A hug in aggressive masculinity- India's alternative politics

There seems to be a phase in the political spectrum of India at present. We can roughly divide it pre-hug and post-hug. Yes, I am referring to the famous hug by Mr Rahul Gandhi to Honourable Prime Minister Mr. Narendra Modi on occasion of No-confidence motion against BJP led NDA on 20th July. A motion which as expected has been easily won over by NDA but marked something extremely interesting towards the possible future of the politics of India.

After the hug, social media is flooded with the ridicules and laughter towards so called 'childish' behaviour of Mr. Rahul Gandhi. Was it really childish? Let me inspect briefly.

Before going towards the hugging issue, let us visit to an article by Haris Jamil published in the Wire magazine dealing with the issue of lack women in Indian politics and why we should be concerned for it (click here). Yes, the percentage is low to such an extent that under representation is a hugely understatement. The arena of politics happens to be the ugly masculine one. The extreme aggressive masculinity is found to be ranged from the parliament to Gram Panchayat. Even though, in Panchayats, there is a reservation of women resulting in official representation of women of significance, the space remains to be a masculine one over the years.

Significantly, in all speeches in recent past delivered by the political parties in street meetings to Parliament, there is an increasing intolerance and personal attack including various forms of character assassinations. Sadly, people holding the supereme positions in Indian politics are also not free from it. Meanwhile Rahul came, and made his "pappu" image popular and won over the heart of those who still believe in politics through friendship and agreement on differences of opinion.

Rahul's hug and few lines like you can call me pappu but I have no hatred for you in my mind are quite in contrast with the nature of politics in India.

Rahul, by the way has done everything to attack the grand narrative of vikash or development and showed why it has never been sabka saath sabka vikash - yes there are visible disparities and skewed nature of india's growth story. While one analyses the content of his deliberation it was filled with facts and in stark contrast to what once amit shah projected as Jumlas- gimmick presentations of false promises.

The major themes which one can decipher are the following-

Patience

Game of straight facts

Acceptance of negative stereotyping to make it positive

Neatly bound domains of bad governance

Tactful unveiling of possible corruptions

Softly-spoken firm words

If the entire deliberation of rahul is a soft cake offered to the BJP the hug was the culmination of the revival of friendly opposition.

The hug however is important because of the following reasons.

A. It brings about the politics of friendship in the arena of aggressive masculinity in the sphere for so many years now. On the one hand there is an absence of women in politics and on the other hand even with the women folk's presence in panchayat it remains a masculine sphere. The women who are there in the sphere happen to speak the same language of aggressive masculinity. Choice of words like 'we will eliminate opposition', 'oppositions are enemies' have wider connotations. The increasing number of lynching has something or other to do with such masculine politics of hatread. If you consider your opposition as enemy and then make a wide category of 'others' including the Muslims, Dalits,Christians, different looking people no one can stop lynching. Rahul's hug is expected to curve out some space of politics of a different set.

B. If you look at the body language of the two supereme leaders the one that initiates, bows down and hugs at a moment when he was fiercely attacking the party whose leader he hugs immediately after - Rahul. The other, however, remains seated of course unexpected but could not stand up and accept the grand invitation of friendship and agreement on disagreement - modi.

The former flexible - a demand of democracy and the later is not.

C. The hug signifies India's tradition of tolerance and acceptance of debate and dispute the qualities which the public sphere was about to forget once and for all.

I do not expect post-hug india will be radically changed from its practices. Even if people can the social media and hatred manufacturing paid agencies wont let it happen. But Rahul's hug definitely shows an alternative world of politics is still possible, and desirable. The smile that we have seen on honourable Prime Minister Mr.  Modi's face indicates he also knows its possible! We will have to wait for the post -hug politics to appear.

Grand 21st July: Three narratives one journey

There are layers of remembrance. Sahid or Martyr has become a popular political projection in West Bengal during the three decades of left rule. In each of the CPIM led Left Front party offices you will encounter a raised plinth like structure constructed in the memory of party martyrs. There are popular slogans like "shata saheed er rakto hobe naa to byartho" meaning the blood of hundreds of martyrs will not go waste. Similarly "saheed tomay bhulini bhulchhinaa" - martyr, we have not forgotten and will not forget you. 

Each year the city's biggest ground used in organising the spectacle. The number of attendee is used as an impression of the popular support base of a particular political party. The left has used it during their tenure so does the trinamool.  

However, there are layers of understanding of the situation. I have tried to cover a few reflections of the same just to give you a hint of its significant. 

Context A Bangur Avenue

A gang of five young men seen asking all the vehicles to avail the main road and not the service road-cum-bus bay. The bay is reserved for 'storing' buses they have booked for the occasion. I could have a brief conversation.

'What happened?'

Don't you know tomorrow is brigade?

Yes,oh! so many buses!

Yes, you know we are so many, so we need buses.

We cant get any bus to go back home!

Yes, when a grand event such as this takes place a few inconvenience is inecutable. Tomorrow almost no buses will ply. No auto, nothing!

Takes a sip from the cocacola bottle kept in the hip pocket.

So what are you planning tonight?

We will celebrate!

What sort?

The sort we like! Winks and asks to leave as they were busy altering the usual traffic rules. 

Context B: The auto ride:

Looking at the number of people waiting at the bus stand i quickly took an auto knowing i have to get down again at baguihati. What about autowallah? Visibly disgusted with the traffic jam for about a three kilometers taking about one and a half hour to reach airport.

Tomorrow is sahid diwas, that is why? 

Aren't you going?

I have to, otherwise they will scold me?

What if you cannot go?

I will go.

Why?

Because otherwise party will not spare me.

What, you said they will scold you, you can always switchoff your ears and then pretend that you are sorry!

No, its not that. I might loose my permission to ply in this route.

I have seen so many buses?

Yes, we need busses to transport people to Brigade.

What? Are you implying they do not come by themselves? 

No! They might not, and you know there is a competition between leaders in showing who has greater support base! So they took out much more buses than might actually required. Tomorrow you people will be in great trouble.

A virtual Bandh!

No! A real Bandh, like that of CPIM and their organised Bandh.

Context C Baguihati - bikers:

Bikers happen to be one of the most integrated components of political rallies for quite some time now. A flag of ruling party is all you need to dodge traffic rules including the requirement of wearing a helmet.

How is it going?

Same as before. 

When will you people go tomorrow?

Who told you we are going tomorrow? We are already here. 

Why? its tomorrow isnt it?

Yes, but we need protection to give. Vroom! They disappeared!

I could reach home by 10:30 pm. Feeling the following dimensions of politics of the street and remembrances.

A. the layers of understanding and perception of the Saheed diwas happens to be fascinatingly diverse - which is quite obvious. However, the kind of cele

bratory mood indicates a Carnival night in the city organised by cadres.

B. The politics of street and rally includes transformation of streets, apart from showing the number of people taking streets, transformation of nature of transportation is another mechanism.

C. it becomes necessary to transform the city scape upside down - like that of festival  becomes necessary political weapon. 

AITC has its version of 21st july, click here 

Malls without memories- a postmodern crisis

Yes, space does speak often the unspoken languages. The late-capital shopping destinations are supposedly the space to bring happiness. Kaleidoscope like many others have watched and liked the Bollywood brilliance 'pyaar ka side effects'. It was still the time when people used to feel down with the breakups. Yes the breakup song was still miles away. No one could even think of an item number with mere saiyan ji se aaj maine breakup kar liya!

As kaleidoscope slowly grew in a rapidly liberalised market economy he learned the joy in shopping. However, such joy could never stay for long. No joyfulness stays for long. Not even those which one attains after a long wait including 'buying' your dream car or 'making' your partner to fall in love with you. It is one of the evolutionary keys to success of kaleidoscope's species.

While joys like these never lasts for long, kaleidoscope finds young people creating memories in the built-in spaces like the shopping malls. If past is what we call memories then creating memories in shopping malls instead of black and white chequered  floored cinema halls remains the same. One ultimately has to go back to reconcile one's own biography in spaces.

Shopping malls however haunts you and attempts to push you away or change you when you have no memory there whatsoever. Until you have created some memories at a specific space you are finding it to be the same like just another mall you have had visited thousands of miles away. May be in a different continent.

Meanwhile a quick visit to one of those endless successions of images in the whole simulcra shows

Faceless desired bodies wearing desired clothes alone.

Joytoys hanging like lifeless bodies in suicide missions

Playcorner without space and children

Then kaleidoscope finds the everchanging sky outside... limited by the curtailed horizons.

The masculine admissions and Chaos in West Bengal

Kaleidoscope has a blogger friend, Medusa. Both of them happened to work in the same college in the port city. Medusa in 2011 wrote a brilliant blogpost: "the taking of a college" (click here) describing how through a violent means political change took place in their college's students' unit bypassing election. It was 2011, the only word that shook the world of everyone including Medusa and Kaleidoscope was the paribartan, the change, the change from CPIM to TMC in the state which had just ended the longest continuous communist democratic regime. Fortunately or unfortunately Medusa then got transferred to one of the elite colleges carrying a colonial legacy and Kaleidoscope to a completely new underprepared college in the heart of a built-in city of New Town, Kolkata. The place Kaleidoscope as noted earlier represents a challenge in teaching. The space for kaleidoscope is a perfect example of spatial liminality, see: "Challenges in teaching at a juxtaposed space" (click here).

Apart from the depthlessness in comparison to Medusa's present college, there is another difference here. Kaleidoscope's college happens to have a student's union and Medusa's college is famous for not having one. How does the paribartan behave in a different set up than the port city college? This college has a glassy architecture, a shopping plaza in front and is surrounded by posh apartments where people are super rich compared to the students who come to educate themselves. Kaleidoscope finds three forms of occupations prevailing: a) IT sector 'professionals' who are upwardly mobile upper middleclass to newly reached upper-class people residing at the apartments, b) Shopping-mall workers, security guards, and c) people engaged in informal economy. There lies a underground roaring black economy of those who can run syndicate of building material supply. The formally outside of the visible economic spheres, these people are also often super-rich, have a huge control over the decisions related to much of the everydayness of the informal sector workers, they are well connected with the local goons and party line.

At a distant and often localised hue, lies a transitional space, a meeting point between formal and informal spheres of economy where the students union etches out their positions. This has been a case for quite some time now, may be a little less during the CPIM era, but increasingly more after the paribartan. The crowd has grown, nurtured in the hotbed of colleges- no matter how newly built they are. Now that there is no election/selection in the student's union sine 2016, there are many faces of the union. It is not that there were not many at other times, but now, everyone has a say in most of the places. The activities as widely covered by a variety of news agencies range from collecting extorted money from even the valid candidates to beating up them, quarrelling with professors, so as to compel the Government to issue an order asking college authorities to stop calling up aspiring applicants to the college compound for physical verification of their merit points.

What makes the young crowd of West Bengal to assume this sort of political culture in most of the colleges:

First of all, there happens to be a good number of guardians ready with money. Its not that they are all helpless, it is that they do not want any conflict and if money can solve that they will assume the easiest option by giving it away. Anyways, still they are paying lakhs less than what they have to if they had to get their sons or daughters admitted to some private colleges. Kaleidoscope's EPW article on "Everyday politics and corruption is West Bengal" seems to have been working smoothly (click here). Yes, of course, there is a fear factor working, but fear is infused among those who were actually ready to pay in cash.

Secondly, doing students' union is quite a "Macho", masculine thing in the first place. You get to satisfy your adrenaline and testosterone but assuming power in the formation. You attract a lot of clout around you and you embody a larger than life image. Hence, 'helping' newcomers to get admitted is a win-win combination. You earn money, you become macho and you become a known face to the new crowd of the institution which you are not ready to leave even when you have completed your course.

While the union occupy an undefined position within the juxtaposed space between the formal-informal interface, the role players remain victims of the demands from the party line and administrative measures being taken. No matter how money they earn, seriously, kaleidoscope feels the amount has no upper limit, neither the amount has any lower limit. At places like that of the college where Kaleidoscope teaches, the newly built up one, has a paucity of students. However, the masculinity prevails.

PS. You know what, Medusa's college doesn't have a student's union, how can they have one, it is a girls' college of repute with colonial continuation.

Pic: GIF from the movie "fight club". taken from https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36236124-fight-club

Making of a dictator

We all love democracy or do we really love democracy at all? The question often has no interesting answer. Kaleidoscope knows that he lives in a society which says that it loves democracy but deep inside many of them would love to become a dictator. Yes dictatorship is good when I am the dictator. He wishes to explore the making of a dictator. How does a dictator constructed? Does s/he born one fine morning with certain qualities to become a dictator? Or does s/he go through a series of constructs to become a dictator.

Bingo! Kaleidoscope has been able to discover the second order construct that clearly takes a constructivist perspective to dictatorship. To put simple 'dictators are constructed' they are constructed in such a way that after a point in their timeline they start believing in themselves as supreme devine authority. As kaleidoscope like others know Hitlar too had constructed 'good' reasons of saving human kind's superior species for species's continuation.

Kaleidoscope has found out certain background constructs that create a dictator.

1. The supreme assistants

Usually the supreme assistants are those who continuously harps the fact that the soon to be dictator has a supreme power. Usually the power rests in Weberian sense of a mix of charismatic and bureaucratic - legal power.
They assist the to be dictator in different ways and curbes out space in the public sphere to become specialist actors.
On every occasion when these assistants feel that there is a slightest chance of the ruler to fall back they re-emphasise the rulers authority and agency. This loop continues in so far as the assistant's position remain second most important after the dictator.

2. The circle of unreasoned followers

While the supreme ruler began to accumulate power with the help of supereme assistants a loosely connected interest groups are formed. They are the yes-men to the ruler and are usually afraid of the supereme assistant. The circle initially remains pervasive through subtle mechanisms of mutual exchange of both material and non material entities. However, when the ruler and assistant attempt to consolidate their support base they usually take no time to align themselves as per the polarised politics.

3. The hypocrites
While there is a section of unreasoned followers develop, a number of actors not being able to align themselves with supreme rulers attempt to access the benefits of the power by playing a balancing act. These are the third layers of support base for the to be dictator who ensures an interesting loose supprt base for which the dictator does not have to make any effort. These are the people usually speak against the dictator in personal sphere however, remain silent at the time of an interface. They Mostly,act in align with the purpose of the dictator or ensure their personal interests getting satisfied.

4. The whisleblowers

Whenever there is a dictator there are whisleblowers available. They happen to be the only source of space where the dictator is truly contested. However, in a polarised and hypocrite filled space whisleblowers are first ignored, then ridiculed, and eliminated, or does they?

There are times when the entire network of dictator gets challenged. The space itself transforms and the dictator has to comeback to the roots.

Whisleblowers can be killed, eliminated physically. Hypocrites and the supreme assistants can find an alternative dictator, but the dictator himself/herself has to pay for the entite system s/he has built. Nothing disappears.

Neither the silence of unreasoned followers and hypocrites  nor the whisleblowers can remain constant for ever.

There seems to be a loop kaleidoscope finds interesting to follow until he is eliminated for being one of the whisleblowers.

Increasing religiousity and the world with information

How information age and increasing religiosity connects?

Information happens to be the mechanism having potentials to reduce uncertainties. It  underlies the very nature of information age of our times. We are happy to be under surveillance because a) we have an urge to show how better we are than others b) we like to see others and participate in an unconscious competition of being happy/fulfilled/rich/intelligent  and so on c) we like to get appreciation through 'likes' comments and 'loves'.

We are supposedly living in an era of late capital technology driven world of impersonal, purposive and contractual bonds. We are supposed to be rational and calculative in every sphere of our lives. We are having increasingly greater control over what happens to us and how does it happen?

Technology seems to answer most of our existential uncertain questions. For example through tests now we know that its the influenaza that is causing fever and not some supernatural forces being applied to us causing the body to raise its temperature. Similarly you know with a certain degree of certainty about your future possibilities.

Well technology seems to occupy the same cognitive plane where religion dwells. Almost through the entire humanity humans invented Gods/ supernatural powers, being, forces to reduce the uncertainty within our insanely uncertain existence. All major religions of the world at one point or the other have legitimized ethnic cleansing and conversion, cultivated hatred, and most of them at present have multiple organizations in different social fronts to subtly promote such polarisation and hatred.

There is a polarisation in technological knowledge base as well. For example a close affinity with technological knowhow works as the 'cultural capital' in a knowledge base hierarchy of habitus.

The age of reason, followed by positivism, in their grand narrative supported by cliche 'enlightenment' claiming the dark age behind promised a future of logic and reason. Centuries after we hardly find any significant change in human beings' dealing with uncertainty.

The age of information instead of giving you access to the supposedly stable world of orders pushing you further towards an exposure of uncertainty.

Uncertainties are manifold now. Even after getting educated with highly demanding field your potential openings can be withered away by the inventions in artificial intelligence  and automation. You are never sure about your position in your relationships neither you have any control over your body. Moreover, even those seemingly controllable spheres like your spending habits, reading habits, learning capabilities, knowledge base, network with interested others are out of your control at present.

Hence, what we are left with is a gigantic world of information that instead of giving us a sense of security creating alternative spheres of uncertainty, desire and helplessness. What is termed as VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous)helps proving the expectations of the proposers of enlightement. Religion and science seem to work perfectly in compatible with each other. Science is creating deep dimensions of VUCA and people keep on embracing religious belief systems.

This is precisely the fertile ground for organized religion to flourish. It is expected that we will experience even greater role of organised religion and perhaps increasingly stronger effects of the same.

Pic. A palmist inside a shopping mall in 2017 Kolkata. 

Lawns as food to the Past - juxtaposed New Town, Rajarhat

Kaleidoscope finds it interesting to teach in the heart of the built in city of New Town Kolkata. There are all sorts of juxtaposed realities co-existing here and there. The 'useless' green lusty lawns as a public space (click here), a cup of coffee in a simulacra (click here) and finally the challenges of teaching in a juxtaposed space (click here).

Today, Kaleidoscope could find something amazing. He noticed not too distant past not only haunting the present but actually, literally eating away a significant part of its aristocracy.

The photo Kaleidoscope could manage to take is this.

"A great civilisation is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within." - Ariel Durant. If you think Rajarhat is not a great civilisation go, see what is happening in Bhangar. 

For those who are interested:

Lionel S Smith & Mark D E Fellowes 2013. Towards a Lawn without Grass: The journey of the imperfect lawn and its analogues. Studies in History of Gardens & Designed Landscape 33: 3,158-159