ELECTION TIME IN KERALA

ELECTION REFLECTIONS, IN A LIGHTER VEIN

Valson Thampu

I am at a loss these days to decide whether to vote for the Congress, or to vote directly for the BJP. I don’t like middle men. Why should I vote and help a Congress candidate win; only to be bought in a matter of months by the BJP? Isn’t it a lot simpler to vote directly for the BJP, instead? By doing so, I could be smashing the dreams (Kaun benega crore-pathi?) of a few scores of Congresswallahs. My apologies to them.

I say this not to slight Congressmen. They are not alien to my sympathies. Is it fair to expect them to be loyal to the party, when the party does not even bother to educate them on the significance of its symbols: the hand? Gandhi once said that if he were a poet he would have written an epic on the human hand.

I know Congress men by dozens. I haven’t yet come across one who has even by mistake referred to the significance of the hand. Yet it is their symbol. The function of a symbol is, as the word literally means, ‘to hold together’. A flag, for example, is a symbol. It holds all Indians together in national solidarity. (It could change for you, if you get hammered, for example, for not standing up in a cinema hall when the national anthem is sung.) If Congressmen are ignorant of their party symbol, how do you expect them to ‘hold together’ with the party so that they are safe from being poached or procured?

If you take Engels seriously-which is purely optional- he will tell you that the development of the hand signalled the evolution of man from the ape-state to that of the savage. More precisely, the crucial moment was when one of our distant ancestors, in the twilight of human consciousness, realized that his thumb was opposable to the index finger. Humans began to grip with their hands. History woke up!

What does this mean? Well, it means the emergence of speech! In the ape-stage of our evolution, when our ancestors walked on all fours, the hand was not free. They had to use their mouths to hold things. So long as they did, they could not develop the capacity to speak. Even now, it is difficult to speak, if our mouth is stuffed with things.

That is where the hand becomes political! Imagine the game of politics being played when human beings could not speak. We can say that the first ray of politics shone forth when the development of hand liberated mouth. Opinions, we know, are divided on whether or not this should have happened. There are those who hold that if the mouth of man had not been so freed, the world would have been at peace. I wish them well and leave them to their predilections.  

Now, assume that the Congressmen knew these rudimentary things about their symbol. They would, then, have pointed out to Modi ji that he is in profound anthropological affinity, indeed atavistic indebtedness, to the Congress party. He owes his unmatched oratorical skills to the Congress symbol: the hand. Anthropologically, it is the hand that speaks! Or, if the mouth speaks, it is courtesy the hand. It is not for nothing that we refer at times to ‘body language’, even if we are unmindful of the undertones of this expression.

All orators depend heavily on the Congress symbol, when they feel that what they say needs to be reinforced. Is it possible to make a five minutes speech without banking on the help of the hand? Is not the Congress party the patron saint of politics? Is politics possible at all without the hand?

Actually, the BJP, in its pre-Modi avatar, was better educated on this. They baited the Congress by labelling it ‘the foreign hand’. The Congress, under Indira Gandhi, attributed all national woes, and fiascos in governance, to some foreign hand or the other; mostly the CIA. But the Congressmen of today? Well, they keep their hands extended.

Now assume, for the sake of argument, that the Congressmen knew the profundity of the hand. What then?

Do you think a single Congress MLA would sell his hand to any other party, or even to the devil, at the drop of a hat? Imaging selling your hand! Imagine selling the hand of humanity!

Anthropologists, courtesy Charles Darwin, connect the hand with the brain. To this day, I am not sure if it is the brain that drives the development, or perfection, of the hand, or vice versa? Because I am inclined to be a bit Hegelian (for want of better things to do) I resolve this riddle by assuming that the relationship between the hand and the brain –the super-cortex, to be specific- is dialectical. That is to say, they are in a state of reciprocal stimulation. (Now this expression is wholly mine, and if it is deployed, let it be acknowledged as such.) Darwin explained this, in part, through a hypothesis which he named ‘the law of the correlation of growth’. Put simply, if one member of the body develops the others too develop accordingly. So, if the brain develops, the hand too develops accordingly. The development of the hand then serves as a stimulation for the development of the brain. The process continues.

It is at this point that Congressmen can, if they so choose, swell with pride like Aesop’s bull-frog. (Sorry, this is not a flattering comparison; but nothing else comes to hand at the moment. Note, ‘hand’, yet again!) The hand is the reason for the growth of all other members. This, you could well say, is a left-handed compliment. But, in dealing this compliment I am in excellent company. Most of us remember Arun Shourie’s quotable words in the run-up to the 2014 general elections. ‘Sonia and Manmohan,’ he said, ‘are the election managers of Modi’. That is to say, they leant him a helping ‘hand’. If so, what’s wrong about Congress MLAs lending a few helping hands to the BJP, by way of extending and elaborating the same courtesy? At least they are smarter than their betters. Sonia and Manmohan did, as Arun says, free service. Their lackeys are smarter. They know their worth. As the cliché goes, they demand, and get, their pound of flesh.

Would all this change for the better, if a crash course is organized for the Congressmen on the historical-anthropological nuances of their party symbol? Well, your guess is as good as mine.

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