Ballot gone Bust: Contemplating the ‘Wasted’ Vote

When on the 23^rd of March I informed friends and family that I had voted for the Communist Party of India as my choice of representative in the Lok Sabha, a number took it on themselves to inform me that I had ‘wasted my’ vote. The Communists stood no chance at winning either in Goa, or forming the Government at the Centre. It is to this notion of ‘waste’ that I would like to attend to today. Is voting in an election only about voting for a candidate who is likely to win, or is it about making other statements as well?

At the time when Al Gore stood as the Presidential Candidate for the Democrats against George W. Bush Jr. a number of my friends expressed some amount of anguish that the Green Party insisted on fielding a candidate of their own. Al Gore they believed was as green a President as they would ever get, and fielding a Green Party candidate merely divided the loyalties of those who would otherwise vote for Al Gore. To this general position, another held the opinion that regardless of how green Gore was, it was necessary for the Greens to field a candidate merely to make a statement about the viability and seriousness of the Green Party as an electoral option. I believe I am able to appreciate that position only today, subsequent to this general election in India.

Increasingly I have come to believe that in a democracy one does not vote only to win, and place one’s candidate of choice in Government. One votes also to express one’s choice. This choice may not be a popular one, but it nevertheless needs to be expressed for reasons that I will discuss below. This association of elections with getting one’s party into power we can perhaps trace to two tendencies within our democracy. The first is one where getting one’s work done has come to mean everything. By any means, fair or foul, one must obtain one’s objective. The second is the tendency to assume that coalition politics of the kind we have seen in the last few Parliaments is a problem, and we should move toward a two party system. It is in the expression of support for this shift towards dual party politics, that the full significance of ‘choice’ becomes evident.

The two-party system is, at least in today’s world, no choice at all! Is there a significant difference between the Republican and Democrat Party? Some would argue not really. Is there a difference between the Congress and the BJP? I believe that the choice between the two is a false one, both playing pretty much the same game. These parties (and especially the BJP) welcome a two party system, because coalition politics requires you to balance the interests of the diverse segments of the polity. A two-party system where a single party has a significant majority, allows greater leeway in simply pushing agendas through. A two-party system in fact allows for majoritarianism (the rule of the majority). In India t

oday, by and large democracy has been understood to be majoritarianism. However, democracy is really about securing the rights and interests of the minority groups, a political truth that most of us would rather ignore. The creation of multiple electoral choices is therefore a crucial aspect of rescuing the Indian democracy from the morass into which it seems to be sliding.

Over the past few years, and especially in Goa, we have been encouraged to think that electing representatives to create the government is our sole democratic responsibility. Subsequent to the election, these representatives take over and we need to exercise ourselves only in another five years. This situation has led to the almost oligarchic tyranny that prevails both in Goa and in the rest of India. Voting in this scenario must also be about the active creation of political choices, voting for parties despite their dim chances, because this vote may encourage them to refashion themselves. A ‘wasted’ vote this year, could result in a ‘serious’ option opening up at the next election.

None of these possibilities make sense however, in an environment where ideologies, principles and dreams (all variations of Hope) have perished under the glare of cynicism. The crisis we face today, the same crisis that allows us to consider a vote ‘wasted’, is fundamentally a spiritual crisis. The early secular republics in separating the Church from the State, also set up a spiritual realm for the citizens of the God-absent polity. The Nation was deity in the Republic, and the dreams of liberty, fraternity, equality were its religious creed. Like the religious vision it replaced, Republicanism also believed in a paradise. The only distinction was that this Paradise would be achieved not through the coming of the Deity on earth, but through the political labours of (hu)man. Voting in the elections was therefore just one of the citizen’s many actions towards committing to the realization of Paradise on earth. Citizenship called for (and still does) a total commitment of human endeavour toward the realization of this perfect polity. The election, if only one, was nevertheless an important mystical ritual in the life of the secular Republic. In the glare of the cynical sun of contemporary politics, this vision has all but burned away.

A return to the mystical in politics therefore would not be out of place and the ‘wasted’ vote has a fine tradition to fall back on. One thread in this tradition is that of Nishkama Karma, where the action is performed without the expectation of the fruit of the action. One performs the action merely because it is the right thing to do, not because of the fruit of the action. Another elaborate argument is present by Pope Benedict XVI in his Encyclical titled Spe Salvi. Spe Salvi presents an argument in favour of Hope, arguing against the cynicism of our times, against the selfish individualism that marks our times and our pursuit of justice. A reading of Spe Salvi, in the context of political action would present to us a scenario where voting for a party most likely to come to power is not an option at all. On the contrary he argues that Hope would ‘give us the courage to place ourselves on the side of good even in hopeless situations, aware that, as far as the external course of history is concerned, the power of sin will continue to be a terrible presence’. The ‘wasted’ vote then, has also a mystical dimension, where it is a symbol of our commitment to Hope, a refusal to participate in the ‘sin’ of ‘pragmatic’ politics. Where the BJP is marked by ‘sin’, the option for us is not the Congress, marked as it is by similar and other ‘sins’. We are charged with creating the option for choice, even if this means our preferred candidate does not win, and the exercise of this vote will place us in a seemingly hopeless situation. When the ballot is exercised with Hope, and our participation in democracy extends beyond participation in a quinquennial ritual, the ‘wasted’ ballot in fact lays the foundation for the emergence of a stronger democracy in the future.

(Published in the Gomantak Times 6th May 2009)

Palestinians, Jews and Zionists

Christopher Fonseca, the trade unionist, deserves a public commendation for having made history of sorts in our State. Exactly a week ago, he organized a public meeting in solidarity with the Palestinian people at the Institute Menezes Braganza. This public meeting was perhaps the first ever public meeting in Goa on the Palestinian issue and for this alone he deserves credit. However, Comrade Fonseca didn’t just organize a meeting; he organized a meeting which had the hall overflowing with people. For the Palestinian issue to merit such attention in Goa was truly a commendable feat. For all of this, thank you Comrade!

Despite being a by-and-large politically vibrant place, why is it that till date Goa has failed to respond to the Palestinian issue? The answer could perhaps lie in the Indian framework within which we are imbricated. Ever noticed how the Palestinian issue does not figure as much as it does (and should) in the Indian electronic media? At times you would imagine that the Palestinian crisis doesn’t even exist! This happens for good reason. A friend in a prominent national network tells me that they traveled to Israel only when transported there by the Israeli State (guess whose side of the story they presented?) Another friend, in a rival national network cynically pointed out, that ignoring the Palestinian crisis and representing an Israeli point of view made eminent sense. “This way we can do the same thing to Pakistan no?” She’d hit the nail on the head. In many ways India would like to see herself as a subcontinental Israel, since it allows us similar options for belligerence against our neighbours.

This is not the time however for a comparison between Hindutva and Zionism; that should be left for another column. We ought to evaluate now, a statement made at this historic meeting.

Speaking at the meeting Sheik Hassan displayed to the world, the ignorance of the Goan people regarding the politics of the Middle East. Sheik Hassan sought to take the origins of the conflict way back into Biblical times. It was the Jews, he said, who killed the Prophet Jesus Christ. Now the same people are killing the Palestinians. What else can you expect from the Jews? There ought to have been gasps of horror, followed by shocked silence in the hall. Instead the audience sat on, as placid as a calm lake. Clearly both speaker and audience were mired in the same pool of ignorance. What Sheik Hassan spoke at the meeting was clear and distinct anti-Semitism, Jew-hatred. And before we proceed to defend the rights of the Palestinians against the barbaric depredations of the Israeli state, it is imperative that we clear our confused vision, to see what the real issue is, and cleanse ourselves of this pointless Jew hating.

To begin with, the Jews did not kill Christ. If we want to blame a Jewish cast, then we need to possibly blame the Sanhedrin, the Jewish Council that included the High Priest before who Christ was first presented. Even within the Sanhedrin though, there was division as to the question of Christ’s ‘guilt’, so we don’t have a clear-cut culpability of the Sanhedrin. You have only to read the Gospels (though the Gospels themselves are not historical documents telling us an objective political truth) to know that the power of life and death rested not in the hands of the Jewish leadership, but in the hands of the representative of Rome, at that time Pontius Pilate. It was Pontius Pilate who sentenced Christ to death, and dramatically evaded responsibility by washing his hands off the blood of Christ. It is the ensuing act by members of the Sanhedrin that is used to pin the guilt of Christ’s death onto the Jews, the scene where the crowd cries out, ‘His blood be on our heads and on the heads of our children’. In time, this scene was blown out of proportion, especially in the course of the European Middle Ages when it was used to justify acts of routine violence against the Jews. It was not a crazed mob that screamed out these words, but a small coterie that went before Pilate. Surely one does not blame an entire community (even then spread out across the world) for the words of a small and insecure elite?

Sheik Hassan picked on the worst kind of rhetoric he could find to rouse the audience to anger, obfuscated the issue, and for this should be roundly condemned. The problem of Palestine did not begin with the Jews of biblical times, it began much closer in time to us. Secondly, it is not the Jews who are to blame, but the Zionists. As I will seek to elaborate at another point of time, Zionists are primarily Jews, but they are in the thrall of a logic that can extend across religions, including even, Hindus, Muslims and Christians.

Zionism is an ideology that seeks to establish a separate state for the Jewish people, and in the course of its evolution, settled on Palestine as the appropriate location. Zionism, emerged in the context of the racist nationalisms that marked the close the Austro-Hapsburg Empire, when various groups banded themselves into racist categories and demanded their own nation-states. Zionism should be seen in this context, as another kind of racist nationalism, quite divorced from the religious tenets of Judaism. In fact, some of the most bitter opponents of the Israeli state and Zionism are segments of the Orthodox Jewish population. It was God they hold, that dispersed the Jewish peoples from Israel, and it is only the Messiah who will establish the Kingdom of Israel again. To attempt to establish an Israeli State therefore, is to go against the wishes of God. These same groups, point to a shared history, and of peaceful coexistence between Christians, Muslims and Jews prior to the arrival of the Zionists in Palestine. This is a fact; it was only after the arrival of aggressive Zionists, who sough to displace the local Arabs (both Christians and Muslims) that Palestine collapsed into the mess that it has now become. Interestingly, like the key thinkers of Hindutva, most of the founders of Zionism, were not practicing or believing Jews.

However, it is not just religious Jews who oppose the State of Israel, there are other ‘secular’ Jewish voices as well, that oppose the racists and inhuman actions of the Zionist State of Israel. These Jewish voices exist both within the State of Israel, for example the Shministim, the Israeli high school graduates (as young as 18 years of age) who been subjected to repeated jail terms for their principled refusal to serve in the Israeli defence force because of the ongoing Israeli occupation and oppression of the Palestinian people, the organization ‘Not In Our Name’ and a number of others.

Sheik Hassan’s statements are regrettable, and he would do well to apologize and retract this statement. Unfortunately, his position is one that is shared by a number of Muslims, a position that they would do well to reconsider, since it works to only place them within this absolutely uncritical category of global Muslim. This position leads us nowhere, only to problematic rhetorical positions that eventually paint us into a corner.

Israel is not a Jewish project, it is a Zionist project, all Jews are not Zionist, and not all Zionists Jewish.

(Published in the Gomantak Times 4 Feb 2009)