Crowds as handmaidens

With election season knocking on the doors of a few states and one Union Territory of India – Assam, West Bengal, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Puducherry – even as a spike in Covid cases is being reported from Maharashtra, Punjab and Kerala, it might just be that both the politician and the coronavirus need human assembly to thrive. The way politicians are holding mammoth rallies betrays a paradoxical stand between what is being preached and what’s being practised. How our politicians use crowds as handmaidens, courting them, intimidating them, fooling them, exploiting them, according to their needs!

In West Bengal, the so-called second wave of Covid-19 cases would be thought of as an anti-democratic wedge, irritant or distraction, eminently making room for post-truth narratives of the actual spread, because the top ministers, including the PM and Bengal CM, are courting crowds in massive rallies. The top epidemiologists advising governments cannot prize public health over democratic assemblies and even if they do, who would listen to them? Therefore, at public rallies, the crowds of non-vaccinated and non-masked people jostling for a darshan of their leaders – no matter whether they have either been bribed or intimidated, or have come of their own accord.

The rally on February 28, touted to be one of the largest meetings the iconic Brigade Parade Ground in Kolkata has seen in some time, was called by the CPM-led Left Front to launch the newly formed Samyukta Morcha of the Congress, the Left and the newly minted Indian Secular Front, led by cleric Abbas Siddiqui. Narendra Modi’s rally on the same ground exactly a week later, was designed to outperform the turnout of the Left rally, for the crowds to be showcased as an agent of support for the BJP, Covid protocols be damned. Modi also feigned wonder in his opening remarks, proclaiming that he had never seen such a huge rally in his life. Heated arguments ensued over the size of the two consecutive rallies; allegations were rife that a large number of BJP handles on social media shared photos of the 2019 Left rally at the same ground, passing it off as their own rally of 2021.

Why must not all our leaders be booked for playing footsie with public health? Why must not they be condemned as super spreaders? Isn’t it the very threat of contagion that has been cited to keep schools and colleges in a limbo for over a year?

Thus, education has already gone for a toss with the fear of Covid spreading being bandied about, but then the pecking order is: first the government and politics, then far down the order of things, education, lack of which might make us a nation of scoundrels. But who wants an educated nation? To what end, pray, is so much stone hammered?

People amassing in great numbers to join a carnival, at the funeral rites of a popular person, engaging in a buying spree at a shopping mall, or in a football stadium are threats during a pandemic. But, for the politicians, the presence of huge crowds at their public rallies is a show of strength that comes to salve their egos, even if it does not translate into votes.

The paradox goes further. Our politicians court public rallies during a pandemic on democratic grounds. But when a group of people seek to gather in order to restore democracy and protest against the government, go against a ruling junta, a system of governance, against a citizenship law or farm laws, or a vested interest, they become anti-nationals. Worse, when a group of people beat or burn someone to death, the same powers that be find that the mob cannot be blamed, they cannot be caught, and the collective havoc they wreak must be expunged from our collective memory. They, who we assume are driven mad and out of control by their crowd membership, are free to go berserk, rant and rave, to lynch, rape, riot and kill.

Manipulating crowd behaviour is the staple of demagogues. They must add up to electoral gains. While crowds cannot be allowed to serve a role as a collective agent for change, the role of the anonymous mob as unruly, boisterous and often murderous body of persons who disturb public order and destroy a cultural artefact or religious symbol such as the Babri Masjid has been exploited time and again.

A year ago, disaggregating crowds by putting restrictions on their right to assembly citing the pandemic was the name for disaggregating disaffection against the government. Now in the election-bound states, the crowds are courted, despite the pandemic.

Crowds can be used as a show of strength, riled as illegal immigrants, or made as a symbol of the superlative when they pack one of the world’s largest stadiums at Motera, made to vote en masse by some majoritarian stratagem, cajoled with some false hope, stirred with rabid nationalism, scared with a bogey of foreign aggression, or exploited using the good, old bogeys of caste and religion.

Manipulation of crowds is easy, when they can be fed false narratives, or be kept largely uneducated.