[Reader-list] deconstructing the anna penomenon

[Tara Prakash]

The professor was equally perturbed during the NandiGram movement, which he 
called moral messianism. We know the result, at least the political one. We 
had the elite crying foul about Gandhi's movement, it may not be perfect but 
it had an impact. So here we have the results, corruption, erstwhile a 
nonissue,  is causing ripples in the ivory towers and in the parliament. The 
dialogue is on. And we needed a messiah to do that. We needed a messiah to 
bring RTI act in to existence. Non-messiahs have not done much to educate 
people or effectively attack corruption so there is no point questing a 
messiah for the same. It's okay that Democracy is guided by the people, the 
mob.



Hopefully the skepticism

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "asit das" <asit1917 at gmail.com>
To: "reader-list" <reader-list at sarai.net>
Sent: Wednesday, August 24, 2011 5:25 AM
Subject: [Reader-list] deconstructing the anna penomenon


> Messianism versus democracyPRABHAT PATNAIK
>
> The substitution of one man for the people, and the reduction of the
> people's role merely to being supporters and cheerleaders for one man's
> actions, is antithetical to democracy.
>
> The Central government's flip-flops on Anna Hazare are obvious: it went 
> from
> abusing him (through the Congress spokesperson) for sheltering corruption,
> to extolling him for his idealism; from arresting him, without any
> justification, and getting him remanded to judicial custody for a week, to
> releasing him within a few hours. But the Anna group's flip-flops are no
> less striking: it moves from
> “we-have-a-democratic-right-to-protest-and-place-our-views-in-public,” 
> which
> is an unexceptionable proposition, to
> “Anna-will-keep-fasting-until-his-bill-is-adopted-or-amended-with-his-permission,”
> which amounts to holding a gun to the head of the Centre, and by 
> implication
> of Parliament, and dictating that the bill it has produced must be passed,
> or else mayhem will follow. The government's flip-flops are indicative of
> incompetence; the Anna group's flip-flops arise because of the compulsions
> of a particular style of politics on which it is embarked, which can be
> called “messianism” and which is fundamentally anti-democratic. The fact
> that it is striking a chord among the people, if at all it is (one cannot
> entirely trust the media on this), should be a source of serious concern,
> for it underscores the pre-modernity of our society and the shallowness of
> the roots of our democracy.
>
> Democracy essentially means a subject role for the people in shaping the
> affairs of society. They not only elect representatives periodically to 
> the
> legislature, but intervene actively through protests, strikes, meetings, 
> and
> demonstrations to convey their mood to the elected representatives. There
> being no single mood, freedom of expression ensures that different moods
> have a chance to be expressed, provided the manner of doing so takes the
> debate forward instead of foreclosing it. For all this to happen, people
> have to be properly informed. The role of public meetings where leaders
> explain issues, and of media reports, articles, and discussions, is to
> ensure that they are. The whole exercise is meant to promote the subject
> role of the people, and the leaders are facilitators. Even charismatic
> leaders do not substitute themselves for the people; they are charismatic
> because the people, in acquiring information to play their subject role,
> trust what they say.
>
> Messianism substitutes the collective subject, the people, by an 
> individual
> subject, the messiah. The people may participate in large numbers, and 
> with
> great enthusiasm and support, in the activities undertaken by the messiah,
> as they are doing reportedly at Anna Hazare's fast at the Ramlila grounds,
> but they do so as *spectators*. The action is of the messiah; the people 
> are
> only enthusiastic and partisan supporters and cheerleaders. If at all they
> ever undertake any action on the side, this is entirely at the messiah's
> bidding, its ethics, rationale and legitimacy never explained to them (no
> need is felt for doing so); whenever they march they march only in support
> of the messiah, not for specific demands that they have internalised and
> feel passionately about. When they gather at the Ramlila grounds, for
> instance, the occasion is not used to enlighten them, to bring home to 
> them
> the nuances of the differences between the government's Lokpal Bill and 
> the
> Jan Lokpal Bill, so that they could act with discrimination and
> understanding. On the contrary, the idea is to whip up enthusiasm among 
> them
> without enlightening them, through the use of meaningless hyperbole like
> “the government's bill is meant not for the*prevention* but for the *
> promotion* of corruption”, and “Anna is India and India is Anna”. If the
> venue was one where discussions, debates, and informative speeches were
> taking place, the matter would be different, but those alas have no place 
> in
> the political activity around messianism.
>
> Informative speeches have been the traditional staple of political 
> activity
> in India. Maulana Bhashani, a popular peasant leader in what is now
> Bangladesh, used to give marathon speeches that were interrupted when 
> people
> went home for lunch or dinner, or even for a night's rest, and resumed 
> when
> they re-assembled afterwards; and the speeches contained much information
> about everything, not just politics but even crop-sowing practices and the
> best means of irrigation. A speech was virtually a set of classes; it had 
> an
> educative role. I myself have heard election speeches in West Bengal by 
> the
> inimitable Jyoti Basu, and also others. The speeches were based on solid
> homework, and conveyed information and argument to the audience. They also
> sought to rebut what was being said by the opponents, and hence carried
> forward a debate in public. Political activity of this kind assumed a
> subject role of the people and prepared them for it; it was
> quintessentially *democratic*. Messianic political activity does no such
> thing; it quintessentially creates a *spectacle*, not just for the 
> audience
> but above all for the TV cameras upon whose presence it is crucially
> dependent.
>
> I am not concerned here with whether the Jan Lokpal Bill is the best piece
> of legislation on the subject; nor am I concerned with the possible RSS
> links of the Anna campaign. These issues, though important, are not 
> germane
> to my argument. My concern is with the “dumbing down” of the people that
> messianic political activity entails: “leave things to Anna but do come to
> cheer him.” Just as in a potboiler Hindi film the hero single-handedly 
> does
> all the fighting required to rid the locale of villainous elements,
> messianic activity leaves all the fighting, that is, the subject role, to
> the messiah. The people stand around with sympathy, and cheer. When the 
> Anna
> group announces that he will take up issues like land reforms, corporate
> land grab, and commercialisation of education, once his fight against
> corruption is over, one almost feels that Shekhar Kapoor's “Mr. India” has
> finally arrived on the scene! The problem, however, is that “Mr. India” is 
> a
> negation of democracy; and relying upon “Mr. India”, like relying upon the
> arrival of an incarnation of Vishnu to cleanse the world of evil, is a
> throwback to our pre-modernity. It is not just an admission of a state of
> powerlessness of the people that may prevail at the moment; it reinforces
> that powerlessness.
>
> Messianism is fundamentally anti-democratic because it is complicit in 
> this
> objectification of the people, this self-fulfilling portrayal of them as
> dumb objects that need a messiah. When the Anna group uses the term 
> “people”
> as a substitute for itself (referring to its own bill as “the people's
> bill,” its own views as the “people's views”), it is implicitly carrying 
> out
> a conceptual *coup d'etat*, namely, that messianism is democracy! But 
> quite
> apart from the fact that the messiah is not elected by the people, a point
> made by many, there is the basic point that nobody, whether elected or 
> not,
> can *substitute* for the people in a democracy.
>
> This presumption, however, explains the flip-flops made by the Anna group.
> If Anna *is* the people, then democracy, where the people are supreme,
> demands that his version of the bill *must* be accepted over any other
> version, including what the parliamentary Standing Committee may come to
> formulate. The people's supremacy over Parliament entails *ipso facto* 
> Anna's
> supremacy over Parliament. Messianism necessarily implies an
> “Anna's-bill-has-got-to-be-adopted” position. Members of Anna's group, 
> many
> of whom have been associated for long with people's causes, may have
> occasional discomfort with this messianic position, and may retreat to a
> “we-are-only-exercising-our-democratic-rights” stance; but since they do 
> not
> repudiate the messianic position, they perforce come back to the
> “Anna-is-the-people-and-hence-supreme” stance. To accept that Anna's 
> version
> of the bill is only one of many possible versions, which the final bill
> could draw upon, amounts to seeing Anna as one among equals, and not as 
> *the
> * messiah, that is, to an abandonment of messianism; the Anna group is 
> loath
> to do this. “Negotiations” with the government therefore come to mean
> negotiations to make it accept Anna's version; “compromise” comes to mean 
> a
> compromise that makes Anna's version final.
>
> It may be asked: if the people prefer “messianism” to “democracy,” then 
> what
> is wrong with it? Those thronging the Ramlila grounds or marching in 
> support
> of Anna in the metros are not necessarily “the people” of the country, and
> it is dangerous to take the two as identical. Besides, even if a majority 
> of
> the people genuinely wish at a particular time to elevate a messiah over
> Parliament, this is no reason to alter the constitutional order, just as a
> majority wishing to abandon secularism at a particular time is no reason 
> to
> do so. The Constitution is the social contract upon which the Indian state
> is founded, and it cannot be overturned by the wishes of a majority at a
> particular time. If perchance the government accepts messianism out of
> expediency, it would be violating the spirit of the Constitution and
> undermining democracy. Besides, any such licence will make multiple
> (quasi-religious) messiahs sprout, who would compete and collude, as
> oligopolists do in the markets for goods, to keep people in thralldom.
>
> *(Prabhat Patnaik recently retired from the Sukhamoy Chakravarty Chair at
> the Centre for Economic Studies and Planning, Jawaharlal Nehru University,
> New Delhi.)*
> _________________________________________
> reader-list: an open discussion list on media and the city.
> Critiques & Collaborations
> To subscribe: send an email to reader-list-request at sarai.net with 
> subscribe in the subject header.
> To unsubscribe: https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/reader-list
> List archive: <https://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/>