Palliative Cures of Political Outsiders
The guru’s got me high on cannabis
He has shown me the path to bliss
My eyes have turned rose-red
This the true love of the belovedHe got me high on his brew
He’s my love, my true guru
The human desire to establish freedom has had a contradictory trajectory. The many disjointed attempts over the course of history moved the needle only so much. And with every infinitesimal gain, we come together in sabotage and bind ourselves in chains once more. Caught in the churn of an indifferent reality, our desire to be led runs deep. We look to any source of authority for assurance. Facing up to freedom is almost traumatic. In India, this sense of bondage finds its most potent institutionalisation in caste. And from it flow all expectations of compliant servitude and desires for a master–guru. As states across the world lurch towards the right, pinning their hopes in despotic figureheads, Navayana’s latest offering The Political Outsider: Indian Democracy and the Lineages of Populism by Srirupa Roy shows how India is a test case to understand how democracy and authoritarianism feed into each other.
We announce this book as Delhi prepares for state elections—the people are presented with a choice between Narendra Modi and Arvind Kejriwal. Both stake their reputations on being political outsiders, here to cleanse a democratic system of its ‘elites’. Both Modi and Kejriwal rose to prominence in the same moment, when a popular dissatisfaction with the system was at its peak and the promises of neoliberalism seemed to be ebbing away from an increasingly paranoid and overwhelmingly Savarna middle class. The Political Outsider shows that despite differences in rhetoric, the form of the strongman outsider is consistent in both Kejriwal and Modi. Roy introduces us to a new form of democracy that has emerged in this context—curative democracy. This is a populist call to restore a presently flawed system by a figure who is seen as an outsider to that system. Curative democracy seldom aims at revolutionary social or political change. It is essentially tutelary, where the public is meant to be in permanent supplication. Curiously, these ‘outsiders’ represent a very specific caste, class, religious, spatial and gendered interest.
My lord, your majesty is everywhere
It floods every shore, it’s here it’s there
Roy shows how this tendency emerged during the 1970s, especially in the aftermath of the Emergency. The era was marked by the emergence of Naxalite movements and other demands for radical change across India. Indira Gandhi’s response was to declare the Emergency, a move she justified as one that would save democracy. Her cult of personality was ascendent, even as she stripped away democratic rights. Her opponents positioned themselves in a similar vein—as outsiders to the system who wished to enter the system only to rescue democracy. In the aftermath, the trope stuck. To be seen as anti-establishment (however nebulously defined) became the primary mode of electioneering.
Political leaders came to peddle a homogenous notion of ‘the people’, fomenting a sense of antipolitics. Despite furious campaigning, they presented themselves as uninterested in games of power and politics. The people were not to be inculcated as political beings, but rather as worshipful customers. This was abetted by a dose of technocracy, injected into governance after the liberalisation of the 1990s. Now, CEOs and godmen could represent the people despite having no mandate. The media came in tow, as an urgent and angry representative of the popular mood, always hungry for the next story, no longer simply relaying facts, but an effector of change. In the relentless news cycle, there was little time to ask what kind of change this was to be.
Just a cupful and it’s gone to my head
Dancing in joy, I paint the town red
All the locks of my life have been broken
A lamp has been lit, I’ve been wokenThe guru’s got me high on cannabis
I’m singing the song of bliss
Arvind Kejriwal and Narendra Modi emerged from this milieu, as angry faces of popular resentment. Both folded within their person the redemptive promise of a politics-beyond-politics, almost ascetic in its disposition. The Western feudal ideal, where the king was a corporeal representative of god on earth, was reversed. The people need no longer be political, for the body of their representative—their leader—became a literal embodiment of their desires.
The Political Outsider: Indian Democracy and the Lineages of Populism shows how despite these figures, discontents continue to rage and every once in a while the charade drops. In the end, curative strategies are only palliative. The book is now available for Rs 500 on our website.
In water and on land, in all forms of life
My beloved blooms and redness is rife
Wherever I see there’s no end in sight
This love keeps me up day and nightThe guru’s got me high
Now I laugh and now I cry
We have turned to the words of Kabir here, and turned them on their head. Listen to Prahlad Tipaniya’s joyous rendition of the song “Saaheb ne Bhaang Pilaayi/ Akhiyon mein laalan chaayi”, where the idea of a guru is turned on its head. It is a heady idea: a democracy where gurus demand unconditional surrender.
(Translation from The Notbook of Kabir: Thinner than Water, Fiercer than Fire)