Subway surfer at Jantar Mantar
Working class power is challenging the neo-liberal upper class hegemony in the protests at Jantar Mantar.
This question is increasingly inescapable. Is this the working class or just what is called the feral underclass of the city which is taking over the protests and seizing power and control at the protest site? Will the protesting pedigreed classes now quickly seek to end these protests and end up colluding with the same powers responsible for the police brutality on the 20 July?
I earlier said that the larva is slowly evolving and something is born. The night of July 20 never ended.
By the night of July 22, the separation and distillation is unmistakable and clear to anyone. Two worlds are forming, albeit undeniably connected and integral so far. The familiar protest at the old venue. The protest we are familiar with. And now the “protest as bakchodi”. This is not “protest” they say half smiling, this is “bakchodi”. Modi has taken panga with the wrong guys, they openly declare. The literati can call it “protest as mischief” but all the while seeking to intensify the fight and go on till one does not know where.
One is reminded here of the Hong Kong protestors who used to say, “be like water”. And that is exactly the case here.
The one is inside, the other (“be like water”) is outside, directly facing the police and the barricades. The one is the official protest with a pedigree and manifesto. The latter is open ended and evolving, fast and furious. Inside they sing Faiz or recite Dinkar. Outside they play tracks from video games like Subway Surfer. You are free to look for the good old IPTA songs still heard within the lefty student huddles.
Outside you will notice a bit too many gym boys as they now want to test themselves in a fight with the police. Outside they are turning fighting the police attacks into an interesting challenge, while inside they are planning to file a petition against police violence in the courts.
Outside the choicest swear and cuss words are deployed against the government, while inside the pedigreed ones continue in polite satire.
Outside it is not easy to find a slogan which is not politically incorrect. But this is politically incorrect without knowing what is the correct one is. Hence we cannot actually call it that. And this is where the categories of the literati fall short.
And yet the delivery is virtuoso, lucid and flowy. You know these guys are having fun. Food is now distributed under the banner of Modi’s terawi (13th day funeral feast). Eating the food is no longer the same and adds to the protest.
Another group of boisterous boys are having fun. They are putting up a show. Tear gas balls are turned into nothing fearful as they are now items for batting in cricket. They draw huge applause from the equally boisterous circle around them.
All this while the crowd is also pushing on the barricades, leading to a night time lathis charge and tear gas shelling.
I am told that in Mumbai protestors have repurposed the Norway football team’s rowing chant into a Resign, Resign refrain. On social media it is captioned, Viking row but make it revolutionary. Again, goes viral.
To get to the pedigreed protest site, police now have to walk through these virtuoso protesters who are egging to fight the police on Subway Surfer beats.
Bang on Parliament Street, protesters sit just looking eye to eye at the police who are in full armour, helmets and batons. In a comic relief, one protester stands up and waves the hand fan towards the police suggesting a kind gesture of sending them cool air in the heat. The crowd cheers and applauds.
Jai Bhim is the most preferred slogan mostly deployed as a battle cry. But there is no Jai Samvidhan. Bharat Mata ki Jai is another favourite. Only in low energy moments do you hear Inquilab Zindabad. There is also a real life Mahatma Gandhi roaming around, chatting with the guys.
For those of you, the literati, looking for a pedigreed catchphrase, call these folks Frantz Fanon’s lumpen proletariat if you like. You will also want to pigeonhole and contain them by saying that these are ones who voted Modi to power. I would prefer to call them simply virtuoso, being like water and so deft at giving a slip to the police, in contrast to the virtuous pedigreed ones.
The most revealing is: who is managing the inside venue and the teeming masses of people around the main dais. These are again these “anonymous” virtuosos. Pedigrees are, as usual, chattering away from the pulpit while the worker bees are doing an amazing job. The Municipal authorities have stopped collecting garbage — adding to the resentment against the government. As packaged food and bottled water continuously lands up through Zomato and Swiggy the empty and dirty plastic and cardboard boxes are piling up.
In continuity with this virtuoso milieu, now we have coaching institute teachers giving a physics self-help class on how to handle tear gas shells. This is, if you like, the connection now with the original NEET paper leak and the demand for Dharmendra Pradhan’s resignation. Turning coaching institutes into incubators of the art of virtuoso protest: there is so much going on in this normally unthinkable convergence.
The question is: can the virtuouso protestors develop a leadership of their own or will the pedigreed protesters finally end up disappointing the former? The forms and modes of virtuoso protest have so much in common with what we saw in the Noida worker riots and the ones in oil refineries of Panipat and Singrauli, particularly the very niche use of social media.
Recall: the dais at the anti-CAA protests at Shaheen Bagh combined the pedigreed and the virtuoso, with the former dominating. And yet the working class elements from the Jamia police attacks are recounting that experience at the Parliament Street. Not the civil society or activist narrative about Shaheen Bagh, but they are recalling their own bodily involvement in those encounters and making the right connections.
The virtuoso feral underclasses clearly do not prefer forms, symbols and figures borrowed from literature and the arts. They draw on and play with images and music. Their preferred mode is the meme, mimic and copy, but add your own to it. Modi’s terawi is I guess very exemplary, and so is what they the many iterations they have done with the Modi-Meloni meet.
This is the modern tale.
Benjamin used to talk about the role the fable played in the older society and artisanal life. The tale and story in the time of the artisans would be embedded in the people from the region and the objects and things around. You had to have local life and knowledge to really enjoy the tale.
Today, the meme and slam is the equivalent of the old fable. Turn the same thing around, repurpose it. You work not on your imagination and utopian thoughts but what is immediately around you and where the narration makes sense only with reference to specific humans, places, things and events.