This is going to be a note partly on popular history and partly on popular politics. Let me correct myself at the outset and replace the term popular with populist. I shall present an incident that has happened yesterday and present, through making some observations on its coverage in the media, a critique of both populist history and populist politics in as practiced in india today. Broadly speaking, it is also a commentary on the irresponsibility of the media, both print and electronic.
Earlier this morning I had been listening to a programme in the most popular FM radio channel in New Delhi. This programme, to give the devil his due, generally airs good songs, interspersed by mostly mindless remarks by its two presenters. It so happened today that they flew into a rage about the hijacking of a Delhi bound Bhubaneswar Rajdhani express by a band of bow and arrow wielding traibals near Jhargram in West Midnapore district of West Bengal, admittedly a stronghold of Maoists.
They compared this episode with the Kakory conspiracy case, where Bhagat Singh and his associates waylaid a train carrying huge amounts of money collected from people as revenues to the state, and made off with a few iron chests conatining substantial cash. They said that this latter act was one of great patriotism and must not be confused with the dastardly conduct of these unpatriotic tribals who persecute their own people. They kept harping on this diffrenece, invoking 'nationalism' and 'patriotism' to sanctify and distinguish one robbery from another. I was struck by this simple equation of nationalism and patriotism. Even in Hindi they have two separate words for these two terms-jatiyatawad/rashtriyatawad and deshbhakti respectively. I know for a fact that practically all decent schoolteachers do spell out the conceptual difference between them with care. May be you go to a different school to become the most popular deejays in Delhi. I wonder how you can annoint Gandhi the father of your nation and in the same breath rationalize a violent train robbery. More importantly, how do you call one train robbery a protest and another a robbery, especially when both are admittedly targetted against the perceived atrocities of an arguably arbitrary state? Is the so called analytical difference then tethered only to the seats of power and authority? If you happen to belong to the ruling class, then protesters are train robbers and if you do not belong to the ruling class, then train robbers are protesters. Are we going to ask our people to consume this simple a potion?
This is a rhetorical question, but one whose time has come. My question therefore is how we are going to resolve this central methodological contradiction of Indian nation state sponsored nationalism. It appears as though this debate has already been decided by everyone except yokels like yours truly. Don't just think about it, the preachers appear to scream, aren't we paid to teach you the right thing after all?
The deejays then proceeded, I think rightly so, to an impromptu quiz question, asking the audience to name the place where this great train robbery took place. As a clue, they said that a certain kind of kebabs are named after this place. I was very closely attending to their intersting chitchats, and trying to follow the kind of popular nationalist narrative that they were evidently trying to construct and wanted their their listeners to consume.
What is this narrative like? It implies, to exapnd on the point I made above, that robbing a train is good if it is carrying money to be used for the benefit of foreigners in a narrowly ethnic sense. Correspondigly, it demands that no means of public transport, least of all Rajdhani expresses and aeroplanes, may be halted for any reason whatsoever as long as it carries people belonging to the same nation-state as the protesters.
It is time to spoil this juvenile party now. What exactly does this uncritical and uninformed celebration of ethnic nationalism mean to communicate to its peddlers and consumers? This idea of nationalism is precisely what the ruling classes of the post independence Indian nation state wish its 'citizens' to obey without question. Do please read Indivar Kamtekar's wonderfully penetrating piece 'the Fables of Nationalism' if you want to know more. I have neither his elegant language nor his disarming candour and so would stop short of giving you a summary unless you have failed to locate the piece.
To everyone who bothers to read nonsensewares, I have a simple request. Please take some time out to think about this issue. It is an issue that has profound implications on the ongoing debate about the role of history in our life and conduct. Of late I have been observing an alrming trend among our youths to pay no heed to history. They think history is a chain with which we are handcuffed, as Salman Rushdie memorably wrote long ago. In this confusion some clerver people and commentators have spotted an opportunity to make quick bucks, posing as readymade retailers of populist history. The two smart rjays are probably unwitting victims of this lifestyle disease but its more glamourous victims include some of the most famous and readable contemporary non fiction prose writers in this country. These latter write more often for popular media, dishing out wonderfully uncomplicated versions of what they ordain as history. They can afford to do so, for they write lucid prose, lit up by smart metaphors and even smarter turns of phrase.I admire their prose, spellbound by its ironic blend of linguistic mastery and average scholarship. In this day and age of packaging, substance has been forced to take a backseat, if not altogether unseated. I live with the hope that this too shall pass, and I shall live to see a brighter tomorrow.
2 comments:
FM radio has got it all wrong but there is one thing which I notice about the radio - its their desire to see Freedom Movement happenning again. If Lalgarh is Kakori and Maoists are Bhagat Singh, then is the Indian State the British Empire? This is the worry.
FM channels do not say that, I have that opinion. The rjays either do not see that or not allowed to air critical judgements. But yes, I do share your worry although equating Indian state with the British empire would be somewhat simplistic. The core concers are ,however, ceratinly analogous.
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