J Sri Raman

Some in the ‘family’ may be frustrated at the relatively slow advance made towards the ‘roots’. Some, in fact, would seem to be upset at the rift within the BJP-led political camp, especially in Maharashtra, where the party has taken a public stance against staunch ally Shiv Sena’s offensive against north Indian migrants in the city

“We are back, back to the
roots. Heavy metal rules! We are back, back to the roots. You have got the rhythm, we have got the beat. We turn the music loud, burn in the heat. Look to the left, look to the right. Look into my eye, I am ready to fight.” Back in the 80s and 90s, these lines from a song of the Grave-Digger band rocked.

‘Back, back to the roots’ is also the refrain heard repeatedly across India’s political spectrum, even if to no delirious audience response, after a decade of the 21st century.

Familiar it may be, but the phrase has meant too many things to too many people to fade away from political use. It means nostalgia, particularly to the ‘nationalists’ of the kind who deem it necessary to invent an exploitable past if it did not really exist. It spells pristine purity to those who pretend their politics and ideology have lost it and promise to restore it.

It is the slogan of those seeking political survival. It is the mantra of those without anything meaningful to offer. Return to ‘the roots’ is often the last resort of those who have lost the power game and political relevance. It may sound like a wistful look back but, as in that song, it is actually a war cry.

It is certainly a call to arms in the case of the Samajwadi Party (SP) versus Amar Singh. The latter has figured earlier in these columns, ‘The importance of being Amar Singh’ (Daily Times, July 4, 2008). The colourful politician, tailor-made for tabloids and television anchors, was the most prominent general secretary of a major party of the country’s most populous state, Uttar Pradesh, for years.

He was known, however, less for his proximity to party chief (and former defence minister) Mulayam Singh than for closeness to a constellation of Bollywood stars (including Jaya Prada, whom famed non-Bollywood filmmaker Satyajit Ray once hailed as the most beautiful Indian actress, besides Jaya Bachchan and her better-known half Amitabh). Perhaps the main fund-raiser for his party, Amar was also known as a buddy of Anil Ambani, a big-business symbol of India’s economic ‘boom’.

The last time we discussed him here was at the height of his political career, when Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s government struck a deal with him in order to save the US-India nuclear deal in parliament. Now he has reached his nadir. He was expelled from the SP on February 3, with no other party waiting for him with a ‘welcome’ sign.

This may have caused some mirth, but the last laugh was not on him. It was on the SP, which declared that it was now free to return to its ‘samajwadi’ or ‘socialist roots’. Rarely indeed has any party resolved to wind its way back to more withered roots. The ‘socialist’ or the Indian version of ‘social-democratic’ politics, with its often misleading label, has been languishing in the political limbo since times before Amar’s political advent.

The expelled leader ended the rabid ‘socialist’ hostility to the Nehru family, which was once part of the party’s special ‘roots’, its sacred heritage. The rest of its avowedly anti-elitist package — including implacable opposition to the English language, the computer and the tractor — excites ridicule today even within its target constituency.

The born-again ‘socialists’ were not the first to set off on the ‘back-to-the-roots’ race. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had a head start on them, when a new president was imposed on it. No fuss was really made about the fact that Nitin Gadkari was the nominee of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the patriarch of the ‘parivar’ (the far-right ‘family’). The party, still recovering from its reverses in the parliamentary elections of last year, it was all but officially announced, was now returning to its ‘roots’.

Some in the ‘family’ may be frustrated at the relatively slow advance made towards the ‘roots’. Some, in fact, would seem to be upset at the rift within the BJP-led political camp, especially in Maharashtra, where the party has taken a public stance against staunch ally Shiv Sena’s offensive against north Indian migrants in the city (including popular film star Shahrukh Khan in the wake of his comment on the Indian Premier League (IPL) cricket and Pakistani players).

The BJP, however, has to brace itself for the forthcoming State Assembly elections in Bihar, migrants from were have faced the brunt of Sena violence in Mumbai. The party has taken pains to stress that its holy, ‘Hindutva’-based alliance with the Sena endures and will be extended. Parivar-watchers can indeed predict a major campaign of religious communalism soon to reunite its ranks ad repair alliances in Maharashtra and elsewhere.

The ‘socialists’ can abandon the alleged search for their ‘roots’ again, if other Amar Singhs come along with electoral and other enticements. For the BJP and the parivar, however, ‘back-to-the-roots’ has always been and will continue to be the way forward to a future of fascist power.

The writer is a journalist based in Chennai, India. A peace activist, he is also the author of a sheaf of poems titled At Gunpoint