Politics and Me

Let me start out with a confession that will shock no one (it should) and concern even fewer people (which is tragic). In my life of just over 28 years, having lived in India from birth for the most part, except a four year spell in the US, I probably know more about the constitution and politics of that land than I do of my own. Head hanging appropriately shamed, the only mitigation that comes to mind is the fact that I really did not know/ care about politics until a few years ago, so in some sense I 'awoke' while in the US. I must also say my taste for politics was defined and honed by a spectacular TV show - "The West Wing", which in itself is, over its seven seasons a course in liberal American politics.

Growing up in India, politics was always something you tapped your nose about and sighed knowingly (although you knew nothing). The thing to do for those my age was to say we thought politics was dirty. Of course, if you pressed us for detail, we could respond with scant little other than a few movie references; or perhaps with some headlines that had pierced the indulgent media cloud that was forming around us. We laughed at Laloo, tut-tutted the Thackerays (and turned up our noses at those who wouldn't), and stared slack-jawed at Jayalalitha without bothering to understand.

I never got that these politicians who obsessed about things we cared nothing about (suitcases filled with cash, endangered ethnic identities, and buffalo care) were in fact representing us, our ideas and ideals, our hopes, dreams, nightmares, and philosophies. Until far too recently, I couldn't tell a leftist from a right-wing nationalist or a centrist if my life depended on it... curious, because I had spent hours obsessing about the very philosophies that they espoused.

My otherwise trivia-obsessed mind never drew lines to connect Lenin and Trotsky with a Naxalite or a Jyoti Basu, or Milton Friedman and Alan Greenspan with Montek Singh Ahluwalia and P Chidambaram. Laughable as it sounds, I was obsessed with understanding some philosophies of economics and governance without recognizing they local variants!

Fast forward to 2009... and we are in the thick of an election season. Another confession - I haven't voted this time (registration and location issues were a convenient excuse) but before you cite all the damn Tata Tea Jaago re commercials let me explain why.

If there is a sin I am guilty of, it is apathy. I don't glory in the fact that I have the wherewithal to admit it where a lot of others don't. I also don't want to propose any solutions or remedies to my condition because, well, I am apathetic to it. Anyway, this blog isn't about what I propose to do about it. This is, (to borrow a wonderful phrase from R Scott Bakker, whose mind-blowing book "The Judging Eye" I am currently reading) an attempt to analyze 'the darkness that comes before'.

Why is it that I am apathetic?

First of all, I don't have too many problems with the way India is run. I am rich enough, escapist enough, and 'travel-enabled' enough to have all these problems seem distant. I live in a gated community that charges premiums on everything to make sure only the 'elite' live here. The beggars on the street are a dull buzz outside my air-conditioned car. I have a good job, eat well, drink expensive, and am allowed to live in a cocoon of my own design.

In fact, if there were one difference between me and the pre-ascetism Prince Siddartha (beside the fact that no banyan tree is going to see me get turned into a Buddha any time soon), it would be that I've had more than the fabled four moments of 'realization' - I've seen poverty, and death, and hunger, and pain, et al - and I walked on past them. Maybe ascetism (or a realization that my comforts are holding me back) is needed before one is truly enlightened, but I am selfish and blase enough to deny myself denial.

The fact is that in a complex reality like India, I am in the minority in the class sense. I don't have tales to tell of a childhood of poverty that I had to pull myself out of by my bootstraps. I was well-provided for - coddled, actually - as a child, and the only difference between me as an adult is now I know where the money comes from!

But then apathy isn't all that keeps me from being political. There is perhaps a deeper reason - my agnosticism.

Another reality is that I just can't tell the difference between political parties and philosophies in India. They are peopled with semi-senile geriatrics or dynastic mediocres who think power is their birthright, for the most part. I do see once firebrand revolutionaries and activists reduced to the role of ignorant yet arrogant pimps in the horse-trading games that repeat at each level of government. Quid pro quo is not only the way in India, it seems to the guiding philosophy!

To vote, to be politically active, is to make a choice and to be convinced of a direction and a philosophy/ vision. I am, first and foremost, a disgusted agnostic.

If I were to have political opinion, I suspect I would be labeled a conservative in India; against unchecked free markets, against invasive government, against affirmative action, for aggressive and engaged foreign policy (particularly projection of regional power), for devolution of power to the states, for uniform civil codes and several key constitutional amendments (beginning with the removal of 'socialist' from the pre-amble, which to my mind is an anachronism now), etc.

To be sure even these opinions sit in my mind with a hundred caveat emptors and while I lean in those directions, I haven't made up my mind.

It is perhaps that hesitation, that recognition that today's just cause could well be tomorrow's grave error (or genocide without the need for brute force) is what keeps me in my stall while all the other horses are running around. I am genuinely afraid of political/ activist passion.

Given that believing/ doing something might not work out for the best, I resign myself to believing/ doing nothing with any force. (I'm not a nihilist - just an armchair commentator with mild preferences).

This is made further strange that my parents are activists, and always have been. They have stated preferences and they do what they say they should. From my earliest days I have seen them fight for some social cause or other (although, it must be said they too for the most part shun the regular channels of elective politics and believe more in people's movements).

I think I am beginning to understand now why I didn't ever feel like jumping in and helping them... first of all, the family dynamic never behooved me to do it just to please them, and secondly, somewhere in my subconscious sits an agnostic sage with the advice:

"Believe nothing, and be wary of passion; passion leads to unreason"

I know that sounds smug and convenient... but not to me. I can't say I've lived by that statement all of the time, but I can confidently say I have most of the time.

Anyway... I just realized I've gone past the point where this post could've had a good punchy finish, and into ramble territory.

So let me conclude by saying... I am a political work in progress... and might - just might - vote the next time. Assuming all things don't remain equal...