Mukul Kesavan - The mourning after: Ways to tackle an electoral defeat
There is a ritualized
quality to mourning in some social groups. In many parts of north India a death
is followed by formal lamentation or 'siyapa'. Punjabi women will beat
their breasts (pitto) and wail to help the bereaved widow weep, but also
to dramatize the awful finality of the moment. In other communities the tragedy
of a death might be differently conveyed. It could be marked sartorially by
wearing black and mourners might contain their grief as a mark of respect to
the dead person and the greater grief of that person's family.
In recent times,
progressives have treated electoral setbacks as deaths in the family and they
have chosen to pitto. This is true of public discourse - op-eds in
newspapers, their equivalent on television - but it is especially marked in the
semi-private online spaces that define modern life, social media communities
like Facebook. The particular
consolation of Facebook is that everyone gets to be chief mourner. The moment a
person posts "I can't believe this is happening", "what sort of
country do we live in", "I can't read the papers I'm so
depressed", a group of ancillary mourners gathers and this faux community
of people has a comfortable funeral. This is harmless and possibly therapeutic;
but it isn't a form of 'engagement'.
Lamentation on social
media is not a form of political engagement; it is a form of virtue signalling.
It is a way of indicating that you are genuinely stricken. It is a preliminary
to grading the politics of your 'friends' by the force of their lamentation. It
is the opposite of political engagement. If that debased term means anything it
must mean working with people on your side, persuading the undecided and
pushing back against the arguments of the other side. Social media narcissism
does none of this; it does, however, briefly make you the hero of every piece
of political theatre in this obsessively political country.
The Bharatiya Janata
Party's massive win in Uttar Pradesh provoked two sorts of responses amongst
middle-class people who dislike the party. One was existential despair. Another
was cold-eyed realism about the prospects of mounting a challenge to Narendra
Modi's BJP in the foreseeable future, accompanied by an 'I told you so' claim
to prescience.
The first sort of
response is both self-indulgent and self-harming. Regardless of how bad a poll
result is for progressive politics, it is dangerous in a democracy to treat the
aftermath of an election like a death in the family. The other side doesn't
think anyone died and since progressive prospects in the next election depend
on persuading some of these people, liberals can't behave as if their side is
doomed because the electorate might take them at their word. Public hand-wringing
and breast-beating might be cathartic for the bereaved after a real death; it
is merely demoralizing after a political defeat. There is a reason why parties
formally concede defeat in stable democracies and put their game face on.
The second response is
useful to the extent that it helps liberals size up the magnitude of the task.
The political reportage during the election, particularly the bizarre phase
when every political correspondent in the province seemed persuaded that a
resurgent Akhilesh Yadav had cast off the millstone of incumbency and was set
to sweep the polls under the sign of good governance, was marred by magical
thinking. It is good to be reminded by those who resisted wishful thinking that
the prime minister and his political machine together make up a formidable
political juggernaut. What is less helpful is the suggestion that everyone
should - take a moment to marvel at the BJP's new mandate. To acknowledge
defeat is essential; to go the extra yard and admire Modi's victory does the progressive
cause no favours. The lessons of defeat might be more useful than hand-wringing
or resignation.
One lesson of the UP
election is that Indian politics is provincial and successful parties tailor
their message to the neighbourhood. This is not to wilfully ignore the force of
Narendra Modi's political persona, but to note that in less helpful
circumstances - Delhi, Bihar, Punjab - it didn't sweep everything before it.
The sociology of UP as well as its political history made a grand alliance of
the Bihar sort impossible. The Congress-Samajwadi Party alliance was a parody
of the Mahagathbandhan and went the way of all bad jokes.
The strategy of
creating a political coalition that unites Muslims and OBCs and denies
majorities to coalitions dominated by savarna parties has seen
some success and much failure. The problem with this strategy is that the
residual category of savarna Hindus that it creates by default
is not just economically but also numerically powerful and able to co-opt
subaltern groups: tribals, Kurmis, non-Yadav OBCs. Even before Modi's inspired
use of his OBC origins, the parivar successfully fielded Vinay
Katiyar, Kalyan Singh and Uma Bharti to consolidate its savarna-plus
strategy.
The other lesson of
this election is that secular coalitions should be inclusive, not excluding.
They are not going to be built by rhetorically nominating savarna Hindus
as the enemy. The Bahujan Samaj Party was most successful when it managed to
co-opt Brahmins along with winning some support amongst Muslims and others, in
what was a reprise of an old Congress strategy, but with the caste roles
reversed.
But building a
political combination has to combine social arithmetic with emancipatory ideas
that resonate beyond this community or that. The BJP's big idea was progress
and empowerment for a consolidated Hindu community that transcended caste and
excluded Muslims. Mayavati's beleaguered response was a rainbow coalition with
two primary colours, Muslims and Dalits. Given the vastness of UP and its
myriad social fractures, she couldn't have won those communities entire and she
didn't. The idea that a Samajwadi Party burdened by incumbency and split by
dynastic politics would be rescued by Akhilesh Yadav's adult baptism in good
governance was always unlikely. The notion that an alliance with the Congress
would help the Samajwadi Party hoover up the Muslim vote was, given the state
of the Congress in north India, wishful.
These fantastical
political scenarios seemed plausible to their sponsors because they assumed that
demonetization must have alienated some part of the BJP's
base. It didn't, and they weren't. As Edward Thompson showed half a century
ago, economic hardship creates resentment only when it's seen to be
discriminatory; if its causes are deemed virtuous, people are willing to take
it in their stride. But knowingness is easy with hindsight.
To declare desolation
or to tough-mindedly announce that the BJP owns the foreseeable future are,
despite their surface differences, very similar responses. They are the
responses of spectators watching a game played by others. If there is one
lesson that the supporters of the BJP have to teach the other side, it is this:
till Anglophone progressives stop playing at being flâneurs, they
are likely to remain at the receiving end of history.
