An interesting issue came up in a conversation with a dear friend . "You always take a polarised position on politics which does not help you bring new people around to your way of thinking. The world has a lot of undecided people, who are looking for a persuasive argument, which will help them pick one side over another, but your polemics turn them away". And further. . "If you are truly objective and rational, you will be able to see that
the people you oppose also do some good. If you acknowledge it before
getting into your critical commentary, you will sound more credible to
those who straddle the fence, and perhaps, even bring some of them
around to your positions". Culminating in this. "There will be more elections in future and the undecided will really be
the deciding vote. If you can bring around even a few people to your
point-of-view, it might help make the difference between victor and
vanquished".
Where do political positions come from? From what I have seen so far, there is a considerable amount of politics which gets passed down in families. A lot of it has to do with community or religious affiliations. This legacy is already in place before a child gets into her teens. Those kids who were heckling the nanis and dadis of Shaheen Bagh with 'goli maro' slogans, or rioting at Chand Bagh, accompanied their fathers and uncles to the protest site. They have been blooded in a particular ideology and it is unlikely that they will change their minds any time soon. My father, who never explicitly aligned himself with a particular party, leaned to the Left, and if I identify as a democratic socialist, it is because of our countless conversations about political power, how it is distributed, what it does to the lives of people, and whether it is possible to reset its inequitable distribution.
Political positions are guided by self-interest. This may be related to religion, economic status, social class, specific or generic anxieties about people or things, assessment of the balance between primacy of the individual/collective and so on. Even the most altruistic or 'virtue-signalling' positions are likely underpinned in self-interest (though this warrants a separate post). What are my positions?
Go back and read what I abhor and what I endorse. People who claim to be undecided about: misogyny, racism, Islamophobia, freedom of speech and expression, scientific temperament or independent media; are really people who represent views at complete odds with mine. People, in essence, who are waiting for the moment when their views will sound less horrible because the Overton Window has moved that way. They are fellow-travelers of everything which I oppose. And it's a waste of my energy and time to try to bring them around.
India, and the world at large, has ceded huge ground to sectarian demagogues with totalitarian ambitions. Remarkably, their positions enjoy widespread support and even a scintilla of dissent is squelched by the armies of vicious trolls at their beck and call.
In such a time, the task for a small voice like mine is to give some vocabulary to those struggling to find it, to contribute to the glue which will coalesce them into a meaningful opposition, to shake out hypocrisy and sanctimony. The grand consensus doesn't need my approbation to validate itself. Those who feel cold, lonely and lost because they are apparently railing against what everyone else worships, though? They need to hear encouragement; to gather around, make common cause, fight on, no matter how daunting the odds.
My time and effort is best spent preaching to the converted.
p.s. A young reader who read the first draft drew my attention to this essay which highlights very similar themes in the context of white people's views of racism.
Where do political positions come from? From what I have seen so far, there is a considerable amount of politics which gets passed down in families. A lot of it has to do with community or religious affiliations. This legacy is already in place before a child gets into her teens. Those kids who were heckling the nanis and dadis of Shaheen Bagh with 'goli maro' slogans, or rioting at Chand Bagh, accompanied their fathers and uncles to the protest site. They have been blooded in a particular ideology and it is unlikely that they will change their minds any time soon. My father, who never explicitly aligned himself with a particular party, leaned to the Left, and if I identify as a democratic socialist, it is because of our countless conversations about political power, how it is distributed, what it does to the lives of people, and whether it is possible to reset its inequitable distribution.
Political positions are guided by self-interest. This may be related to religion, economic status, social class, specific or generic anxieties about people or things, assessment of the balance between primacy of the individual/collective and so on. Even the most altruistic or 'virtue-signalling' positions are likely underpinned in self-interest (though this warrants a separate post). What are my positions?
- I abhor and accept no compromises with: gender-disparity and misogyny, racism, casteism, religious phobias (Antisemitism, Islamophobia), sectarianism, communalism, stratospheric disparities of income and wealth and government policies which encourage them, totalitarianism, majoritarianism, extra-judicial vigilantism. And so on.
- I endorse and promote: freedom of thought and expression (including religious thought and expression), equality of status and opportunity, fraternity of all peoples across the world, economic justice and system of progressive personal taxes, a durable and comprehensive social safety net, independent judiciary, competent and autonomous institutions, scientific temperament and intellectual curiosity, free and fearless news media, affirmative action for the physically, socially or economically disadvantaged. And so on.
- Political activism is intended to organise individuals into collectives. The Mahatma, Madiba, Dr. King and Velupillai Prabhakaran sensed that there was far wider support for the causes they espoused than was visible, particularly to their particular adversary. Their actions were designed to galvanise people to action and each action snowballed their movement. Their message to their people was of resistance to a malign overlord. Their strategy was to show them that they were not alone in their frustration and pain; that while an individual could be muzzled or snuffed out, the collective was impossible to mute. They worked as the glue which fused individuals into great movements.
- Political activism clarifies hazy, unarticulated frustrations into cogent ideas of dissent and resistance. Stated differently, political activism gives vocabulary and grammar to what was incipient and repressed. Greta Thunberg can't possibly be the first person of her generation to agonise over the ravaging of the biosphere by insatiable human greed, but she became the catalyst for a global movement by speaking her mind.
- Political activism creates a litmus test, parsing those for and against a viewpoint. When Mr. Modi called for his allies to prefix their SocMed identities with "chowkidar", he set up a binary; there was no middle ground. In addition, he gave them an honorific which they shared with the greatest in the land. Gandhi's Khadi, Lenin's red scarves and Trump's MAGA hats are all shibboleths. These days, a cursory look at the comments below any SocMed post, particularly one with a political colour, divide neatly into pro and anti.
Go back and read what I abhor and what I endorse. People who claim to be undecided about: misogyny, racism, Islamophobia, freedom of speech and expression, scientific temperament or independent media; are really people who represent views at complete odds with mine. People, in essence, who are waiting for the moment when their views will sound less horrible because the Overton Window has moved that way. They are fellow-travelers of everything which I oppose. And it's a waste of my energy and time to try to bring them around.
India, and the world at large, has ceded huge ground to sectarian demagogues with totalitarian ambitions. Remarkably, their positions enjoy widespread support and even a scintilla of dissent is squelched by the armies of vicious trolls at their beck and call.
In such a time, the task for a small voice like mine is to give some vocabulary to those struggling to find it, to contribute to the glue which will coalesce them into a meaningful opposition, to shake out hypocrisy and sanctimony. The grand consensus doesn't need my approbation to validate itself. Those who feel cold, lonely and lost because they are apparently railing against what everyone else worships, though? They need to hear encouragement; to gather around, make common cause, fight on, no matter how daunting the odds.
My time and effort is best spent preaching to the converted.
p.s. A young reader who read the first draft drew my attention to this essay which highlights very similar themes in the context of white people's views of racism.
2 comments:
Well written in its readability. However, does contain an inherent contradiction.
Gandhi and Madiba acted as glue to coalesce people who were not sure. You are talking about preaching to the converted. Why do they need another idiom, they already know what they are railing against.
If Gandhi or any other did not succeed in getting people together, then we would not have remembered themm till today. One key objective of a political leader, or evangelist is to convert his thoughts into a movement, or else it may end up something like spitting into the sun.
Clearly, a larger number of people believe in a leader that you despise. In order to become a significant opposition,or even overthrow it to become the dominant narrative, you must first understand why more people prefer that camp than yours, plus ruminate on what you will offer differently and better than the current proposition. Only then will the brand preference change, won't it.
Mktg 101. Right?
The blog makes it quite clear that I see myself as not much more than a small voice, not a leader. As a contributor to the glue, not the prime mover. I despise a particular ideology, and will take issue with those who preach it. That being said, this was never intended to be an ad hominem screed. If your big takeaway was my hostility to a particular leader, I have failed to make the principle case: that I am not obliged to convert anyone, just affirm and validate those who already share my implacable resistance to politics at the polar opposite of everything which I believe in.
Politics is trivialised when you see it as mere brand preference. It speaks to our enduring view of ourselves, the multiple 'worlds' around us (cultural, religious, business, ecology etc), and our relationship with them. Politics, in this sense, is closer to religious or linguistic or community identities. Not easily mutable.
Finally, this is a piece about why I shouldn't be expected to pander to the undecided, not a detailed exploration of my ideology or alternative policy prescriptions. Although it does have a section on what I abhor and what I support.
And no, this isn't Mktg 101. If anything, it is Political Advocacy 100.
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