Irfan Ahmad - The Algebra of Warfare-Welfare: A Long View of Indias 2014 Election

The Algebra of Warfare-Welfare

The Algebra of Warfare-Welfare

A Long View of Indias 2014 Election

Edited by

Irfan Ahmad and Pralay Kanungo

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ISBN-13 (print edition): 978-0-19-948962-6

ISBN-10 (print edition): 0-19-948962-9

ISBN-13 (eBook): 978-0-19-909753-1

ISBN-10 (eBook): 0-19-909753-4

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To

Democracy to come,

and

all honest democrats worldwide who cannot even think of

contesting elections, let alone win them!

CONTENTS

Irfan Ahmad

Irfan Ahmad

Manisha Sethi

Pralay Kanungo

Zoya Hasan

Hilal Ahmed

Bikramaditya Kumar Choudhary

R. Thirunavukkarasu

Mohammad Reyaz

Sudhir Pattnaik

Patrick French

Irfan Ahmad

R. Thirunavukkarasu

Figures

Tables

Writing about the 2014 Indian elections, anthropologist

The elimination of the massacre in Banerjees account is not only an empirical omission. This narrative eliminationas constitutive of democracy in India (think also of other massacres, not only those in Gujarat in 2002 or Muzaffarnagar in 2013)and the simultaneous use of superlative adjectives that inundate her account, I argue, stem from captivity to a theoretical vocabulary whereby accounts of democracy secure an auto-immunity for themselves by disguising, to cite ).

Panegyric accounts such as Banerjees thus figuratively (re)produce a series of aporias about democracy predicated on a set of impossible concepts: people, border, law, life, liberty, decision, foundation, sovereignty ( terse words.

Superlatives such as Banerjees are also at work in the characterizationby journalists and academics alikeof the result of the 2014 elections. If ). Notably, Braudels longue dure was also conceptual. It meant a structural relationship with enduring, distinct features. As is well known, Braudel did not give much weight to the political in its own right. But if we take it more seriously, longue dure will be considerably justified here for we also refer to a certain structure of politics instituted in the early twentieth century and its continuation into our very present. Readers who may still find longue dure unpleasant and less convincing, to them we instead make a modest offer: a long viewa non-technical but comprehensive phrase suggested by Peter van der Veer. Thank you, Peter!

When and if analysed in the proposed long-term framework, the 2014 elections results were less than the most dramatic. They were instead an outcome of a long process set in motionsynthetically, albeit differentlyby the secular Indian National Congress and communal Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) or its ancestors, Jan Sangh and Hindu Mahasabha. Going past Friedrich Engels observation that the names of political parties are never entirely right (cited in ). One may, therefore, justifiably ask: what is socialist about the Samajwadi Party (socialist party)? Likewise, does the word socialist in the Preamble of the Indian Constitution have any signification beyond its decorative presence?

This book examines the 2014 elections beyond the aforementioned twin types of superlatives that pervade the understandings of electoral democracyacademic as well as popular. Unlike most books belonging to the genre of election studies with gigantic numbers and cold statistics ()compiled along the variables of constituency, partys name, caste, region, gender, age, rural versus urban, and so onthis volume approaches election and democracy substantively. We use substantively to mean foregrounding of subjectivity liberated from the mere act and decision of voting and instead analyse elections as sociologicalanthropological processes (which are no less political) with institutional anchoring rather than bare political events within a span of some weeks or months. Put differently, this volume makes liveshuman and non-human, lived and unlived or unliveablecentral to any understanding of elections and democracy. In our view, probably this is at once the most parsimonious and most expansive way to articulate an anthropologicalsociological approach to election and democracy.

The reigning assumption that data about Indian elections and politicswhich have witnessed a dramatic increase since the early 1990s (), mere data may disfigure that under to present themselves as if they were objective truth defying their moment and motive of conceptualization, collection, and circulation.

To recapitulate, the distinction of this volume is threefold. First, rather than focussing squarely on the empirical acts of voting and ), but against a tendency that elevates data to the status of analytical destination, thereby sacrificing pursuit of a coherent understanding. Third, and following from the second, the sensibility and thrust of the volume are largely anthropologicalsociological (broadly conceived) even as all contributors are not trained as anthropologists or sociologists. After all, the sensibility of everyone with a degree in anthropology or sociology is not necessarily and always anthropologicalsociological!

We hope that readersacademics across social sciences and humanities as well as the interested public at large from many walks of lifewill find this intervention meaningful and useful to inaugurate a truly democratic conversation about democracy and its sine qua non, elections.

References

Ahmad, Irfan. 2017. Religion as Critique: Islamic Critical Thinking from Mecca to the Marketplace. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.

Ahmad, Irfan and Zakaria Siddiqui. 2017. Democracy in Jail: Over-representation of Minorities in Indian Prisons. Economic and Political Weekly, 52(44): 98106.

Alam, Javeed. 2012. Who Wants Democracy?, 2nd edition. New Delhi: Orient Blackswan.

BBC. 2014. India Election 2014: Assam Muslims Attacked for Who They Voted For, 7 May. Available at http://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-asia-india-27305178/india-election-2014-assam-muslims-attacked-for-who-they-voted-for, last accessed on 21 December 2017.

Banerjee, Mukulika. 2016. Elections in India are a Loud, Rambunctious, Great Equalizer in Public Life.