If personal is political, you have to work on yourself to understand how your personal thoughts and opinions—and the forces that shaped them – can be interpreted and translated into policy for the people. This requires a transition of taking the subjective life, with all its experiences, feelings, meetings, and conversations, and rendering it objective by applying it to people’s needs, wishes, dreams, and aspirations. This requires discipline – every second of your life, if genuinely lived in the political space, becomes an act of tapasya. You learn discipline; you begin to see the world differently; you start understanding things with a deeper lens.
You consume everything; you must become the renaissance person. You need to be able to have conversations on anything and everything. You read to refine, reshape, and sometimes unlearn your biases and opinions. You develop empathy. You detach from yourself. You become a maskless Batman: constantly embodying a character you have consciously created for yourself, knowing that if that persona stems from a place of integrity, it becomes a vehicle for meaningful change. You have a work life that you begin to perceive differently, quietly interpreting the social and cultural structures – caste, gender, religion – within which it operates. You have a personal life that remains private. All the while, both lives are inherently political.
You always keep your eyes open, removing the personal and observing the world through the social. The only difference between a sociologist and a politician is that the former observes and understands, while the latter articulates, advocates, and speaks up for or against what they see. The voice is what matters the most. Obama once said that if all professions did their job properly, there would be no need for anyone to switch their work; the reason the switch happens is because either people imagine greener pastures on the other side (with many, unfortunately, joining politics for the green Gandhi notes) or because they feel under-empowered in their current profession. There is nothing more revolutionary than a worker. The highest form of social service is teaching. It is time to de-glorify the bureaucrats. It is time for politicians to demystify the profession and inhabit their space – which, if done correctly, is already the most magical profession in the world.
When I was young, the year that shaped my romanticisation of politics was 2002. I was 7 years old. I was captivated by watching people cheer for wrestlers in the make-believe world of professional wrestling. The Rock (later Dwayne Johnson) was my favourite. My father was in the midst of campaigning for the Goa state assembly elections in the summer of 2002. I attended an election rally. When my father was called to the stage and the cheers and chants erupted for him, I instinctively equated the two professions, without yet grasping their obvious differences: it was love at first sight.
You have a calling; the calling is the raison d’être for why you do something; my first encounter was that moment of my father’s, and my calling crystallised with the state assembly defeat in Haryana in 2005. Now, in the growing phase, something like that – where the loss cannot be publicly expressed – makes one more private, introspective, and secretive. It was a shared experience, and all the factors that shaped it brought the family closer. There is no help for the defeated; only sympathy. Our LOP’s motive, though I have never had the opportunity to ask him, must stem from 1989 – the year the INC lost the elections. He was 19. The calling would have been to become the quiet orchestrator who helped rebuild the party toward its glorious victory in 1993. Boss’ father was killed in a terrorist attack in Tamil Nadu in 1991. All was lost. The rebuilding that follows such devastation extracts a toll only the affected can understand. When I see him explain to a make believe parliament for youth under 18, using a paper and pen to demonstrate how honesty can lead to a time period where you may be stagnant but the curve shoots up suddenly if you stick to the truth fills me with hope for a better tomorrow. Politics is the most brutal yet beautiful profession in the world.
Politics is gossip that pays – in more ways than one. It has space for everyone. It affects everyone. It is a never-ending chess game where the death of self is the only checkmate; which some politicians defy too; framing appointments & policy from the grave! It is the best vehicle for change. It can bring transformation at a macro level that reshapes entire societies. In a dictator’s hands, it can destroy everything. In the hands of a person with empathy, it can heal the world.
Define your politics. It will define you & the people around you.
Himanshu Chakravarty Sharma / मंच 