This began as notes for a blog which I dictated not being able to type because of a fractured right arm. It soon developed a life of its own as events in India, where I am at present, overtook me. I was supposed to write about my encounter with everyday authoritarianism and petty tyranny after a somewhat ludicrous and part shocking incident in which I found myself involved but then realised that the authoritarianism experienced at an everyday level made it possible for authoritarianism and despotism to grow and thrive at all levels of public and private life including in governance.
Everyday encounters
The somewhat ludicrous incident I want to talk about first happened here in the apartment building where I live. I was invited by one of the residents of the apartment building to participate in an informal meeting with another flat owner but not resident of the building who had raised objections to the new management committee we had proposed. The complainant objected not to the formation of a new committee but to the inclusion of one person who he called a troublemaker. At first I didn't give it much thought but then I realised that other people thought it important and so I agreed.
There were four of us in this meeting: the complainant; S a resident owner who always took the responsibility for steering the affairs of this building whether he was on the management committee or not; and N a woman resident who was secretary in an earlier committee, and, me.
The meeting began quite politely. We tried to accommodate all that the complainant said in the hope that he would not bring up anything untoward . But with people like this that's never the case. They see your politeness as being 'soft'. You can be very nice to them, you can also accommodate them but they must have their say because they are so convinced as to the rightness of their opinions. Just as we tried to conclude that the decisions had been taken he interjected with I don't agree. And what did he not agree to. He did not agree to including this gentleman whom he had termed as troublemaker in the committee. Asked why he thought the resident in question was a troublemaker, he gave instances such as when the 'accused' seemed to have raised objections to the lack of transparency in managing the affairs of the building and on one occasion in a combative tone. Needless to say the complainant was not a witness to these episodes of so-called trouble making behaviour; it was based on hearsay.
As this did not amount to trouble making as far as I was concerned since a resident should and could raise concerns, I asked for concrete instances. This led the complainant to think that I had not heard so he repeated what he had said. I tried to appease him by suggesting that inclusion was the best way to contain intransigent behaviour if there was any. The person in question would then have to choose a middle way between participating and obstructing. But our complainant was having none of it. His verdict was that we could include the said gentleman later after a trial period of 2 years in which time he had to prove himself worthy. And who would sit in judgement to determine that the test was passed? People like him of course. The arrogance and high handedness of this man momentarily stunned me.
Luckily for all of us he then decided to ask for a vote secure in the belief that the others thought like him. Suddenly he was all for democracy and for a vote having all this while been anything but. This was in itself dubious since we were not a formal committee and our vote did not count. I had by this time reiterated that the person in question had the same rights to be represented on the committee as any of us. Fortunately the other two present also found the complainant ridiculous and voted against him. The complainant left warning us of dire consequences. ' When this decision goes wrong don't say I didn't warn you'. To which an incensed me retorted that if any of us went against the common interests of the building we would have to bear the consequences underlining that this applied to each and every one of us and not just the alleged troublemaker.
Authoritarianism as public virtue
This tendency to assume authority and make the rules for others, to police people based on our judgement as to whether they fit in and conform to our norms is more common than we think. And all of this is argued from the point of view of the greater good, the common interest. You see it in households where a petty dictator 'decides' what is good for the rest secure in the belief that he/she is doing it for the best interests of the members. They are mostly benevolent but dictators nevertheless. One sees it around us where everyday incidents of high handedness and arbitrary imposition is justified on the premise that it is for the common good. And in India class, caste and gender play a significant role in determining who can assume the role of authority figure. Without the active connivance of those on the receiving end investing those making the standards and decisions with authority, authoritarianism and tyranny would not be reproduced. Authoritarianism is increasingly seen here as a virtue, a means to establish order and to keep power in the ‘right’ hands.
The leap from talking about everyday authoritarianism to the wider question of the culture and practices of governance is not too far. We see elected heads of state being invested with god-like qualities, imbued with sovereign like powers and infallibility, held immune to criticism or questioning. We cite the greatness of the 'civilisational' past and these demigods of the present as representatives. We extol their virtues and police those who would dare raise questions forgetting that they are there because people voted for them. In fact that they were elected becomes proof of their invincibility and greatness.
All this forebodes ill for the health of democracy because elections by themselves do not a democratic culture make! As it is the number of electoral autocracies world-wide is on the rise with strong men heading parties and governments. They keep winning elections because their opposition is stifled and crippled, languishing in jail or exiled. For a long time India prided itself on being one of those populous democracies that had institutionalised competitive politics but not for much longer. As a growing number of incidents in the heart of democratic institutions, as in the country's parliament, indicate there is a systematic campaign by those in power to silence protest, disqualify and delegitimise opposition and harass opponents. The ideal is a opposition free parliament, one that can rubber stamp the decisions of the supreme leader. This being India rank political vengeance is dressed up in legal and procedural clothing so that it looks perfectly legitimate. There was a favourite saying among my parents' generation that the madness, trauma and unspeakable horror that was the Partition of India in 1947 was normalised into a bureaucratic and procedural exercise because the interlocutors of the British colonial government negotiating independence were three lawyers, Gandhi, Nehru and Jinnah. We have since perfected the art of legal chicanery.
As the political landscape changes rapidly here people of the immediate post-independence generation who have lived through really difficult tests of our democracy in the 1970s take heart that the resistance to tyranny that saved Indian democracy then will reassert itself now. But what was then is not now. Whereas authoritarianism in everyday life existed then as now, it was not made into a public virtue as is the case today. Everyday tyranny has been normalised into a public discourse of the nation, a nation unified under a strong leader espousing a nativist nationalism in which ideas of secularism, diversity and syncretic beliefs and practices have been systematically eroded by labelling them as elitist, out of touch and therefore anti-national. And we have a sizable chunk of the educated middle class totally enamoured by the jingoism and the authoritarianism-dressed up-as discipline that this promises because then their authority over others remains intact. Lest we forget the political economy of nativist nationalism we should remind ourselves that the world order is built on the autocratic rule of capital and this form of nativist nationalism fits very well with the authoritarian and elitist neoliberal practices. After all the elite are entitled to expanding their interests and capital. As is evident from the recent scandals that have engulfed the Indian parliament the supreme leader’s crony capitalist has been minting money illegally safeguarded by his closeness to power.
The argumentative Indian
And yet the sheer diversity of India’s people, the myriads of eclectic social and religious practices, the fact that many Indias exist struggling for survival and an ordinary life, the sheer decency of ordinary people helping their neighbours who are under attack because they do not fit the mould set by a nativist nationalist narrative, makes a uniform homogeneity that the powers that be can control somewhat difficult. There are small and big insurrections all the time; we have to learn to recognise and name them. However, an electoral autocracy which we are fast becoming imposes its own version of uniformity; the winner takes all and their narrative is legitimised. We need new narratives of resistance that refuse domination, we need to fight the tyranny of a single story, we need a rebirth of the argumentative Indian.
