Traps Of Virtue-Signalling

Appropriations and even usurpations of legacy come naturally to politicians, especially when they struggle to stitch a compelling narrative of their own. Tripping deemed legatees into surrendering and ‘fixed-depositing’ their familial legacy is a shortcut to electoral relevance.

Unlike most mature, secure, and forward-looking democracies, the Indian experiment of democracy still suffers from the culture of deifying past leaders to an extent that it leads to competitive appropriations. However, like all brand attributes, these appropriations are often timeserving and easily discardable once the relevance has been sucked dry.

The sufferer is not just the hard-earned legacy of the concerned leader, but also those, who knowingly or unknowingly allowed themselves to be used in the appropriation process, and then left high and dry.

One of the most easily ‘trapped’ tactics of legacy appropriation or even usurpation is to have the progeny and family members of the historical leader endorse a partisan persuasion, as if to suggest that had the said leader been alive, they would have naturally been a part of the ideology sought to be espoused by the usurping political party.

It is a slippery slope of assumption as the decision to link the legacy of a leader (who themselves aren’t around to endorse or reject the political party) is left to the whims of folks who by themselves have nothing to justify the familial halo, other than shared bloodline. It is dynastic politics, by other means.

And the impulse to lend the legacy could be owing to the personal ambition of the family members or some other topical exigency. Ideological fitment or factual elements of history often take a convenient backseat. However, the ‘cost’ of surrendering and putting up the priceless legacy can be rather painful, ultimately.

In recent times, one of the most contested legacy has been that of Dr B. R. Ambedkar. Unlike many other leading figures of the Independence movement, Ambedkar’s legacy is seemingly ‘unattached’ from a partisan lens and open to appropriation by the most persuasive claimant.

Even though Ambedkar was a Law Minister in Nehru’s formative cabinet, he was not part of the Congress Party and had announced the formation of Republican Party of India, though he died shortly thereafter. Today, parties with this nomenclature have split multiple times into many factions and electorally insignificant groupings.

Ambedkar’s grandson, Prakash Ambedkar, is the President of Bharipa Bahujan Mahasangh, whereas yet another grandson, Anandraj Ambedkar is the head of Republican Sena. However, the most electorally successful inheritor of Ambedkarite movement has been the Kanshi Ram-led (later by Mayawati), Bahujan Samaj Party.

From a stage when it gave a Chief Minister for four terms in the most populated state of Uttar Pradesh to becoming the third-largest national party in terms of vote percentage, it now suffers the ignominy of just 1 MLA in the Uttar Pradesh Assembly out of 403 seats in the fray (down from 206 in 2007).

Today, Chandrashekar Azad ‘Ravan’ of the Bhim Army has stolen a march on Ambedkarite credentials and is emerging as an alternative flag bearer in the heartland.

The race for Ambedkar’s legacy has seen the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) positing Dr B. R. Ambedkar (as also Bhagat Singh) as its principal inspiration and even the BJP has left no stone unturned to own a credible piece of Ambedkar’s imagery.

This quest led the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJ) to declare certain sites as virtual pilgrimages i.e., Janmabhoomi (birthplace) in Mhow, Shiksha Bhoomi (London where he studied), Deeksha Bhoomi (in Nagpur where he embraced Buddhism), Mahaparinirvan Bhoomi (house in Delhi where he breathed his last) and Chaitya Bhoomi (where he was cremated in Mumbai).

All this while it selectively ignored Ambedkar’s critique of topics and underpinnings that are fundamentally foundational to BJP. There are good reasons to attempt usurping the legacy of Ambedkar with nearly 17% of the national population as Dalits and 84 Lok Sabha seats, reserved.

Though history is instructive, virtually no party (regional or national) ever truly embodied the lofty, revolutionary, and uncompromising ideals of the genius that was, BR Ambedkar. Many who were courted in the name of Ambedkar, are now fighting for their own relevance.

Another powerful symbol of revisionism in modern times has been the image of legendary Maratha ruler, Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj. Already ensconced as a sacred memory (e.g., Shiv Sena) the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) led by the Maratha strongman Sharad Pawar had weaned away the 17th holder of the title of Chhatrapati from the House of Bhosales, Udayanraje Bhosale, from the BJP, only to see him return to BJP, some time later.

The BJP was understandably chuffed at retaining the sensitive legacy and posturing its ‘Shivaji’ credentials in a constant tussle of appropriations while the NCP let out a terse statement that his departure was ‘good riddance’! So, it was never really a case of ideology-fitment as opposed to topical opportunities for the family owners, while the political parties with the most clout and ‘wherewithal’ to satisfy the brand-owner, appropriated the brand temporarily, as is often the case.

Yet another supremely bandied political ‘catch’ has been the legacy of Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose, once the President of Congress Party and later of All India Forward Bloc, both given to a certain ideological tilt that naturally disallows fitment with certain ideological persuasions. So, while Netaji’s nephew, Amiya Nath Bose, was a MP of the Forward Bloc, Amiya’s son, Chandra Kumar Bose, joined the BJP in 2016 with much fanfare and surprise.

It was a leap of faith in terms of contextualising Netaji’s belief-systems with those of the current dispensation, but Chandra Kumar Bose persisted by insisting that the communal image of BJP was the creation of the Opposition! Expectedly Chandra Kumar was nominated for Lok Sabha elections subsequently but lost.

Nonetheless, like the case of lifelong Congressman Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel (even both his children were Congress Party politicians), the legacy of Bose was sought to move from both the Congress Party, and even from the party that Netaji himself launched i.e., Forward Bloc!

It could be credibly argued that both Netaji and Patel did not get as much spotlight as they deserved and the same was deftly picked up by politicians from diametrically opposite ends of the ideological anchorage and brilliantly appropriated. In the case of Netaji, the ‘family’ had sanctified the drift.

Now, as is the dominant urge of all parties to build their own folklore and narrative that does not care for facts beyond a point, the penny dropped. A movie lionising the ideological hero of the current dispensation titled, ‘Swatantra Veer Savarkar’, posited that Savarkar was the “inspiration behind revolutionaries like Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose”!

Chandra Kumar Bose was aghast at the suggested manipulation of the factual history by calling out the ‘distorting facts’. Netaji’s daughter, Anita Bose Pfaff, weighed in that the only common ground between the two was their religion but that like Mahatma Gandhi, Netaji stood against religious polarisation or divisiveness.

Chandra is now left fuming that both Netaji and Bhagat Singh stood for secular and united India and had in fact opposed Savarkar’s ideas and association with Hindu Mahasabha. Even the grandnephew of Khudiram Bose, Subrata Roy, clarified that there was no historical evidence suggesting that Khudiram found inspiration in Savarkar.

But it is a realisation that has come in a wee bit too late, and the price of bequeathing a priceless legacy at the altar of topical opportunities can be emotionally fatal, is something the family must be mulling over.

Subsequent calls of foul-play by the Bose family will get drowned in the ‘nationalistic’ fervour of the successfully appropriated, usurped and then twisted history to suit a partisan narrative.

All governments and political parties since independence have done that, and the onus is on the legacy flag bearers to honestly introspect and consider if the legacy that they seek to surrender onto a partisan flag is truly reflective of the former leader’s sensibilities or those of their own ambitions. The latter can have truly painful consequences. For the politicians it is only a matter of virtue-signalling, posturing, and milking the legacy towards an end, usually an electoral one.

Lt General Bhopinder Singh (Retd), is the Former Lt Governor of Andaman & Nicobar Islands and Puducherry. Views expressed are the writer’s own.