Rahul Gandhi’s sympathisers often rue that though he has earned some goodwill through his politics in the past year, the Congress leader still doesn’t have the ability to sway people with his speeches. This is a particularly telling drawback when compared to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the master communicator. They have a point. In Modi, India has a leader who lives in the world of communication. He has gathered a team that seems to be always in search of acronyms and barbs.
Take the current moment of eloquence, for instance. It was inaugurated with grand fanfare on the occasion of the hundredth episode of the PM’s Mann ki Baat. In the build-up to it, a “study” was systematically circulated informing people about the programme’s vast listenership and telling them how it has captured the national imagination. It is a minor matter that this episode happened with government sponsorship during the election campaign in a major state. Expectedly, the ECI ignored such a “minor” matter in view of the monumental significance of Mann ki Baat.
Right after that, the prime minister has, in right-earnest focused on the Karnataka campaign, combining the roles of a hero and a victim, beginning with the point about a snake being the ornament of Shiv Shankar and then turning to remind the audience that he has been abused 91 times. Such eloquence has the ability to galvanise, evoke, sentimentalise and mobilise people.
Democracy has had a close connection with demagoguery from Athenian times. So, one should not grudge the PM his eloquence or treat it as something exceptional. If anything, such eloquence is only a long-lost attribute of popular mandates that Indians have been craving for decades.
And yet, there is something very curious about what is happening today. Bouts of eloquence are interspersed with silences. The popularity of Modi runs on the rails of eloquence and silence. Critics may point to the absence of routine media interaction. But more than that, Modi’s silences should be a study in themselves, especially because after reading his speeches of Modi, a future historian will be unable to fathom if certain events actually occurred or not. A gubernatorial appointee of this government recently made a rather scandalous set of revelations on the delicate question of the Pulwama attack — something around which the latter half of the BJP’s electoral campaign in 2019 rested. But the PM, who was eloquent four years ago about the deaths of India’s soldiers, has maintained silence over Satyapal Malik’s allegations. One can keep listing such instances of the PM’s silence, especially his reticence in recent months over the persistent allegations of nexus with the Adani group of companies.
This is not a personal criticism of the prime minister, but an effort to draw attention to a broader pattern — how the combination of loquacious articulation and mysterious silence produces a culture that abhors public reason, a culture that mutes public reason and, at times, presents distortions as public reason. We are witnessing a systematic and skilful mixing of the two in public life. This can take the form of projecting a non-event as a mega-event while trying to erase the significance of a critical incident by not speaking about it.
As the week of Modi’s eloquence unfolded, we also witnessed movie actors waxing eloquent over Mann ki Baat while choosing to maintain silence over the question of non-investigation into the alleged sexual harassment of equally — or more — famous personalities. In exercising their freedom of expression, these film personalities have contributed to structuring the terms of conversation among the public — privileging one set of conversations as important, significant and acceptable and undermining another as irrelevant and/or unacceptable. This begs the question: Irrelevant and/or unacceptable to whom?
Public reason becomes robust by engaging in awkward conversations — public reason, in fact, takes shape only under conditions of accepting the unacceptable. Celebrities might argue that it is their choice not to speak about sexual harassment or remain silent about a more inclusive attitude to a diversity of sexual orientations or have nothing to say about a rich democratic culture. However, the point is, in the process, boundaries are set for the ordinary citizen about what a popularly acceptable question is.
If the political leadership, particularly one that claims popular approval as its source, is a key pillar in the shaping of public reason, those engaged in the enterprises of communication, entertainment and production of ideas (including scientists and academicians) — the cultural elite — have crucial roles in shaping public reason. Unless the latter function in an autonomous manner, a critical approach to power is not likely to be cultivated easily. But what we are witnessing today is the collusion of a willing cultural elite and a scheming political elite.
This takes us to the third layer of public culture. It consists of make-believe, innuendo, whataboutery and open intimidation to produce an alternate reality. One way to visualise this alternative reality is to re-read Kafka or Orwell’s 1984. It is perhaps not a coincidence that similar prognostications are being expressed in Indian literature. While this writer cannot claim expertise in many languages, one can read the Marathi stories of Ratnakar Matkari (written mostly after 2014) in Gas Chamber, or the dystopian work on the national commission on hurt sentiments, Nacohus by Purushottam Agarwal.
Systematic efforts are on today to create an atmosphere of make-believe and apprehension. Even writing critical op-eds is seen as seditious activity. But this is not just about intimidation. An atmosphere of acquiescence is created through the world of social media. A study shows how similar comments against George Soros were “generated” after the establishment took umbrage to his statements.
In other words, a machinery is working to inculcate among the public this culture of loquaciousness in articulating the unreal while being aggressively silent on the real. Democracy operationally relies on electoral majority but let us remember that at its core, it relies on the ability to breach silences. It puts limits to mute endorsements and challenges eloquence through critique. This constitutes public reason. An electoral majority that revels in reducing citizens to abusive brigades of shouting supporters will often have disdain for public reason. It will, in fact, be not just suspicious but vindictive about public reason. The current moment of eloquence and silence represents this assault on public reason.
The writer, based at Pune, taught political science
