Out Of A History Book: The Elections Through My Eyes

For the past month, it is like I have been living in a world borrowed from an Orwellian universe, with no plan on it being returned. I am approximately a year away from voting age and five years away from an election where I can actually vote, unless in one of the infinite variations of the universe, I become a UP teenager at a polling booth whose officer is happily unaware or bought off as I vote 8 times to show my commitment to my party; or the nine year old son of a Panchayat leader in Bhopal, held by my father as I vote excitedly for a party I don’t know anything of but have been taught to love. Isn’t that the last line of Orwell’s 1984? He loved Big Brother. 

I loved Big Brother. 

Here, I’m afraid, it is the first line of the book–whatever said book turns out to be.

I care about whatever is happening right now because who knows where I will be in the next five years? But more importantly, who knows what will become of the election in five years?

As of now, buffalos and mangalsutras will be stolen if one supports a particular party (the other side may steal your votes to counteract this though). Our leaders are no longer humans. Perhaps tyrants in a certain language, but most certainly not in Indian newspeak–the degree of vocabulary sanctioned to us regular folks.

Instead, our leaders are distant. So distant that they are closer to God than to us. So distant that they avoid press conferences at all costs. So distant that they call their own people infiltrators and then lie to us the next day about saying anything of that sort. Gods are not so different from humans, I think. They forget things too.

Fake videos manufactured and deployed. Whatsapp university’s world class education propagated. Deepika’s out to vote but pregnant (or is she?) look creating more of a conversation than whatever is happening regarding the future of the country. Letters written to the election commissioner, ignored. An alliance that cannot stand on its own two feet. Leaders arrested, funds frozen and candidates forced to drop out. Missing names, skewed EVMs and a joke existing in the form of the model code of conduct.

Media bought, media sold. People robbed, people misled, and like modern-day Marie Antoinettes, TikTok stars tell us to eat bread. This rhyme thing is fun, but what I'm writing is not.

There is a global crisis unfurling right now. I speak from my own bubble in India. However, this year is the year of elections worldwide. Russia manipulated just another one and my neighbour Bangladesh did so too. Later in the year, we will watch chaos, a notch higher than the kind existing right now, unleash in The United States.

In Gaza we still have an ongoing war, a genocide. Let me remind you, Newspeak is not just an Indian thing; hence, we use these terms in hushed tones, if we remember their existence at all.

I can go into a deep theoretical dive into truth, post-truth, absolute truth, the violence of non-violence, terror, protest, liberalism, radicalism and new age left and right wing politics. However, that is not the point of this essay, dump, or stream of consciousness that I am writing, which many will try to dismiss as a young, uninformed and biased point of view.

Funnily enough, just as I was writing this– I received a call from the glorious election commission itself. I recorded it too, just to visit it from time to time and laugh. They urged me to go out and vote. In case you are eligible, I urge you all too.

This year, 1.8 crore new young voters are eligible to vote in this election but unfortunately only 40% of them are registered. In the first three phases of the election, we have had only 8.6% (358 out of 4162) women candidates running for the elections. Voter turnout across metropolitan cities Chennai, Bengaluru, and Hyderabad (which have undergone polling in this year's Lok Sabha elections till now) have remained on the lower side.

Through my little experience in politics and civic engagement as high school student leading my nonprofit, conducting political research, exploring dissent in art and interacting with folks from all over the world, who may or may not be interested in politics– I have further deconstructed the ‘democratic imagination’ or the idea of democracy in everyday life. As we morph into an electoral autocracy, wherein elections, the judiciary system and units such as CBI, State Bank of India and the Enforcement Directorate exist on paper, but are co-opted by the establishment, we must learn to redefine and reinvent democracy as a whole.

Where do we place ourselves in the system? Where does our democracy begin and end? Does it start with our parents heading out to vote in the morning and coming home with inked fingers and complaints about the poor management? Or does it start here: this active and reflexive production and consumption of knowledge. Does it start with this line of thought itself– this critical pedagogy, perhaps triggered by classroom discussions, student-led nonprofits or internet influencers who teach better politics than our very own textbooks.

Democracy is about access. It is about the public. Right now, there is no distinction between the public and the private. It is not just the personal is political; it’s that the personal is doomed. Apathy has always been a clear political stance, and right now it is more evident and dangerous than ever.

Democracy, at heart, is a challenge. Not in the sense that it is challenging or difficult per se, but because it challenges. It creates a space wherein people can hold and lose power, question and laugh at those in power, stand and contest for power; where there are no Gods or servants in the game but only people who we ourselves have put into power and people who we ourselves will remove from power by exercising our own power which is substantially more than theirs. That is the way it is supposed to be. Politics and policy can change lives for the better. However, to do so–it must be demystified and viewed independent of those that consider it merely as a tool of domination and supremacy.

Things are not entirely gloomy and I do not want to make it seem so. I do hope that in this redefinition and reinvention of democracy, we realize not only the power we hold but the power we collectively co-create. I hope we understand the preconditions of a revolution, and how eerily similar these days are to one, no matter how out-of-a-history-book it sounds. In fact, we are actually very much out-of-a-history-book. A bad one. A depressing one. One with a Big Brother whose supposed love or lack thereof we are desperately trying to prevail over. A book that will either be rewritten by the establishment’s victors or remembered by future generations as the moment we overcame them.  It really is up to us.

S.B

Views expressed are personal. Please don’t file an FIR. Or wait, you could. You would prove my point that way :)