Anaconda of notes
Shiv Viswanathan
First Published : 26 Mar 2010 12:22:00 AM ISTLast Updated : 26 Mar
2010 01:00:14 AM IST
The hysteria around Mayawati's garland has triggered an epidemic of
reactions. It is condemned as obscene and populist. But as a symbolic
message, the incident of the garland calls for a deeper semiotic
meditation. To talk about how much it weighed or how many craftsmen
made it, reduces it to trivia. The event however is significant. One
needs to re-read it. Firstly, let me confess that the garland was an
anthropological delight.
It is neither natural nor artificial. It seemed alive in a space of
its own, like some exotic sea animal. A giant snake glistening through
its million edges like an old coral. It is a garland; yet not a
garland of flowers, exuding not scent, or a promise of perfume but a
promise or premise of power. The essence of the picture is its
gigantism. Each part of the garland moves almost seismically, fusing
secret muscles, offering the terrifying link between note power and
vote power.
The ordinariness of the woman in the middle no longer matters. She
presents a spectacle which defies current politics. The Congress
objects to her act calling her Daulat ki beti and their critique
sounds like a cry of envy, of admiration. Politicians are suddenly
suffering from 'garland envy'. The RJD creates its own populist
garland, but the mob steals its thunder by stealing the notes. The RJD
garland appears an also ran, a bit moth eaten; or as a punster said
"not note worthy."
The Congress politicians called it obscene, but the beauty of Congress
is that it is always half wrong. Their benchmark is the elegance of
Sonia. But the colours of Sonia are elitist and orthodox. Mayawati is
a foil to Sonia and foil she can be, only as long as she speaks a
different grammar. Populism cannot be repetitive. She cannot be the
god-like figure that MGR was. The remains of his 'Cool drink' was
sprinkled on his followers. She cannot acquire the cinematic stature
of an NTR or a Raj Kumar, where a film hoarding enacts a myth. She
needs monumentality, a sense of gravitas, of weight. But weighing
yourself in gold or silver adds little to the imagination. She has to
possess or project something which is spectacular and populist,
something which triggers rumours, sensation, protest and keeps her on
page one. It has to be something the media returns to in hysterical
frenzy, yet something she can dismiss as "every day", something
sensational she can shrug off as normal when required.
At one level, a garland is an expected object, and a welcoming ritual.
Politicians usually expect a garland of marigolds. Marigolds in India
combat mosquitoes and also serve as a badge for politics. They signal
the expectedly official, a sense of VIPness. Even garlands of currency
are a part of marriages and festivals. They are not as common as being
weighed in gold or silver but are becoming a part of public rituals.
What Mayawati did was to take an ordinary event and make it
extraordinary. The garland in itself was spectacular, a giant anaconda
of notes, vibrating under its own weight. More it was a message of
living life Mayawati-size, inviting everyone to start a long affair
with Dalit politics.
Mayawati was taunting established parties challenging their own
hypocrisy, setting up a lifestyle challenge to the Congress and the
RJD. To the "conspicuous poverty" which Congress is trying to
practice by cutting frills and other expenses, Mayawati offers a new
politics as conspicuous consumption. She is signaling a new politics
of the spectacle which Congress would not be inclined to match. She is
advocating blatant desire, a message of greed as populism, insisting
on a mnemonics of monumentality. The iconicity of the act suggests
blasphemy but her message is clear. She is offering the gigantism of
intentions as a message, stating that it will soon be cornucopia time
for her followers. It is an unapologetic celebration of herself,
counterposing crassness to hypocrisy. She is projecting scale,
suggesting her politics can amplify, exaggerate, monumentalise in ways
that the Laloos, the Yadavs cannot dream off. It is Brodbignag of
Gulliver confronting the world of the Lilliputs.
What I would like to suggest is that a moralising position on Mayawati
or the garlands will not do. Mayawati is challenging the hypocrisy of
politics by amplifying and perpetuating it. She is asking who Mulayam
or the Congress are to condemn her, as they are fattened fleas from
the same heap. What she is proposing is not a circulation of elites
but a circulation of corruptions. Her message is clear : it is our
turn now. To the gluttony of the Congress python she is offering the
"Anaconda Smile." To call it obscenity does not offer an understanding
of the process. To call it corruption will do little to control it. To
dub it unaesthetic is sheer snobbery. This is the Rabelaisian cry of a
subaltern politics conducted in absolute contempt of norms. Her
message is simple. I have mastered vote bank politics. I have a right
to live off it.
At one level, the logic of Ramdev is a more effective counter. It is
asceticism that sounds more ascetic than the Congress claim that it is
"daulat" not "Dalit politics." Ramdev's is more sincere, where his
logic of yoga as balance challenges Mayawati's spectacle of "our turn
now." Mayawati has however switched symbols by condemning the entry of
babas into politics as a dilution of the secular. Her ability to
switch signals is acute. Her argument if examined sees the state as a
fat pie. Politics is a competition for a share and those who master
politics can fatten on the pie. If they cannibalise it, that is their
own choice. Table manners, like morals are often culturally relative.
Populism demands the spectacle. Winning votes alone is not enough. One
must create a circus of delight, a hall of mirrors where one is seen
and seen again repeatedly. Populism demands seduction on a giant
scale. To the elite it might be crude but to the masses it must offer
an assurance of power, a statement that they are part of it. The very
size of the garland is a promise of its inclusiveness and the
potential power of the collectivity that put it together.
Mayawati is not asking for a character certificate. She is
telegraphing a message to the middleclass of the character of the
regime she heads. She feeds on their consternations, gorges on her
appetite for scandal. She offers the spectacle and the Dalit sense of
the spectacular. It may be crude; a trifle Roman, yet one knows that
her symbols harness new forces of Indian politics. In this lies her
power and sadly its imaginative limits.
About the author:
Shiv Viswanathan is a social scientist
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