Elections are once again in the offing. And all parties have gone into a huddle along with trusted strategists and media cells creating promotional templates.
The media, as expected, is locked and barred from entering most meetings but that does not prevent it from listening in at various keyholes, catching a few inspired ‘leaks’ from disgruntled motor-mouths and crafting its own saucy counter-narratives around who is invited to the Ayodhya consecration ceremony – the Pran Pratishtha Samaroh, so to speak – and who is not, and who is invited but has declined to attend.
Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty
Some of the opposition has understandably declined. They have also mentioned the four Shankaracharyas, who have called the event at the half-constructed temple politically motivated and improper as per the religious books. But there is no denying, so far, that the opposition appears less-than-ready to meet their formidable challenger. Of course, they have declared their coalition will take on the Bharatiya Janata Party as one. The pro-BJP media has sniggered and declared their reluctance to attend the consecration of Ram into the new temple at Ayodhya as “anti-Hindu” and their coalition formation exercise as a non starter.
In the coming 2024 general elections, the Modi-led National Democratic Alliance will be challenged by the grand coalition of the Congress, the Janata Dal (United), the Rashtriya Janata Dal, the Trinamool Congress, the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, the Left and several other regional groups. Their view is that coalition politics in India offers a voluntary response to an involuntary situation ever since the 11th Lok Sabha elections resulted in India’s first hung parliament.
When challenging a power structure is beyond the grasp of any single party’s reach, all parties, regional or national, must challenge it unitedly. It is not easy to make parties soften their ideological stand and step away from caste fault-lines. But history sometimes throws up an ideal catalytic agent who can make it happen. The BJP and its ardent followers pick and choose Puranic stories that play up the role of empire-builder kings as unifiers, playing down the coalition makers who shed political ambitions and diplomatically persuaded several warring republics under one umbrella. One outstanding example is that of Krishna. This is not the mischievous cowherd and heart-breaker of gopikas or milkmaids in the Braj Bhumi, but the mature Krishna of Dwarika. Today, many insist on labelling him as Dwarikadheesh, the lord of Dwarika. But Krishna was never a king of Mathura or Dwarika. He was a coalition maker who helped bring about a union between clans like the Andhaka and the Vrishnis.
The Dwarika of Krishna operated as an oligarchy under various clans. But not before it gave a hard time to the creator of the coalition who had to handle bitter inner squabbling. In Mahabharat, Krishna confides to his close confidant Narada how tired he is of handling problems between warring clans. Narada reminds him, ‘But you are the head of a coalition – the Sangh Mukhyoasi Keshav.’
‘You can not give up! Assert yourself!’
But Krishna like Gandhi and Jayprakash Narayan, had no imperial ambitions of his own. He killed the beastly king Kamsa but crowned someone else. In fact Shishupal later mocked him for not wearing a crown, calling him ‘Araja’.
Krishna’s coalition split when a fratricidal war became unavoidable. The armies and commanders of the coalition fought on behalf of the Kauravas. But Krishna himself chose to pick up arms and instead drove Arjun’s chariot because he felt Duryodhan was a nascent dictator. His elder brother Balram was so enraged by the split that he too refused to fight. As he left with his plough, he accused Krishna of tilting towards his friends but Krishna’s defence was that in his opinion Duryodhana was an imperialist fuelled by pride and envy with ambitions of being a Chakravartin like Kamsa.
Right now, fuelled by envy, anger and casteism, the cycle of federal history of India seems to be moving so fast that one fears the wheels may just come off at some point. Not too long ago, some of the richest men in India appeared as discussants about India’s growing power in various widely beamed shows that are now mounted by big media houses. In India, these folks go up or down the Forbes list but they remain our big media barons forever. The elephant in the room today is that our lives and indeed, our entire developmental planning, are fast becoming dependent on a set of unelected billionaires who have also acquired most of our mainstream media. As in the USA, they now can, if they wish, swing elections and prevail upon chosen representatives to reshape public policies and laws.
As a writer, one must frankly state the absurdity of one’s position in this strange scenario. Autocratic heads of state are being re-elected in many democratic nations, the UN is withering visibly and the EU’s erstwhile willingness to take in immigrants has developed huge cracks. Some erstwhile hunted ethnic groups, having done well, have turned heartless ethnic cleansers and ex-bureaucrats and judges, the grand guards of objectivity and secularism are seen bowing to temple priests and organizing mega religious spectacles.
Also read: Israel Could Perpetrate More Genocidal Acts: Lawyer for South Africa at ICJ Hearings
And here, we, the writers and historians are still attending literary festivals and writers’ meets and speaking against racism, casteism and sexism. We know well how racially homogenous societies have not been necessarily happier or more peaceful. We also can not claim that democratisation is an easy process or that there are easy answers to its current problems, but these for heaven’s sake, are some of the darkest times we have known.
We, whose business is the intimate lives of the sea of humanity around us…what does the failure of multiculturalism herald?
If we are asked this by genuinely puzzled young, it implies that not just the politicians but human cultures too have failed all of us and that Indians are no longer capable of living peacefully together with those who follow different cultures. What the publicists for the temple have done is, used it as a wistful whimsy to drum up a time when all of India was Hindu, and spun it into a powerful political narrative. And from billionaires doing pilgrimage rounds to Bollywood biggies with rudrakshmalas and tilak, everyone is using this reborn Hinduism to get what they want.
Even at the UN they refuse to see how the world now is ruled by digital capital armed with AI. It no longer accepts old international borders or human rights. It is out to eradicate vast money-guzzling human labour, large offices with coffee machines and gossip corners, or even the human need for sleep. Real progress – when it comes – will be incremental at best. The dream of time travel into Ram Rajya on the wings of a temple, I am sorry dears, is just that – a dream.
Saakhi is a Sunday column from Mrinal Pande, in which she writes of what she sees and also participates in. That has been her burden to bear ever since she embarked on a life as a journalist, writer, editor, author and as chairperson of Prasar Bharti. Her journey of being a witness-participant continues.
