Polity as theatre

Frenzy was first experimented by BJP’s predecessor, the Bharatiya Jan Sangh and its most able orator, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, as the dispute between India and China over land in the North-East in the late 1950s, culminating in the war of November 1962. When Nehru described the barren land in that region in a graphic phrase — not a blade of grass grows’ — and prepared for some sort of negotiated settlement, Vajpayee put his oratorical skills to maximum use to stop any kind of negotiation involving transfer of “even an inch of the sacred motherland”. Nehru paid put in his efforts. Chester Bowles, the US ambassador put it vividly. Diplomacy lost out to democracy’.

This new element of frenzy was retrieved in the course of the Ayodhya dispute in the late 1980s and early 90s and forced upon the political scenario by the BJP under the leadership of L.K. Advani and M.M. Joshi, besides the lower rung of more vituperative leaders such as Sadhavi Rithambhra and Uma Bharati. Things began to change drastically.

History elsewhere has witnessed frenzy as a mode of mobilisation on a vast scale. Muhammad himself had done wonders for his religion with frenzy as a strong driving force and his followers carried on with his legacy, though, to be sure, this was not his only legacy. The 11th century crusades were similarly driven by religious zeal. They constitute a major episode in the evolution of European Christian perception of Islam and the Muslim world.

Frenzy was brought to a high water mark by Adolf Hitler when he mobilised his SS volunteers on the basis of intense antipathy towards a part of the nation and a part of history, i.e. the Jews, a model that had greatly inspired M.S. Golwalkar, the second Sarsanghchalak of the RSS. On a much reduced scale, Indira Gandhi’s acolytes too tried out the tactics when they used to bring in hordes of Congress volunteers’ shouting themselves hoarse in support of some of the other minor action of hers.

The BJP thus has several historical precedents across the spectrum to fall back upon, with varying results. It must ask itself the question and the country must repeat the question to itself: Do we, in the 21st century, have option to go along the same path that humanity has trodden in one way or another in the hoary past?

Historical evidence regarding the existence of a Ram temple beneath the Babri Masjid is not the issue; it is one of political direction and social vision. History in any case yields precious little to support the theory of a Ram temple, or any temple, on the site of the Babri Masjid. The earliest concrete and unambiguous evidence that the site was the birth-place of Ram comes from a Persian language document, written by one Hafizullah, submitted to the Faizabad court in 1822, nearly three centuries after the construction of the mosque. As any practicing historian would testify, the value of documentary evidence declines in keeping with its distance in time from the event it refers to. Thus, a document of 1822 is poor evidence for authenticating an event of 1528! Indeed, even this evidence speaks of Ram Janamasthan (the very word used in the document in Persian script) but does not speak of a temple there. There was of course considerable demolition of temples (and, incidentally, demolition of some mosquesby Hindu rulers) in medieval India, but such was not the case at Ayodhya. But then, even if historical evidence were to prove conclusively that Babar had actually destroyed the temple, which would be quite contrary to his personal characteristics, are we poised in the 21st century to go back to the 16th and justify it?

The state in every medieval society looked upon itself as the site of a theatre where roles were performed according to a script for the common people to emulate. As long as theatrical roles had the desired effect, no further questions needed to be asked. Modern Indian polity still seems to follow the same script: Some dramatic action on the part of one or another segment of the political class and the people will back it. Demolish the Babri Masjid, explode a bomb, do not allow Parliament to function, announce that the Babri Masjid fell to a bomb rather than to the hammers of those atop the domes and frenzy of those behind the microphones, and you have the masses voting for you.

People themselves engage in some sort of drama by exploding crackers and doing bhangra. But when it comes to political choice, they have again and again shown their yearning for clean, development oriented politics. Anyone exhibiting the slightest promise of cleaning up politics becomes the darling of the masses. Remember the popularity of the early Rajiv Gandhi, V.P. Singh, T.N. Seshan, and others who have the image of a crusader for clean politics.

The question then that stares us all in the face is: Have we matured as a nation to sit back and discuss and decide our destiny, or, are we yet to allow frenzy to guide us into the middle ages? We do expect our political class to reconsider its strategy of polity as theatre, where the basic assumption is that the masses are a pack of fools with no mind of their own; and we do expect Vajpayee to give us a shade better governance than his poetry.