Pragmatism isn’t all

Evidently, political parties in UP have chosen pragmatism as the framework within which they will aim for success in the assembly elections. This involves an accurate assessment by each party of the relative strength of contending parties. Individual parties will then start making the requisite calculations to become a part of the winning combination.

Such pragmatic considerations do not make huge ideological or ethical demands on parties. It becomes enough for them to calculate, not the strength of ideology or argument, but the demographic strength of social groups that form the critical base for the winning combination. Thus the attempts of Bahujan Samaj Party and Samajwadi Party in particular to concentrate on the upper caste and Muslim ‘base’ respectively.

The upper castes may not have any problem with the BSP as long as the party’s politics of ‘sarvjan’ does not upset the enduring hierarchy in twice-born civil society. The SP, on the other hand, is trying to strategically invoke a trans-national consciousness so as to consolidate its influence over the Muslims.

While any supporter of national sovereignty would not hesitate to criticise the US role in Iraq, to think that this is a sufficient condition for the Muslim to interrogate the local structures that have a bearing on the worsening conditions of the community in UP, is misdirected smartness, to say the least.

In its worst incarnation, pragmatism encourages parties in UP and elsewhere in the country to take recourse to ethical relativism. In this view, the reference and counter reference to ethically wrong practices like corruption offer equal advantage or disadvantage to everyone. In other words, since everyone is corrupt, my corruption is less objectionable. If all parties feel satisfied that everyone is corrupt, noone takes the moral lead to create the new moral standards that are so necessary to elevate politics to a higher level where it becomes transformative.

The pragmatist framework adopted by the political parties in UP has implications for justice as well. Politics based on careful calculations tends to relegate smaller social groups to insignificance. That is why in UP, smaller castes do not matter in the electoral calculations of the significant parties, particularly the BSP and SP.

A politics based on normative concerns like poverty and hunger would surely include the Musahars of eastern UP who otherwise don’t stand a chance even of making a cursory guest appearance in the electoral imagination of political parties. A politics based on the principle of justice would make it morally imperative on the parties involved to be sensitive to the smaller entities. In UP this does not seem to be happening — not even at the level of rhetoric. Justice is the first casualty in the politics of pragmatism.

A normative politics would expect parties to collect details on the living conditions of the marginalised. Details and data are important for shaping policies. This would help them to formulate and implement pro-people policies when they come to power.

Instead of doing this, political parties in UP in particular and parties in general, tend to assiduously generate and maintain ‘delicate details’ about their opponents. The reigning framework of politics based on mutual suspicion makes it necessary to generate the ‘delicate detail’ of the other. Parties use such ‘delicate details’ to discredit their opponents in the heat of electoral battle.

This politics of ‘delicate details’ creates a curious paradox. This is created by parties’ attempts to manipulate and at times create ‘delicate details’ where they do not exist. An effective deployment of these details requires the moral commitment of the people. Ironically, political parties continue to thrive on public morality without, however, contributing to it.

The writer is professor of political science, Centre for Political Studies, JNU, New Delhi