Staying Alive

Hansen tells a graphic and compelling story about the rise of the Sena. The structural transformations in the political economy of Mumbai certainly gave the Sena an opening: the decline of traditional working class politics brought about by changes in the structure of industry; the inability of civic life as it existed in Bombay in the '60s and '70s to cater to the aspirations of the newly emerging classes and the unorganised sector; the incapacity of its cosmopolitan ethos to give full due to vernacular cultures and idioms; the general churning of society which would no longer accept the paternalism of the older Bombay; the competition over white collar jobs and the internal corrosion of public institutions. But, as Hansen insists, the Sena's success cannot be attributed simply to structural causes of social dynamics. Its success is largely political and can be attributed, in no small measure, to a repertoire of organisational and rhetorical inventions. In fact, Hansen argues, that rather than drawing upon pre-given identities like caste, or the Maratha regional identity, the Sena politically created these identities; its strategy is governed by a deliberate choice rather than a social logic.

Thus much of the study concentrates on the organisation, its rhetoric, mobilisational techniques and political strategy of the Sena. Hansen describes in vivid detail all the paradoxical elements that have made the Sena a success, an astonishing combination of bravado and opportunism, organisational hierarchy and local entrepreneurship, violent gestures and social service. But in its essentials, the secret of the Sena's and Thackeray's success lies in the fact that it successfully deploys an apocalyptic politics of self-esteem. It gives young, powerless, insecure men seeking affirmation of their own moral worth an opportunity to view themselves as strong, powerful and capable of self-assertion. Association with the Sena allows them the license to become strongmen or dadas with a worthy cause. It gives them a manifest explanation of their sense of injury, by projecting it onto an alien other, and satisfies their desire for recognition. Although Hansen does not quite put it in these words, the Sena feeds on an urban experience that can be profoundly alienating. Old moral codes do not have the power to inspire, the aspiration to upward mobility is rarely, if ever, fulfilled, and is accompanied by an existential condition where one often needs to assert one's will in order to feel alive. Hence the Sena emphasises not long-term social and institutional transformation, but violent, theatrical gestures and public performance. Hansen brilliantly analyses Thackeray's intuitive grasp of this reality and the commanding and intimate way in which his homely idioms cater to it, the ways in which he endows 'ordinary' existence with a modicum of worth.

Hansen argues that a politics that caters to our desire for recognition by endowing us with identities is subject to the paradox that no identity is self-evident or stable and hence requires constant renewal through acts of will. The essential fluidity and incompleteness as also the constructed nature of identity has become something of a cliche amongst social scientists and I doubt that it reveals much. The deeper paradox of our times seems to be that while all those who study identities seem to believe this, all those who enact identities don't. Perhaps in the unravelling of this paradox might lie the clues to our predicament. Hansen takes us farther than most have in trying to understand the allures of identity and the violence associated with it, but he does not quite answer why the fluidity and incompleteness of the identity that seems to be so self-evident to the social scientist cuts so little ice with those whom he studies. But as a study of the moral psychology of political mobilisation, this study ought to be regarded as a minor classic, on par with J.P. Stern's classic study of Hitler's rhetorical techniques. More importantly, it throws light on the ways in which the excess, violence and essential vapidity of our politics is threatening to jeopardise the gains of democracy. If politics becomes a means, not of solving practical problems, but of feeling assertive and alive, it will consume us all in its wake.