The Hindu : Politics as violence

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Jun 01, 2002

Opinion

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Politics as violence

By Neera Chandhoke

Instead of moving in the direction of governance and management of tensions, the BJP and its constituency are still enmeshed in the politics of violence.

THAT THE leaders of the Sangh Parivar are itching to go to war with Pakistan is, by now, more than evident. Fired by dreams of destruction, they will not rest till they have involved the country in a ruinous war, till thousands of young men have been massacred, till Indian society has been completely de-sensitised to normative concerns — such as respect for the lives of ordinary human beings — and till this society is `unified' by the semantics of national chauvinism and the politics of hate and attrition. It is also more than obvious that the Sangh Parivar leadership just does not seem to know what it is talking about when it calls for the use of the nuclear option. It just does not seem to be familiar with what a nuclear holocaust can do to existing and future generations. Those who agitate for war should meet the descendants of the victims of the nuclear explosion over Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Till today these descendants carry the scars of the explosion, after all they are the `untouchables' of modern Japan.

The urge to launch nuclear strikes on Pakistan is as insane as the insistence by the RSS cadres, after the nuclear explosion, that the sands of Pokhran be distributed over the country. Just as they did not know that these sands would be necessarily radioactive, they do not seem to grasp the implications of a nuclear war? Is it possible to be so ignorant? Or does the desire to preach and practice violence sweep all rationality aside?

Many observers have persuasively argued that the current war hysteria is carefully being built up in order to divert national and international attention from the Gujarat scenario. And in a way they are correct: just witness the way in which Gujarat and its multiple tragedies have been pushed off the headlines of most national dailies. Now it is Pervez Musharraf who excites political passions. It is difficult to ignore that the current standoff with Pakistan is convenient for the BJP at this precise moment. There is nothing like identifying an external enemy and perceiving him as the cause of everything that is wrong with the country today when it comes to cynical and amoral political strategies. And yet there is something deeper and rather ominous in the sabre-rattling and muscle-flexing we see today. For, Gujarat and now the current pre-occupation with teaching Pakistan a lesson is not exceptional to the Sangh Parivar, it is part of its general fascination with violence. Its very agenda is violence. Ever since the mid-1980s when we were to see the VHP and the Bajrang Dal along with the RSS erupting onto the political scene like so many macabre and demonic beings, our country has witnessed nothing but the systematic institutionalisation of violence in the politics of everyday life.

This is not to say that politics and violence have nothing to do with each other, or that they constitute binary opposites. The belief that politics is about transformation and that violence is about destruction had been done away with some time ago. Many theorists have argued that the distinction between politics and violence is overdrawn, and that politics concerned as it is with power is deeply coercive in nature. And yet there is more to an activity that we identify as politics, than the instrumental use of power and coercion. That would be to reduce politics to violence by other means.

The relationship between politics and violence is, however, subtle and certainly more complex. Certainly, the origins of politics lie in violence — the violence that occurs in the absence of politics as negotiation and arbitration. On the other hand, politics is about controlling violence and relegating it to the margins. In this context, it is worthwhile to recollect the insights of the English political philosopher, Thomas Hobbes. Hobbes had suggested that violence in the hypothetical pre-political and pre-social state of nature is so immediately threatening and so vicious, that any kind of political order that can contain it is better than none. A Leviathan vested with all power by his constituents is preferable to the anarchic state of nature where individuals possess absolute liberty. Recognising the soul-destroying potential of violence, people opt to give up their liberty in return for security of life and property. Correspondingly, the Leviathan cedes all claims to loyalty and obligation if he violates the basic premise of the contract — provision of security and the control of violence.

Therefore, even though the founding moment of politics is violence, politics sidelines the will to control violence through the employment of other means — persuasion for instance. It subordinates the violence of everyday life to the logic of relatively peaceable social transactions. That is why modern politics, rather than subscribe to the view that politics is about an eye-for-eye conception of justice, or that politics is about balance between warring factions, gives us other visions of a good life. Even though modern politics may not do away with violence, what it does ensure is that violence is contained and constrained, not to be employed unless that use can be justified.

The founding moment of the BJP's journey to power was of course violence. Who can forget the blood-spattered trail of the Shilanyas, of the rath yatra, of the destruction of the Babri Masjid? But once in power, the holders of state power should have moved to transcend this original moment and onto other tasks: ensuring that the ordinary human being in India is delivered justice as her or his due. That is what we normally expect of modern politics and of the democratic party-system. Instead, we saw since the late 1990s the overt use of violence against the minorities, against anyone who dissented from the agenda of the Sangh Parivar, against those who struggle to ensure that human beings can live a life of dignity. The level to which the Sangh Parivar cadres have fallen, in their attacks on the minorities in Gujarat for instance, is indeed shocking. Instead of moving in the direction of governance and management of tensions, the BJP and its constituency are still enmeshed in the politics of violence, they are unable to get out of these coils, they are unable to learn civilised modes of reasoning and persuasion.

We do not expect much of the BJP. However, the task of even a minimalist form of politics is to contain or hold at bay violence that begets nothing but violence. But the Sangh Parivar cadres refuse to subscribe to mature political reasoning. They remind one of the antics of a caveman who knowing no other language wields his club to bludgeon his opponents into insensibility. The politics of the Hindutva brigade remains primitive because its members have not been able to transcend the founding moment of their ascent to power. They refuse to dream dreams of a politics that creatively and imaginatively negotiates the human condition in India.

Politics as the art of negotiation, as the technique of neutralising tensions, as the way of creatively engaging with the aspirations of ordinary people, as the art of achieving what seems to be impossible, has been swept aside in favour of the naked and unashamed use of violence. It almost seems that the Sangh Parivar is as unfamiliar with the potential and the capacities of politics as it is with the fallout of a nuclear war.

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