EXTRAVAGANT MUCH PUBLICIZED YOGA SPECTACLE  TODAY;

A PRESCRIPTION FOLLOWED WITH A PROSCRIPTION !

  The new ruling arrangement in New Delhi is already trying to interfere with our private food habits and choices. A larger theme at work can be discerned. There is a pronounced inclination to smuggle in trusted RSS apparatchiks into cultural institutions who, then, can be trusted to ensure that we watch the “right” kind of movies, read the “right” kind of books and learn and teach the “right” kind of history. All this in the name of a newly acquired insistence that the majority's sentiments ought to be respected.

Nothing out of the ordinary.  After all, the Sangh Parivar has always been contemptuous of constitutionally mandated democratic norms, secular practices and egalitarian values.  It has always positioned the (Hindu) majority and its religious preferences as superior to constraints and restraints inherent in our constitutional order. The Modi government's penchant for mass mobilisation of sentiments and sensibilities can only be understood as part of a carefully thought-out redefining of notions of democratic legitimacy. The June 21 collectivist tableau is meant to soften us up for the new narrative. 

Twentieth century European history teaches us enough about authoritarian rulers using grand spectacles of crowd mobilization to make citizens comfortable with the idea and practices of regimentation. From the days of the Nuremberg rally, so hypnotically captured by Leni Riefenstahl in that iconic documentary, “Triumph of the Will”, authoritarian rulers have found ways of using crowds to induce a willing abdication of the citizen’s right to question the regime and its whims and fancies. 

 The nation has already been wooed silently into rejoicing in an authoritarian personality cult around the Prime Minister.  Add to it this new itch to experiment with collectivist projects like the Rajpath spectacle. The deadly mix can easily calcify into something less than a democratic arrangement.