselves in the swirling waters of the mighty river if and when it is “dammed” fully.

Over the years all this has resulted in senseless death and destruction, either provoking or provoked by extreme forms of governmental action like police lathi charge, firing and imposition of curfew. There has been an alarming increase in the frequency of such threats, which have brought untold misery and hardships to the common people who began to resent and resist but did not how to without harming the genuine public causes they are supposed to espouse. In the light of such experience the former Pak Supreme Court Judge’s plea of national sanity as well as solidarity is of immense value and is equally applicable to the whole of the Indian subcontinent. His advice deserves to be taken to heart by all those for whom unalloyed public weal is a prized possession at heart.

Even more abhorrent is yet another hideous practice of comparatively recent origin fashioned by almost all political parties in a bewildering variety of abuse and crudity. That is the practice of “effigy burning” which has come into vogue to ventilate all kinds of grievances, both genuine and fancied, by all and sundry. It is the most despicable of all forms of protests resorted to, at the drop of a hat as it were, by the most irresponsible sections of politicians of all hues and colour.

Whether it is prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee or opposition leader Sonia Gandhi, George Bush or Pervez Musharraf, Jyoti Basu or successive Pakistani High Commissioners in India, Mulayam Singh Yadav or Laloo Prasad Yadav, L. K. Advani or Pramod Mahajan, M.P. CM Digvijay Singh or Kerala premier A. K Antony, Jaylalita or Karunanidhi, none has been spared and all have been at the receiving end of the mocking fiery wrath of synthetic crowds and lately the so-called fan clubs. Its latest example is the burning of the effigy of Tamil film star Rajnikant for his “crime” of refusing to join the ugly agitation against Karnatak on the issue of sharing Cauvery waters between the two combative states. Rajnikant was thus reportedly forced to change his mind.

In the galaxy of national and international stars a few “lesser” mortals and wicked souls of “dubious fame” have also found a place of honour and the torching – regrettably not in flesh and blood but only in combustible straw and rags bathed in showers of precious commodities like petrol or kerosene. They are the ferocious looking mustachioed figures like those of forest brigand Veerappan and some imaginary masked terrorists, all anarchists who, ironically enough, deserve a much worse fate.

These meaningless fiery rituals have come in handy for television hounds to make colourful visuals and copy for the media. In addition, of course, to focusing their cameras upon the daily fare of ghastly events and sickeningly close shots of mutilated bodies of victims and the wounded swathed in bandages, writhing in pain on hospital beds, yet most inhumanly coaxed to provide a few agonizing sound bytes by the paparazzi thrusting their mikes into their bruised faces. Such images routinely dished out day after day only help to deaden the senses and sensitivities of the viewers, and rarely help to promote the cause of “wake-up-calls” they are alleged to be intended. In stark reality it is nothing of the kind but only a ruse to sub serve their own fiercely competitive “marketology”.

Amidst all this chaotic fare is a fanciful pastime of most of our political leaders. It is their lately acquired practice of unleashing from its scabbard a gleaming sword and waving it ponderously at the otherwise perfectly innocuous, peaceful gatherings at inaugural or valedictory functions the leaders are fond of attending every now and then, often sporting assorted sizes and shapes of headgear to suit the variegated regional fancies. The picture of dispirited leaders like Atal Behari Vajpayee or faltering feminines like Sonia Gandhi indulging in such gimmicks makes a grotesque sight. Indeed as grotesque as some chief ministers and lesser mortals in our political and social firmament demeaning themselves by sitting like a lump of jaggery on the precariously balanced pan of a huge grocer’s scale to get weighed against silver coins or bags of currency or grains or such other mundane commodities in order to please their sycophantic followers and admirers, all in the name of a long forgotten ancient tradition, “Tulabhar”.

What started at the begining of the last century in a nascent form of picketing of some shops and burning of foreign goods has grown to the present effigy burning and 'tulabhar. Yet, if one looks closely, one notices that the paradigm of political action in Indian sub-continent has remained essentially unchanged, though it has been extended and stretched to a ridiculous extent. Political class in India will do well to move beyond the last century's paradigm of political action and exert to develop new means of giving expression to people's sentiments.

VT Joshi

6th October, 2002

VT JOSHI (1925-2008) worked for more than fifty years as a journalist. He retired from THE TIMES OF INDIA in 1989. During 1985-89 he was the Special Correspondent of THE TIMES OF INDIA in Pakistan. His books "PAKISTAN: ZIA TO BENAZIR" and "INDIA AT CROSS ROADS" (co-author GG Puri) were widely reviewed in both India and Pakistan.

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