Politics and loathing

Parties and their supporters vociferously opposing each other in Parliament and during elections is not new to democratic India. Even in the 1950s, the cult of Nehruvian consensus was shot through with the dark rebellions of Feroze Gandhi, Ram Manohar Lohia and others. But a polarising confrontation was always along clear ideological lines. Charges against the ruling group were logically sustainable, hardly ever personal, and never aimed at provoking India’s dark, communally divisive djinns. Outside the electoral or parliamentary arenas, opposing leaders continued to confer, interact and laugh together, and stood as one in times of national emergency. Present-day leaders’ speeches reveal an absolute loathing of opponents: their brand of politics, their language, their familial background, even their dead ancestors. This is new.

Unlike their smalltown counterparts, our metro-based young voters are mostly glued to their Facebook pages or mobiles. They lean on the web for information, quite unaware that social media are now run by the sheep dogs of warring parties, herding them towards carefully nursed party websites filled with unsubstantiated, crowdsourced facts. For a generation whose childhood was centred around tutorials as well as school-organised, compulsory “nature walks” and “basti” work, political hairsplitting is a boring job. If they take an interest in election speeches, it is in the spirit of chasing a music festival — everyone they hang out with is going. The structure of the event appeals to them more than the actual fare. Few among the young pause to question the worth of stories and glib innuendos about “evil neighbours” and “domestic thugs” conspiring against our democracy.

Sirsa to Sangli, the milling crowds of jobless youth that throng the rallies expect little beyond electoral pyrotechnics. The speakers pander to their egos when they call them unfairly deprived and promise that those who have gained at their expense deserve to pay for it. The leaders who, in 1947, stood for courage and fellowship, a sense of moderation and order, and used these to curb India’s baser instincts, are increasingly being targeted with rage and ridiculed for being lily livered. The very sense of history we grew up on is being revised by these rallies. As you see the eager faces of the young taking in the perverted logic, you get the uneasy feeling that the wild beast that the 1947 riots had unleashed before law and order were restored is slowly being set free to roam once again.

The writer is a Delhi-based journalist and former chairperson of Prasar Bharati
express@expressindia.com