Soon a mere tide of political collusion will carry A.P.J. Abdul Kalam into the presidential palace — and the media will, no doubt, discover some other entertainment. Meanwhile, the presidential election provides an occasion for the display of several elements of contemporary morality. Among the least attractive of these is the current hostility towards anything or anyone that is perceived as weak. This is curious, because sympathy for the underdog is supposed to be instinctive — but in the current phase of morality, all that has changed entirely. And Lakshmi Sehgal’s greatest fault is that she has consented to enter a contest that she is certain to lose. However, the very fact of her candidacy provides us with a chance to examine the symbolic significance of this symbolic contest for a largely symbolic office.The individual excellences of the principals are not at issue. Both the candidates are, by all accounts, exceptional human beings — certainly better than some who have occupied that office. The fact that they are pitted against each other is an effect of everyday politics, which will no doubt persist in its sleazy way long after one of them has risen into invisibility of office, and the other sunk into the invisibility of the mundane. However, in so far as they are contenders, it is worth asking what each symbolises.Let us ignore the ignoble communal considerations that might have motivated the BJP leadership, damage-controlling after the Gujarat carnage. Kalam is not merely the rishi-like figure, leading an existence of simplicity, and yet possessed of the secrets of terrible power. He is also the technocrat who inhabits a world of technical solutions far removed from the messy social world of problems. He is someone who is unabashedly and somewhat simplistically, committed to enhancing the ‘‘power’’ of the state, committed towards a greater reliance on military strength as the means to national ‘‘greatness’’. As such, he becomes a ready symbol of the impatient, largely Hindu, middle class, eager to enter the glamorous world of globalised consumption, desirous of simple solutions, resentful of the unwashed masses of their own countrymen who are complicating — by their disparate demands, by their implacable needs — this fervently desired translation. Kalam the techno-magician will fix all that.Sehgal, on the one hand, seems a figure from another world. It isn’t merely that Subhas Bose’s INA is almost forgotten. It is also the case that her way of living is, as any MBA will tell you, a terrible under-utilisation of her star potential. She seems an appropriate symbol for the heroic, helpless nobility of the Left — itself an echo from an earlier time. Kalam, on the other hand, is — as Amar Singh gushed on TV — an achiever.One can only admire, even as one deplores, the skill with which the BJP’s tacticians have successfully humiliated so many worthy people, including the president, vice-president, a governor, and still emerge smelling of roses. Of course, as with everything else that they have touched, the institution of the presidency too has been soiled by their attentions. But it would be a mistake to suppose that the symbolic content of any presidency is given at the very outset. Thus, skipping the odious examples, one admires the way in which President Narayanan managed to articulate, crystallise and give voice to the troubled conscience of the nation while remaining within prescribed limits. For all the cunning of the masters of the game, there are inevitable risks in playing with living pieces — as Alice discovered in Wonderland.Sehgal will no doubt fade back into her quietly worthy life. But the evolution of the symbolic content of the presidency that is about to start will be worth following. Thus, the eminent Kalam might discover parts of himself that he might never have otherwise needed. He might well discover that in the real world of quantum complications, the pursuit of power and strength sometimes translates into weakness. India’s nuclearisation has, as surely the most wooden-headed must understand by now, wiped out the relative weakness of Pakistan’s conventional forces. Greater military expenditure — with which he is, alas, hitherto identified — will almost certainly mean diversion of funds from social welfare. It remains to be seen whether Kalam will be able to use the symbolic resonance of the presidency to become better than the forces who are hustling him into the Rashtrapati Bhavan.
