Graffiti,icons

Not every picture a minister hangs on her office walls makes an electoral statement. Some of those pictures are so intricately tied to our idea of ourselves individually and collectively that we dont think twice about them. It appears,therefore,that the Election Commission is picking the wrong fights on the eve of the Lok Sabha polls. It might be assumed that constraints of time and the engagement of its officials otherwise would preclude the possibility of the EC sneaking a peek at who or what hangs behind the heads of public servants in government offices across this vast country. And even if a directive is issued thereof,what objection can there be to Rabindranath Tagore or Subhas Chandra Bose? For one,the political in a wholly electoral sense import of these names is zero; let alone that they are dead men.

An order announced by the chief electoral officer in West Bengal allows only pictures of Mahatma Gandhi and those of the incumbent president and governors on the walls of government and PSU offices and on government websites. But in a country where icons proliferate,and in a state where the cultural icons are almost wholly secular,but public possessiveness over them a religion of sorts,the EC has started a debate. If an exasperated Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee calls the EC order absurd,the CM isnt exactly referring to an aesthetic and philosophical mode of making sense of a world that doesnt make sense. Though,on second thoughts,he might be. Portraits of Tagore,Netaji,Vidyasagar,Deshbandhu C.R. Das,and those of Marx and Lenin aye,every inch Bengali,the last two! have grown into the plaster and paint they hang from in Bengals government offices. Their sudden loss would make the world absurd,and the CM cannot be expected to stare at the nothingness when he walks into the Writers Buildings.

And its not the just the Marxists,the Trinamool Congress too seems surprised that portraits of freedom fighters need to be removed. Well,what of Bhagat Singh or Nehru then? Surely the EC doesnt see Tagore as anything other than quintessentially intellectual,with no eye to influencing electoral outcomes in 2009?