http://www.expressbuzz.com/edition/story.aspx?Title=Anaconda+of+notes&artid=QSEoCRGKkmY=&SectionID=d16Fdk4iJhE=&MainSectionID=HuSUEmcGnyc=&SectionName=aVlZZy44Xq0bJKAA84nwcg==&SEO=
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 ------------------------------------ ---- INFORMATION OVERLOAD? 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