The Civic & the Ludic
Rajarshi Dasgupta & Prasanta Chakravarty Abstract This dialogue, written in 2008, tried to unpack the terms of thinking about the transformations in Indian politics, especially in West Bengal, following the turn of events in Nandigram. It tried to appraise left-liberal issues of governance, and develop new categories to understand some of the forms of resistance at that time. The speakers were also conversing, at the same time, with a shared sense of the changing topography of the political. New kinds of spaces, new practices and interventions, new kinds of concerns were presenting unfamiliar gestures within the familiar structures of power. Things looked new but also disturbing. Much has changed now, of course. The dialogue approaches these questions with three interwoven but distinct engagements: a resurgent conception of ethics, the problems of realpolitik and the political role of aesthetics. The outcome is not a standard article of political science, but a revisionist excursion with a touch of lightness, which raises questions about the desired forms of life and practices in a democracy like India. The discussion tries to go beyond the familiar Marxist and liberal arguments on agency and self and re-frame the role of subjectivity and matter in politics. Keeping the predominant institutional forms of politics like the parties and election in the background, the exchange speculates on the new kinds of political associations and potential communities waiting on the wings of democracy. Hope was twelve hours gone/And frightful a nightfall folded rueful a day/Nor rescue, only rocket and lightship, shone, /And lives at last were washing away. The Wreck of the Deutschland–Gerard Manley Hopkins Prasanta: Whether the succession of events that have unfolded in West Bengal over the past two year or so, reaching a sort of crescendo in the months of October-November, 2007, are momentous enough to make any tangible difference in the social and political life of the state is still an open question, but going by the sheer volume of protests and the visibility factor, these are extraordinary times. The processes of institutional politics are still unfolding though, with some interesting results coming up in the 2008 Panchayat elections. Having a long-standing interest in studying left politics in India and thinking about the language of politics in more general terms, I was wondering about your reactions on certain key points that have been emerging since. There are certainly diverse issues of interest involved here, but one important talking point pivots around questions of ethics, or their lack of, in everyday politics in West Bengal. Rajarshi: It is a testing time for the Indian Left, I agree, but I don’t think it will lead to a change in the power structure or in the language of everyday politics too soon. I also doubt if questions of ethics are being raised directly and pointedly, even if we sense a moral overtone in the indignation of some segments of society and in their unusual modes of protest. This may have more to do with a growing disquiet with our party system’s tiresome monopoly over representative politics, seen as instrumental, manipulative, unsavory and untrustworthy by many. The blackmail of having no rational alternative, flogged by the left, right and centre alike, has narrowed the political space so much that any intervention begins from a place called ‘apolitical’, hence, mistaken as ethical. This doesn’t mean there is no ethical side to what is happening. But I want to be careful in thinking how exactly such dissent is ethical: because it is not political? I will disagree with that. It is useful to separate the ethical and moral here, as the latter has more currency in common sense and what we might describe as the liberal contractual language. Indeed, most party discourses contain appeals to morality: we know their competing notions of virtue and good life; we hear them pledging truth all the time. But the sense of these properties has become a matter of cynic polemic and superficial reasoning, as we know, in such opaque terms that only cadres can administer and make careers out of them. As Nandigram shows, the language of politics has been replete with moral appeal on both sides, yet it sadly remains bereft of justice, tolerance, transparency and equal decision-making to a great degree. Besides, how is the moral lack of a ruling party at all relevant if it continues to enjoy electoral majority? (Should we not consider Narendra Modi’s election as a lesson?) It seems to me a crisis of the techniques of representative politics, a crisis of the parliament seemingly lacking energy for democratic change, which must be underlined before we discuss the ethical side. Prasanta: One appreciates your distinction between the moral and the ethical, but in popular imagination one can still see that a language of virtue and conscience being coupled with a scathing criticism of an ossified and dangerous culture of totalitarianism that has become synonymous with West Bengal. It is here that one notices a real possibility: the collective across the civil society discourse and the one around extra-parliamentary political order both would galvanize around the ethical language of virtue and conscience. But this could of course be dangerous. Both these groups have thus can rise, in fact have risen, above the contractual language of moderate mainstream liberalism as well that of official Marxism. There is a sudden and momentous realization among sections of the much vilified Bengali middle class at least, that there is something more to politics and society than the metaphors of merit or equality around which much of our contemporary political discussions revolve. There is some hope but it could be mistaken too. But, I have two questions here. One, what constitutes this new language? And why would this language of virtue itself be not a platform that would demand a certain kind of austerity that would be equally top-down and closed? Rajarshi: That is the question I have in mind too. What is new about this new language? If we