Sugata Srinivasaraju I ET
There is already a voluminous heap of analyses and commentary on the general election results. It may not be pragmatic to look back anymore, but to look ahead. In fact, the new Lok Sabha has already been constituted and members have taken oath.
However, provocative slogans that rented Parliament during the oath-taking ceremony, with a clear intent to stalk some opposition members, reminded one of something that lies buried at the bottom of all the heap of reasoning that has characterised poll results – the dogged cultural politics of the BJP. This merits a visitation and constant re-visitation. If this is not accorded primacy there is no going forward for opposition parties like the Congress, which are staring at a horizon that does not promise the blip of comet light.
The term “narrative” often crops up in political talk. The vanquished concede that the victor had a “strong narrative”, but they seldom go deeper to ask what really were the elements in the victor’s story. How did those elements orchestrate into a single, impactful recital? Was this story an epic, oral construction over the decades, or was it a make-believe bedtime yarn that fulfilled the exigency of a night? None of these questions gets serious attention because no other party in India is as persistent with cultural politics as the BJP. The absence of a well laid out cultural strategy has defined almost all opposition parties today. They understand identity to an extent, but do not think through cultural aspects. They have so far reacted to the unravelling epic of the BJP, with the exigency of a bedtime yarn.
Assume an ordinary BJP worker and a regular Congress worker are locked up in a room. What if they are told that they will be let out only if they list three things they strongly believe in? The likely responses are not difficult to imagine. The BJP worker, with the breathlessness of rote learning, will say, a Ram temple should be built in what is Ram janmabhoomi; special status to Kashmir be scrapped and. therefore, Article 370 of the Constitution abrogated; finally, s/he will insist on a uniform civil code. S/he will have more on offer, but these may be on top of the agenda. Whether right or wrong, inclusive or exclusive, mvirulent or benign, all of his/her demands have a cultural ring to them. On the other hand, the hemming and hawing Congress worker may have some diffculty in articulating his or her position. He/she may get into a circular twist of power dreams, believing in becoming a corporator, or an MLA, or an MP, depending on his/her station in life at the time.
Therefore, it is between culture and power. Everybody seeks power but the BJP creates a cultural reasoning to seek power. This makes a great impression on the voters’ mind. While one is supposedly seeking it for the nation, filigreed in collective imagination, the other is seeking it for the self. This was the cultural contrast the BJP worked on between Narendra Modi and Rahul Gandhi. The naamdar and kaamdar jibes arose with a strategic intent to create such contrast. The Congress was dragged into this culture war they did not know how to fight because they never applied themselves in that direction. Everything they raised, however big, Rafale or NYAY, got dissolved in this cultural logic.
Senior leaders of the Congress may have spoken of an “idea of India” that is plural, diverse and tolerant as a cultural counter, but that is tame, and in the realm of abstraction. Ordinary party workers could not draw from it to answer their BJP counterpart in their immediate surroundings, say, in a park or a drawing room. If by some quirk of luck, they did draw from this abstraction they would sound like delivering a lecture, while the BJP person would be speaking a dream.
In a recent issue of the Economist (May 11, 2019), the column “Charlemagne” looked at the politics of suburbia in Europe and said: “Culture wars have taken hold of European politics and eclipsed the old left-versus-right distinction.” The nationalism of the suburbs of Europe has clashed with pro-European internationalism. What is being fought in India are culture wars too, but have never been characterised that way. The Congress placed an implicit trust in a default electoral cycle that would deliver power on its doorstep. Hence, they did not address the cultural questions with the seriousness they deserved.
Cultural Cell Called RSS
Most parties spend crores on data scientists, pollsters, technologists, spin masters as well as event and image managers, but do not spend resources, time or energy to get their cultural thinking and positioning right. None of these parties would ever think of commissioning a report that helps understand the cultural journeys they need to undertake. The biggest yield of such a report could be the narrative they need to build, sustain and accord it the sublimity it deserves. This, obviously, is a long-term project, hence, the poll-management industry may not be interested. They work on short-term goals and instantaneous ideas with an exclusive focus on creating a big splash for a specific duration. First of all, none of these parties would have a cultural cell. Even if they did, it would be the most unglamorous assignment for an office-bearer. For the BJP, there is a permanent cultural cell called the RSS, which is its reverential core.
During this poll, and the previous one in 2014, Modi, BJP and the RSS had a definitive cultural strategy in place. From it they created a compelling story of majoritarian victimhood and told it in a million ways. This is not something they had created for the polls, but had patiently told, retold, illustrated and annotated over the decades. The RSS was always the custodian of these stories. For the polls, they were only sharpening it for a new historical setting. From time to time, to keep the story fresh and renew its purpose, they created fresh cultural memories around old themes. Those fresh memories were called beef-eating, cow protection, urban naxals, sedition, citizenship bill, love jihad, triple talaq, Indo-Pak tension, Godse, Savarkar, Patel statue etc.
One Nation, One Language, One Religion
They also deployed technology intelligently to amplify the story. Important to note, technology came only after the story, technology itself was not the story. And since the story had the makings of a blockbuster it did well wherever it was placed. It developed a life of its own from one mouth to another, from one social media account to another, one conversation to another. What the opposition parties and leaders did was to vigorously react to these stories. While they assumed they were countering it, they were only arguing about the progression of this story line, its implications and the climax it would reach. This meant, they were actively participating in the story the BJP had created and controlled. The reaction they were putting out became one of the many retellings of the story. They were unwittingly enmeshed in an oral epic that was being woven. All through the polls the BJP ensured there was only one story being told. This resonated with the Sangh’s idea of one nation, one language, one religion, and also, one election.
How the opposition and the Congress actually contributed to the retelling of BJP’s story became obvious on many occasions. Sample this one, from the many by Mamata Banerjee, walking blind into a cultural trap. In a debate on the word “Ramdhanu”, which means rainbow in Bangla, she apparently said it would be ideal to replace the word “Ram” with “Rango” (colour) and make it “Rangodhanu”. Rainbow in Bangla has a poetic expression as Ram’s bow. Instead of celebrating its metaphoric joy, she meddled with a deeply embedded cultural idea. The logic behind this contraption she was creating for herself was obvious. She thought Muslims may not like to say “Ramdhanu”. India’s former ambassador to UNESCO, Chiranjiv Singh, who mentioned this to me, asked: “Will Mamata now replace the word in Tagore’s poem, Nirjharer Swapnabhanga (Awakening of the Waterfall), too?” The lines in the poem read: “Kesh elayia, phul kudaiya,/Ramdhanu-aanka pakha udayiya…”
Similar was Rahul Gandhi’s project to visit temples during the state and general elections. The BJP was happy to keep the debate and hashtags flowing around it, because it told people the story they had created in a more live and illustrative manner. Since it had an everyday cultural connect, its sales power was that much more powerful. To the one god, Ram, that the BJP served up to bolster their one nation-one religion story, Rahul could have thought of a countervailing idea with thousands of plebian and proletariat gods that came under the Hindu umbrella. There was so much to pick from diverse Indian knowledge traditions to checkmate the BJP, but that needed a consistent cultural strategy. It needed a much deeper response than just entering a temple, or offering a shallow binary of love and hate. Unfortunately, the Congress and other opposition parties have allowed the BJP to appropriate an entire intellectual tradition without any resistance. Now, its recovery is a Himalayan task. We see leaders like Mamata attempting something shallow by countering the “Jai Shri Ram” slogan with “Jai Kali Maa”. It is not likely to work if it is a clever trick, to serve the exigency of the times. There has to be something more original, something stronger in faith that meanders its own path even in the national versus subnational plot.
The Lingayat religion issue that the Siddaramaiah government created during the Karnataka assembly polls in 2018, was also marred by cultural unthinking. Instead of drawing from the great cultural heritage of the Lingayat community and their vachana tradition, they made it a bureaucratic, legislative and pride issue. If cultural heritage had to be foregrounded, it needed considerable time, not the few months before polls. The five years they had were sufficient, but they never applied themselves.
There are innumerable instances across states that can be picked to demonstrate that the Congress did not culturally apply itself, nor, for that matter, did the other opposition parties. There were certain simple measures they could have tried, like simultaneously broadcasting Rahul Gandhi’s press conferences (they were quite a few) in all Schedule Eight languages. They, after all, had Pradesh Congress Committees in each of the linguistic regions. That would have at least demonstrated their commitment for cultural/linguistic diversity against the BJP’s Hindi/Sanskrit obsession. Rahul looked so good in Malayalam when he got a passionate translator in Jyothi Vijayakumar. She did what an anglicised Shashi Tharoor could never do for him. Was it difficult for the Congress to create such alibis in each of the Indian languages? They never thought of it, for sure. Their claim to diversity was never actively illustrated. It was as dry as a corporate mission statement.
The Congress constantly grumbled about most of the mainstream media having kow-towed to the interests of the BJP, but never said that the mainstream media is dominated by upper caste, upper class people who have become the saffron party’s fellow travellers. To intervene on this would have qualified as cultural politics. The Congress chose to live in an ideological ecosystem created by, and for, the BJP. While the BJP did majoritarian politics, media chased majoritarian readership/viewership or constructed false equivalences.
It is not that the Congress never had cultural thinking. In fact, all that Mahatma Gandhi did was cultural politics. He made the freedom movement a cultural movement. He built an ideal for the nation through cultural gestures, like holding prayer meetings, popularising Vaishnava jana to or Raghupati Raghava Raja Ram, defining Ram Rajya, spinning the charkha or encouraging linguistic states. For that matter, his ideas of civil disobedience, satyagraha, trusteeship and making salt were all cultural ideas. He envisioned the Congress as a cultural institution; paradoxically the RSS was born to counter the Congress’s diverse cultural weave. Gandhi could blend two distinct streams with refined clarity — the Sanatana Hindu essence and the European Enlightenment values.
Post-1947, for a new nation in a daze of freedom and the pain of Partition, Jawaharlal Nehru emphasised more on scientific temper and institution-building, however, this was on a bedrock of cultural understanding. But with Nehru gone, and Indira Gandhi in command, it became a pure pursuit of power. It is perhaps time for the Congress to go back to its basics. What it needs is a cultural cell that sees, hears and thinks. Its vision of governance should include cultural diplomacy besides economic and geostrategic diplomacy. Indira understood this component well. Soft power cannot be outsourced to Bollywood or misunderstood as software.
Interestingly, all these years, we dismissed the Sangh Parivar as speaking abstract, ritualistic, anachronistic mumbo jumbo. But, over the decades, when the Congress gave up its cultural thinking, the Sangh with great perseverance built up signs and symbols, Sanskritised whole populations and appropriated ideological opposites. Ironically now, the liberal messaging of the “idea of India” sounds rootless and abstract without concrete co-relationships or attachments.