Enmities of class, caste and creed have flared up in bigger, more virulent ways, from beef bans and lynchings of Muslims and Dalits to love jihads, but increasingly, the real and imagined politics of grievance finds expression in unexpected situations. I got talking to a well-informed and articulate professional at a social occasion recently – of the sort that right wing trolls label a “libtard” – and on being asked what she did, with good-humoured irony, she replied, “I’m a professional anti-nationalist you could say. I teach at Jawaharlal Nehru University.”
Many a good professor is troubled, most notably Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen, a documentary on whom has been held up by the censor board until the words “cow”, “Gujarat”, “Hindutva view of India”, etc. are deleted. The censor board chief Pahlaj Nihalani has done worse, from making B-grade films to doting music videos on Narendra Modi; evidently his Hindutva identikit of gau rakshak disallows anyone else from using the words. The aggrieved documentary-maker plans to challenge the decision, adding to the quagmire clogging the courts.
The bitter twist of caste identities and grievance politics are best exemplified by the champion of social justice, Lalu Prasad, and his corrupt progeny, a “Cricket XI” that beat the cricket control board for nefarious wheeling-dealing. Cornered in a gigantic property scam of ill-begotten farm houses and real estate in Delhi and Patna, Bihar’s deputy chief minister and former cricketer Tejashwi says he will go to the “people’s court” to seek legitimacy. Like other icons of deprived classes such as Mayawati and Mulayam Singh Yadav, Bihar’s first family today stands for, in Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad’s withering phrase, “the Robert Vadra model of development”.
Their aspirations are of princely proportion, their identities defined by social markers of untold wealth. Ms Mayawati may strut around in diamonds to unleash a building mania for pleasure parks in B R Ambedkar’s name to rival the Bourbon queens but her political rivals in Uttar Pradesh are driven by a craze for foreign cars. While Mulayam Singh and Akhilesh Yadav profess a preference for latest bullet-proof Mercedes models, younger son Prateek proudly posts images of his sky blue Rs 5-crore Lamborghini. This flagrant exhibition of rapacity contributed to their defeat in the state election in the spring.
The noose of financial malfeasance is also tightening round Pakistani premier Nawaz Sharif, as investigations into his family’s huge hoard of hidden overseas assets are spotlighted. Here is columnist F S Aijazuddin’s writing in Dawn this week: “One has only to turn the leaves of Pakistan’s ledgers kept since 1947 to see how almost every ruler – whether elected, nominated or self-appointed – has in time blurred the distinction between state ownership and private possession…The situation now is so chronic that…should Pakistan be headed by an honest leader, determined to cleanse the country of corruption, he would be hounded out of office soon enough for incompetence or unforgivable negligence.” Like Mr Tejashwi, Mr Sharif is also mulling the idea of approaching the “people’s court”. A general election is due next year but will he call a snap poll to test his mandate?
As Mr Aijazuddin cynically remarks, “Pakistani politicians could never become Roman Catholic priests. They refuse to take a vow of poverty.” That fate, as in India, is reserved for the so-called Bangladeshi slum dwellers of Noida who took to stoning the apartments of their well-to-do employers. The real injury of the aggrieved is not the same as the grievance politics of those in power.
