The Elf of Self-Respect

Contrast Sonia Gandhi on the campaign trail. Sheer Chinese torture. An Englishwoman-in-the-tropics with the stilted smile reaching out graciously to her mob of domestic servants. The beauty who married the Indian nabob and is now destiny-bound to rule his awful land. The patronising regal style and condescending phrases like ‘‘tribals are close to my heart’’ show a tragic inability to respect the dirtiest voter as a rational individual.

Foreign origin is not Sonia’s problem. The abusive Narendra Modi has got it wrong. It’s not foreign-ness that makes Sonia unfit to rule India. It is her simple inability to understand the Self-Respect revolution. She has become a caricature of The Indian Woman in order to touch ‘‘the peoples’” hearts. The pallu is draped over the head, maulis are tied on the wrist in the conviction that the urban sophisticate must wear Red Indian feathers and say ‘‘hail big chief’’ in order to win approval. The cotton sari must be suitably rustic. The words must be suitably bahu-like. If this is not a monumental insult to the Indian voter, then what is?

Indira Gandhi would have none of it. Nehru’s widowed daughter strode out to the countryside, with her cropped hair, mannish wristwatch, no maulis on her hands or tikas on her forehead, and won the devotion of mammoth crowds. What was her secret? Not the correct caricature costume, nor a queenly mastery over the local dialect. Simply a subliminal message: you are me and I am you.

The elf of Self-Respect, accustomed to being treated as a statistic or as an unnoticed face in the crowd, or as an audience for the fancy dress pantomimes of leaders, came quietly out of his hiding place towards Indiramma. In return for the respect she gave him, he promised her his life.

Chandrababu Naidu, darling of India Inc, faces a massive setback in Andhra according to the exit polls. In the first few months of coming to power, he was the repository of Self-Respect. He launched his famous Janmabhoomi movements, taking up a shovel and crowbar and getting down to work on the roads, planting trees and clearing up city drains himself. Along the coast fisherfolk families rose out of poverty and villages got their first computers. And Chandrababu’s popularity soared.

But somewhere along the last ten years, the revolutionary became a despot. If Naidu loses, it will be because the leader with the shovel on his back has become the computer-tapping elitist, far too caught up in being appreciated by the glossy media. It will be because rich Kamma industrialists monopolised the pro-farmer Telugu Desam promise. It will be because it is an insult to voter Self-Respect when the American Dream begins to replace the Andhra one, when Davos replaces Rayalseema. On the other hand if Naidu still wins, he will have to work hard once again to recapture the popular intimacy of the Janmabhoomi days.

Naveen Patnaik was written off four years ago. He barely spoke Oriya and was a New York trendy. Today Naveen Patnaik is on the verge of a second victory in Orissa. What do the Self-Respect voters see in Patnaik? They see someone who is not lying about his personal life. They see someone not putting on phoney rural airs or wearing a fake costume. Just someone who is what he is whether at a Delhi salon or in a party office in Hinjli. He doesn’t speak in a condescending broken tongue, but openly admits in English or Hindi, ‘‘Sorry, forgive me. I can’t speak Oriya.’’ By speaking in English, Patnaik is being far more respectful to his voters than he would be attempting to speak the pidgin used for domestic help.

Laloo Prasad Yadav is pushing Bihar to the brink of an abyss but keeps getting votes. Why? Because those who had to bow their heads when passing the CM’s house can now come inside and sit in his garden. Because when he pushes the police aside, the unnoticed feel noticed. Mayawati increases her vote share with every passing election. Why? Not just because of her dalit identity. But because this dalit identity comes with a fashionable hair cut, tailored salwar kameezes and lots of jewellery. Ritu Beri may not approve but to the Self-Respect voter, Behnji is a role model of success and strength.

And why in the end is that grey warhorse Atal Bihari Vajpayee still a wizard with every crowd? Not because he says the right things (often says the wrong things), not because he’s learnt the local lingo or wears the right hat, but simply because his rallies are giant family gatherings. An indefinable certain something hangs in the air, a unity between voter and leader, the utter lack of condescension, again that simple message, I am you and you are me.

The election managers, shuttered in their technological fortresses, are trying to compute the arithmetic of crowds. They don’t know that hiding in those same crowds is a tiny unknown quantity: the elf of Self-Respect.