Power and its tokens

Inevitable as authoritarianism is, re-invoking tedious truisms about its nature is not. My teens were spent in discussing politics from a couch and a coffee. We are rarely at the scene of revolution, and never its centre. We know back and forth, the theory and practice of almost every political credo (or at least, Wikipedia does.) So we shouldn’t think about it. But, yet, its vicarious effects are there every day of our lives, hard enough to miss, harder still to leave unprocessed. We place our chair between pro and con, of course, but still, the temptation to rethink them is upon us. So how do we deal with politics? I am tired of arguments and debates….

Before even man could write (and, perhaps, speak intelligibly) he chose a leader and carved a totem pole. Leadership is older than even flowing thought, that is, language. Perhaps this is why none of our efforts are enough to get a grip on it. But this doesn’t mean we stay numb and dumb (though we do).

Let us cast a glance at its prime perpetrators: politicians, aka rabble rousers, demagogues, chieftains…and the many epithets (many flatteries) they bestow on the ‘rabble’ gives them their freshness. Everything is new from the mouth of the Politician. There is a certain ignominy when the demagogue prostrates himself for the crowd, now vulgarly elevated….and then…suddenly, he is back on top. For a good modern example, The Last King of Scotland would suffice.

There is more to it. The apathetic, dispersed mass is captivated, hence captive, but how does the politician reinforce his ‘authoritah’? Scintillating examples from history: Asoka, seizing the reins of Magadha, bids the treasury to stamp coins with his profile. R.C Majumdar, historian, records this many centuries later. So ‘well stamped’ is Asoka’s power, that its glow does not abate for centuries. There are bulkier symbols that Asoka scattered, like Stupas and the uniqe Asoka pillars, but money is almost like a rash, his authority isnt reinforced, it breeds. It is an idea still utilised, if one sees into one’s wallet.

There are subtler examples in modern literature. ‘Tlon, Uqbar, and Orbis Tertius’ , a short story by Borges, condenses the rise to power of a group of geniuses, who envision a whole new world called Uqbar, and slowly make it intrude onto the real world. In another story by Kafka, ‘The Great Wall of China’ authority is maintained by not only the building of symbols, but where the act of building itself is a symbol (the great wall is never completed, it is just a ruse to keep the mass scattered and disunited)

Not that literature forgets the flip-side. Authority is comatose. Kafka’s ‘Neptune’ has the great sea god so inundated with affairs of state that he is unable to take a swim. Italo Calvino’s ‘A king listens’ reduces the monarch to a motionless puppet moved by nothing in particular, trusting only his hearing (or his overhearing, as the tale progresses). A more moribund token is found in Jorge Luis Borges’ ‘Brodie’s Report’- where a degenerate African tribe chooses its chieftain by certain stigmata on a child’s body, and promptly cuts away his limbs and puts out his eyes, so that he may concentrate on his duties, rather than the attractions of the world. Tedious connections to reality are readily available: Hitler’s insane behaviour as the World War progresses against his favour; a paranoiac Idi Amin regressing into wanton atrocity.

The ‘mob’ now churns out a new leader, or becomes the many headed leader. He challenges the sterile authority. In some fortunate examples, this is the first ruler himself, avoiding wearisome substitutions, like Asoka and other ‘enlightened’ ones. In most others, it does involve a dark interregnum bled by Civil war and violation from external aggressors. The mob behaves paradoxically at this point. In several cases there is a paradigm shift in world view: Gandhi’s non violence, Asoka’s missionary Buddhism, etc. There is a crescendo in the atrocities and the resistance.

Finally, the coin is changed, reissued. In modern times there is generally a disembodied ideal, like a thinker or a symbol (Benjamin Franklin on the dollar, the Asoka pillar in the Indian Rupee). This is an aphorism of democracy. However, democracy is hardly freedom….the totem pole still endures, there is just a many-headed monster on the top, destabilising it. A graceful Sufi epic casts its final scene in such a light- Mantiq Al Tayr (The parliament of the birds) by Farid ud-Din Attar. The poem, mainly spiritual in content and persuasion, sings of the search for The Simurgh, god of the Birds, by the race of birds. They seek enlightenment and authority through the Simurgh. As their pilgrimage continues, several birds drop out, citing various excuses, all symbolic, and (as it is a poem) sweet. Eventually, a mere thirty birds are left.

Reaching the height of Mountain Qaf, they wait while the Simurgh’s chamberlain promises a vision of the Great Simurgh. After several minutes, when no Simurgh is forthcoming, by looking at their reflection in the lake, they realise that they are the Simurgh(Simurgh also means Thirty Birds in Persian).

It is really quite absurd to try and narrate our way through any political era, there are too many details. Might it not be better to glide through them on symbols?