We grew up learning that a democracy speaks through its votes. But then, as they say, no system is perfect. Criticisms are made of the American electoral college and also of the “first past the post” system. But then, voting is only one form of expression in a democracy. There is, before that, just regular speech too. Words, ideas, stories; about the past, present, and future. Sometimes, they inspire and elevate. More often, they don’t.
I was recently on a podcast where we talked about media and elections. The hosts were concerned with what they said was the lack of equal representation for the opposition in the media. We agreed that the principle of equal coverage that would inform the public honestly so they could make the best choices was a noble one. Where we had a different view was on the question of whether such an ideal condition ever existed considering the roots of news in European colonialism and global exploitation. But we did share one more conclusion — the culture of loud, screaming panelists on TV news channels was not good for the health of democracy, or even listeners.
Continuing in the spirit of conversations that somehow remain civil despite differences of opinion, and concerned about where our words are taking us as a democracy, a nation, a civilisation, and indeed maybe as a species considering one way human beings were told be to kind to animals by our elders was by reference to their inability to speak, I share some thoughts on the state of media, politics, and education.
Media: From ritual to addiction
The period when news came mainly from print and broadcasting, say, the 1950s to 1980s in India, was marked by a sense of ritualistic commonness. You got one dose in the morning, and one in the night, with a few radio bulletins in between. Radio and TV were perhaps always slightly biased in favour of the ruling party, but print was more diverse. And even if citizens had disagreements, there was little divergence in what they knew or thought they saw on the news.
But with the rise of multiple satellite channels, and now the digital online world, there is more fragmentation, and a different institutional imperative driving discourse — ratings for TV, and “engagement” for the online world.
All this affected the content, naturally. In the US, Newsweek opinion editor Batya Ungar-Sargon has written a lot about how technology, economic changes in journalism (including the gentrification of the profession), and a click-bait-driven obsession with Donald Trump and racism distorted the picture, and alienated a large section of the audience. Another critic of mainstream news, journalist-author Matt Taibi, has called news a “rhetorical addiction.”
The desperation for attention is of course also understood by advertisers who design ever more creative ways to get it. On that note, I thought the BJP’s advertising campaign started off cleverly with the “Dulha kaun hai (who is the groom)” video. It set up a context most Indians could relate to — that of a facilitated marriage meeting (although some critics would have perhaps found a dating-app like swipe-left setting more with the times).
The pacing, acting, and most of all the music was nicely harmonised. The soundtrack was comical, but with a hint of menace. And, of course, the bride has the last word, with a close-up to express her refusal.
If the “disunity” of the INDIA coalition was the message the BJP wanted to convey, it was a good case of “show, not tell.” But sadly, it has been all “tell,” and “yell,” in the campaign since. The other ads got grating, and speeches of course have been in free-fall all around.
Politics: How should a president or PM speak?
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has built a careful communication legacy over the last ten years, coming across as a down-to-earth elder to his fans, always confident enough to disarm his challengers without losing his cool. Internationally, despite a largely critical press, he has stuck to a certain line in his many large public speeches. Given this record, his recent tone seems a bit jarring, even for some of his admirers, and it remains to be seen how it will play not only at the ballot-box-office but in the long run too.
In America, no one has been able to stand up to Trump’s communication style, distasteful as it may be to many. As persuasion expert Scott Adams wrote in Win Bigly, Trump took on Barack Obama, a charismatic President himself, with the most unpresidential of tactics (“birtherism”). But it was already a time when politics and the media were saying “facts don’t matter.” Only attention did.
In both democracies, the form and content of political discourse is waning. It would seem that everyone only wants to be heard, even if it takes only a loud voice to secure that moment of attention, and possibly fear.
A big heart would play the game as a “uniter versus divider” (as the BJP’s marriage ad did). But now, it all sounds like “divider vs divider,” and a voter has to pick a camp based on simply whether they fit in the “protected” camp or not.
Education, propaganda, the future
The proposed dividing lines that have surfaced in this heated rhetoric about OBCs and Muslims need to be seen in relation to deeper and older assumptions about the Indian identity landscape — assumptions that come from the social sciences in Western and Indian academia, and are reflected in the school curricula of millions of children year after.
Western South Asia Studies experts have long maintained that Modi represents Hindutva, an upper-caste, Brahminical ideology, which endangers Dalits, Muslims, and Adivasis, among other minority and/or oppressed groups. This understanding of course had some political implications for the Congress as well, as allegedly seen in its 2024 election manifesto. In turn, we have a different argument from the BJP: that the “Dalit, Muslim, Adivasi” construct will, in fact, favour only Muslims.
In both camps, of course, the long-running colonial-era assumptions about “ancestral sins” remain alive and well in rhetoric and stated policy goals.
It is on this note that a potent, socially divisive mental time-bomb facing Indian youth in the future needs to be recognised.
Prime Minister Modi has often referred to protest culture in a dismissive manner with the label “andolanjeevis.” Yet, the NCERT social studies textbooks his government has continued to use throughout his ten years in office remain those that were designed in 2005. Of course, accusations of changing textbooks, especially in history, frequently come up, and the response from the education minister that not one word has been changed, has also been noted with disappointment, more in the Hindutva camp rather than the other side.
While history textbooks are often a battleground, what is evident is that the picture of Indian society and the prescribed paths for social change normalised in these textbooks may well be the reason why the Prime Minister’s jibe about “andolanjeevis” does not sit well with many of India’s “Gen Z” youth (born between 1995 and 2010 in the US conception, but essentially the cohort that went to school in the UPA years, and with UPA textbooks in the present NDA decade).
From cover pictures to multiple exercises and illustrations, the basic message of these books seems to be that Indian social inequality is primarily a religious problem (specifically, Hinduism), and incessant protests are what democracy is about. In fact, the textbooks seem to suggest that protests are actually more important than votes — the cover image of one book (Class 8 social science) has Parliament in the background, while a group of protesters are highlighted in the foreground, with their backs turned to it.
US universities and the crisis of being heard
Finally, one must look at what is happening in some major American universities to understand the strengths and pitfalls of the protest as the language of social change.
One might argue that youth in America are feeling unheard by normal means of expression (like voting for politicians who will stop arms exports to Israel and free Palestine for them) and hence their actions. Their position of course is based in their particular understanding of causes and effects, as well as heroes and villains, in the conflict, and there is increasingly a generational split in that understanding too—according to a poll, 48 per cent in 18-24 age group sided more with Hamas compared to 95 per cent of 65+ who sided more with Israel. Now, with police action in some campuses, the feeling of being unheard is also growing into one of being actively stamped down. Along with the continuing violence in West Asia, it is a sad state indeed.
Given our polarised realities, it is useful to extend our memories to recollect how exactly we have come to this, how our different “languages” of political expression have been changing.
In the 1970s, it was said that apathy had grown tremendously in the world; the sight of one man starving himself was enough to move the world to sympathy in the 1930s (MK Gandhi), but by the 1960s, it took the sight of a Buddhist monk setting himself on fire to capture attention. In the 1990s, anti-reservation student protesters in Delhi did the same thing, but the discourse on our understanding of our sinful ancestral past was already set, and so was the political destiny that would emerge from it.
It is also important to recognise that many young people in America possibly view the 7 October attacks on Israelis in the same way as the public viewed Gandhi’s fasts or Vietnamese monk Thich Quang Duc’s self-immolation against the persecution of Buddhists — as the desperate act of those who have been unheard for too long.
The predicament of Israelis whose families are still held captive, or whose children face smears and attacks on US campuses, is indeed a difficult one. Until the 1990s or so, they commanded the perception battle in America, with Hollywood movies and the press conventionally depicting the Palestinian cause as a “terrorist” one. Documentary films like Reel Bad Arabs (2006) and dozens of studies and conferences on Islamophobia have since transformed the next generation’s view of the conflict, including that of many Jewish-ancestry students. Muslims in general, and Palestinians in particular, are seen as the underprivileged victims of colonisers. That view will not change overnight with political, legal, or economic heft, as some billionaires are trying to do. Only a story about the long, Jewish memory of its ties to the place can even the ethical dilemmas out, but perhaps they are no longer the powerful story-tellers they used to be, or their children now tell stories with other peoples’ memories.
The warning for India too is clear. Culture, and especially the intergenerational expansion of memory, is the bedrock of society, not the technical motions of campaigning or voting or trafficking in identities and invented memories like the heroes of Inception (2010).
Monumental lapses of memory are responsible for the division bells of our time. Whatever happens in these elections, we need to fix our education, media, and, of course, our political discourse, in that order.
Vamsee Juluri @vamseejuluri is Professor of Media Studies, University of San Francisco. Views are personal.
(Edited by Prashant)