ThePrint asks:
Has Gujarat election shown that civility has disappeared from the language of politics?
There are two things of relevance in the course of this discussion– one is tremendous hostility, and the other is tremendous insecurity. To a certain extent, BJP entered this election as a behemoth, but ultimately it turned into a stuttering behemoth. This happened because it found its position questioned by the most unlikely opponent, Rahul Gandhi. Not only did they not expect to be questioned, they definitely didn’t think that it would be Gandhi who would rise to the occasion.
A misunderstanding of politics has always led to a breakdown of language. For Modi, the breakdown manifests best in a lack of imagination. His anathema is the outsider. Sonia and Rahul become outsiders, as non-Hindus, who are ineligible to challenge his position. Thus, insults recourse back to the same unoriginal trope leading to no productive debate.
Modi shows a certain lack of respect for nature and dignity of language. It was shocking that even after the Afrazul incident in Rajasthan, where a man was set on fire alive, no respect was accorded to him as a person. This should have created a storm with raging debates. Instead, we encountered a deafening silence. Thus, there was a death of language and the beginning of an era of silence. Between obscenity and insult and, silence as indifference, a dreariness enters into politics.
There is a glaring lacuna in the debate about relevant issues. Moreover, there is an unparalleled obscenity in the way candidates are treated now-a-days. This is not the way politics is conducted in a parliamentary system. Personality culture politics seems to always herald a decline of language. When language is used to describe issues, it is much more versatile. However, to buttonhole a person is not only redundant but also easy. One can get away with the same insult, time and again. Thus, the power of language and sense of metaphor recedes and what we have is a slapstick scenario which Modi enjoys.
Modi is intent on reducing the competition to him and Gandhi. In trying to simplify politics, he is destroying language. The variety of arguments that is needed in a democracy no longer finds space. Debate needs diversity. When it is Pavlovian, politics becomes predictable.