Use the power of the ballot to bail out democracy

Neera Chandhoke

Political Scientist

WHAT is at stake in the 2024 elections? A great deal because for the past 10 years, the spectre of autocratisation, a process that whittles away the substance of democracy while retaining the façade, has been hanging heavily over our heads. Autocrats have done away with substantive democracy. More troublingly, they have cynically provoked intense polarisation among a people who had re-learnt to live together. In the process, we bear witness to the death of the spirit of democracy, ie solidarity. In the heyday of Communism, solidarity referred to fellow feeling among the working classes. Today, the sentiment is important if we want democracy to survive.

Solidarity, or its cousin fraternity, is enshrined in the Preamble to the Constitution. Consider the tasks that the Constitution makers had to confront. A people who had been divided along lines of politicised religion had to accept each other as fellow citizens in a democratic political community. They had descended to the lowest level of humanity during the Partition. The makers of the Constitution tried to introduce a modicum of sanity in the charged atmosphere. They brought to the forefront the normative precepts of political theory — freedom, equality, justice and fraternity — in the Preamble. Indians who were in thrall of religion were offered an alternative: solidarity, which is important for at least two reasons.

One, democracy falters if people do not care about others, about their ill health or poverty, or if a particular community is subjected to rampant injustice. Without solidarity, we become a bunch of rights-bearing, self-interested individuals. Without solidarity, we will continue to live in Hobbes’ state of nature, isolated and cut off from the virtues that make us complete as human beings.

Two, history shows that when people come together in shared webs of solidarity against oppression, they move the proverbial mountain. They dislodge regimes that claim to rule by divine right. They dismantle powerful imperial empires. They challenge governments that abuse power merely by assembling on the streets, as they did in 1989 in Eastern Europe. In Iran, women called out patriarchy by publicly cutting off a lock of their hair. Germans brought down the Berlin Wall. In doing so, they have passionately and courageously propelled solidarity as the centrepiece of the political agenda.

It is not surprising that autocrats, who are in the business of accumulating power, try to divide people. There is nothing quite as awesome in history as the spectacle of masses without leaders or organisations spontaneously arising to defy unjust laws. Defiance takes other forms — we have the vote. We do not need to cut off the King’s head, as in the French Revolution. We need to use the vote prudently.

Why is our vote significant? In 2014, a sizeable number of Indians put their trust in Narendra Modi. His charismatic personality was extensively written and spoken about. Charisma in excessive doses can, however, be hazardous for democracy’s health. Consider the relentless targeting of the Muslim minority in peculiarly uncivil terms. This is accepted because the leader is charismatic. So, our Muslim fellow citizens have neither names nor distinct biographies; neither worthwhile belief systems nor languages. The minority is just a sack of potatoes and a mash of potatoes, as Karl Marx had once remarked in a different context. Perhaps, it is easier to inflict violence on people when they have become faceless. They are simply a part of a group that has been vilified through the politics of hate.

The deleterious consequences of right-wing majoritarianism are clear. Slurs that, till 10 years ago, were confined to the subconscious have been catapulted to the forefront of the political agenda and public sphere. We, the people of India, gave to ourselves a Constitution that created a democratic political community. We, the people of India, have been once again divided by cynical power politics. This is the tragedy of contemporary India: the closing in of the Indian mind through unbelievable stories of manufactured enmity.

And we, passionate defenders of democracy, justice, freedom, equality and solidarity, are suffocated when the ruling class casts a pall of fear over the country and when our fellow citizens suffer. Philosopher Brahm Prakash, author of Body On The Barricades, writes that at least some of us are feeling suffocated by the situation shaping Indian society. We are feeling barricaded, chained in our bodies and spaces. I am looking for words and phrases to describe the times we are living through. For me, no other words match the potential and vulnerability of ‘I can’t breathe’. I am looking for a figurative image that can capture this situation in body and action. The image I see is that of the body on the barricades.

A caveat is in order here. Power that stifles democracy is constantly stalked by Goddess Nemesis, who punishes hubris. The ‘significant other’ of power is resistance. Resistance does not refute the legitimacy of the state; it rejects the idea that laws are justifiable simply because they have been enacted by the government. In the Gandhian sense, resistance is justified by the belief that ordinary human beings have the moral competence to protest against unjust laws. In solidarity, we protest, we march and we sing revolutionary songs for the sake of democracy and justice. Above all, we vote — one of the most potent weapons of resistance, provided it is used for democracy.

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