Post-Modernist historians like Hayden White have argued that there are no stable significations in the world we live in.
Ergo, the so-called stable nouns or identities that our words point to are, in fact, merely chimeras in flux.
Indeed, they contend, what we dub ‘reality’ is often only constituted by a ‘play’ of narratives which owe no being or allegiance to any unshakable or rooted truths.
This is, of course, an intellectually engaging take on the often frustrating substance of human endeavours, but one that rather cleverly evades from a secure class position the quite determinable fact that such ‘play’, be it of narratives or identities, is invariably linked to the pursuit of one form or another of power.
Human agents never cease to deploy what seem inconsistent narratives to obtain dominance over definitions, institutions, systems of governance.
Thus, when Jagdeep Dhankhar was heard to make reference to his social identity in open session – a procedure frowned upon upon by constitutional etiquette – he was drawing upon a social resource that he felt at the time might have more traction among a television audience than his identities as vice-president of India and and chairperson of the Rajya Sabha.
No mere idle ‘play’ of an identity that but one cannily directed to a political purpose.
There are of course few other nations that offer quite the same mind-boggling spread of identities as does India.
That fact makes politics in India both endlessly frustrating and fascinating all at once.
Lately, given the ruling party’s adroitness at sophistry (making false arguments stand for the lurking factual ones), the forthcoming general elections are generating a most instructive skein of ‘takes’ on who is who among contenders for state power at the centre.
The same man is now a pure, socially undifferentiated nationalist, and now a protagonist of this or that social group, the prime minister not excluded.
Even as Modi’s latest play is to foreground some demographic categories as the real four castes in India, do remember that he also gently reminds us now and again how he is the country’s first Other Backward Classes numero uno of independent India.
This back-and-forth of owning or disowning identities from time to time now can be seen to shape the canny calculations of segments of the electorate across the Hindi heartland especially.
In that context, a pretty ingenuous and politically telling sample came to the fore in the 7 o’clock evening bulletin of the electronic news channel, News 24, in its popular programme ‘Mahol Kya Hai (what is the political weather like).’
Also read: We Were Created in Our Creator’s Image – Mimicry Is Our Manifest Destiny
The anchor in attendance, dressed in a saffron sadri reinforced by a kalava around his wrist seemed to have a clear-enough agenda.
He was anxious to elicit from his exclusive Jat audience in Hapur, a Western Uttar Pradesh area, assent to the proposition that in mimicking Dhankhar, the political opposition had insulted all jats.
Important to note that this programme featured on the birth anniversary of the late Chaudhary Charan Singh, whom Jats especially credit with having been not just their tallest leader , but of all agriculturists.
Stunningly came a retort that the only authentic Jats were the followers of that great departed leader and, then, of his lineage now led by his grandson, Jayant Chaudhary; those Jats who had their loyalties elsewhere were not Jats but Hindus!
The nationalist right-wing of course continues to be frustrated by this most distressing schism among Indian Hindus: they re both Hindus with religious allegiances and, simultaneously, proud members of caste groups which they uphold as being more intimate to their concrete and grounded livelihoods than their rather more abstruse and undifferentiated religious oneness.
The ruling political conglomeration is thus constrained constantly to now deny the one and own the other, and vice versa, never quite able yet to extinguish the social in favour of the denominational as its monochromatic ideological purpose requires.
That dance of necessity of course is distorted by grave and in-your-face contradictions which often the best of their sophistry fails to eschew.
When, for example, asked why Dhankhar’s proud social allegiance did not come to the fore when globally decorated Jat women wrestlers were shamefully humiliated throughout their prolonged protest on the issue of alleged ‘sexual harassment’ by the man then incharge of the Wrestling Federation, only very pathetic and lame answers come to the fore from the spokespersons of the ruling party.
Vinesh Phogat, Sangeeta Phogal and Sakshi Malik. Photo: Twitter/@Phogat_Vinesh
Equally, how is it that Dhankhar was missing in action when an overwhelmingly Jat-constituted year-long farmer’s protest in the worst of heat and chill held its ground against the since-withdrawn farm laws?
That the alleged deaths of some 700 Jat/Sikh farmers during that historic protest in sun and rain on the outskirts of the capital, nor the ugly fact that they were dubbed ‘terrorists’ by scions of the establishment of which Dhankhar remained one, likewise did not draw any syllables of social kinship from the honourable Dhankhar are facts that expose the un-heroic plaint that Dhankhar has made, following some playful inventiveness at his expense – such as might have amused Nehru no end had he been the lampooned subject.
Also read: The Vice-President Was a Jat During the Farmers’ and Wrestlers’ Protests Too…
What is new and charming in the instance cited above is how, in a new twist of the definitional play of identities, a common Jat thought nothing of distinguishing between real and fake Jats, dubbing the latter as mere ‘Hindus.’.
Should such perceptions fructify in the months to come in the Hindu-Hindi heartland, the republic may indeed be set to witness a most consequential replay of the politics of the late seventies and eighties.
Think how, even as it decries the politics of caste, the ruling BJP is busier than most in adding on as many caste and sub-caste groups to its alliance as it can muster, while also hoping that the big coming event of the inauguration of the Ram Temple will eventually subsume all caste/social identities into a common Hindu-religious identity.
The nationalist right-wing, thus, finds itself in a situation where it must both press into political service social/caste identities as do the opposition, but also oppose the holding of a caste-census, lest a social-denominational reality come to overwhelm its project of religious consolidation to the exclusion of all concrete social realities and imperatives.
Meanwhile, it is comforting that the opposition seems to have largely succeeded in quelling the canny narrative of insult to Jat identity via the mimicking of Dhankhar by forcefully foregrounding the more real and consequential issues of ingress of undesirables into parliament, the undemocratic/unconstitutional refusal of the executive to take parliament into confidence on it, and the unprecedented ejection of practically all opposition lawmakers – designed to serve two governmental purposes: one, to deflect from accountability to the nation, to avert any mention of the fact that the intruder’s entry into the House had been facilitated by a BJP member of the House, and to facilitate the passage of more than one potentially citizen-retrograde legislation with no opposition to counter.
To top it al, consider that while the entire opposition has been thrown out, the one parliamentarian whose say-so enabled the intruders to enter parliament remains both unquestioned and sweetly ensconced in the House.
Parliamentary democracy, as member after member has been saying, seems truly in the gravest jeopardy, yielding everyday to, in the words of Manish Tewari, a ‘police state.’
But then, the ruling right-wing seems to know that most Indians prefer to celebrate power more than liberty, to borrow the felicitous phrase of a fellow commentator; and many seem inebriated on the narrative that ‘the whole world is now singing praises of India’, testifying to its destined greatness as vishwaguru.
And were you to think that facts on the ground do not warrant the manufactured hype and euphoria, why, who more anti-national than you?
Never was Independence as fatally on the cusp of a destiny, this way or that, as it seems on the eve of what is likely to be a conclusive general election.
