A couple of years ago, I watched an interesting programme on National Geographic Channel. There was a lady anthropologist whose name I cannot remember who conducted an experiment on children of human beings and chimpanzees of a comparable age (with chimpanzee years equated to human years like in one human year is equal to seven dog years). The experiment consisted of putting two blacked out glass boxes one of which had a small opening. Inside the box with opening was a candy bar. What the lady did was to give a small stick to children in the age group of 8-11 years and teach the children a sequence of poking the stick in four different places before poking the hole which would make the candy available. The same sequence was taught to chimpanzees of comparable age. Ten children and ten chimpanzees went through the routine and found the candy bar. The lady anthropologist then proceeded to peel of the black paper which was covering the glass. There was only one aperture for all to see. Then she called the same set of ten children and asked them to take the candy bar. Incredibly all of them went through the four steps of poking before finally poking the aperture and taking the candy. She then called the same set of chimpanzees and even more incredibly all of them just poked the only aperture and went straight for the candy bar. They did not bother with four pokes that were simply not necessary. The anthropologist's conclusion was that this was the most important reason why human society is different from chimpanzee society. Though the chimpanzees displayed greater cleverness in reaching for the candy bar, they displayed a greater amount of individualism. The anthropologist claimed that human children by following the order that was originally set even when the black paper had been removed demonstrated an attitude of compliance with what seemed like a set rule. This for the anthropologist the reason why human society is so successful. If you are wondering what this story has to do with my post, I will only say that it has everything to do with human behaviour including follow the leader. The anthropologist who set the rules was the leader and the children followed her rules without questioning and with alacrity.
Let us now come down to the reality about which I have been blogging. Agitations. Most of the time it is made out that agitations emerge from within people and that it is they who make movements happen. I disagree. People will complain about their condition and become unhappy, but rarely do they spontaneously agitate. Agitations are organized by individuals who rally others around them. There is a reason for this too. Eric Fromm argues that people are afraid of freedom because it brings a certain responsibility with it. The fear of failure and unwillingness to own up to that failure is what keeps people from experiencing freedom. Wilhelm Reich argues similarly when he talks about why fascism was so successful. He gives the example of a Europe caught in the throes of the Great Economic Depression where hunger reigned supreme and yet the poor never thought about breaking glasses of bakeries and other eateries that were displaying food and grabbing that food. The fear of punishment and retribution that comes out of owning up to actions kept people away from food. For Reich this is not only the reason for the success of fascism but also the failure of Marxism. Both Reich and Fromm argue that the idea of class consciousness where every single individual was enlightened about his own place in society and that leading to a revolution was simply erroneous according to the two writers, because it does not take into account the fear factor, even that of freedom. They say that this is also the reason why great dictators such as Hitler and Mussolini succeeded. They point out that most of the Russian peasantry was happy to participate in the Bolshevik Revolution because of the faith that they had in Lenin as somebody who would work for their good. In short all populations look for leaders to take care of their problems. Leaders emerge from valid situations but can go on to become whatever they want, as was demonstrated in history by Napoleon, Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin, not to talk of the several dictators who flourished in Pakistan, Bangladesh and almost every African nation. The wisdom of the ages has said that in a war, finishing off the leader was more important than killing a huge number of soldiers.
This concept of leaders setting agendas for people is also quite common in India. Mahatma Gandhi could hold huge sections of people to ransom by fasting. Chauri-Chaura is an illuminating example. He could suspend the entire freedom movement when it was at its peak. That is because people without a leader are like a body without a head. All agitations therefore have a leadership that sets the agendas and goals. They maybe peaceful or they maybe violent. If one looks at what is happening in Andhra Pradesh today, what we see is not people vs people as it is made out to be, but leaders vs leaders. During the Indian Freedom Struggle many such as Rabindranath Tagore, Sardar Vallabhai Patel and even Nehru agreed to a number of things that were suggested by Gandhi even though they did not always see eye to eye with him. That was because the enemy was an obvious outsider and everybody stood to benefit from driving out the common enemy. In the situation that we see in Andhra Pradesh, this struggle for a separate Telangana is happening when everybody's rights are intact but there is a displeasure in the way in which the state is being governed, leading to the advantage of some and the disadvantage of the others. In all this, it is the leadership that decides on what will be the course of action and what will be the settlement of the problem.
Let us go back a few years into the history of the state. Even after the failure of the first separate Telangana agitation and when the state looked steady, there were people who pasted stickers that said Jai Telangana and My Telangana on their vehicles. There were some newspapers in Telugu as well that tried to highlight the problems of the region. So it is not wrong to say there was a Telangana sentiment. But that sentiment did not cry out loud for an immediate splitting of the state. N. Chandra Babu Naidu becomes the Chief Minister and begins a new chapter of manipulations in politics of the state. He denies K. Chandrashekhar Rao a ministerial berth (for reasons unknown to me) and the latter raises cudgels and revives the dormant Telangana sentiment. Initially it is all about electoral politics and stays that way till the December of 2009. Outside appearance is that K. Chandrashekar Rao is keen on keeping the Telangana Rashtra Samithi as a party that is also like a trade union. Use your strength to bargain things for betterment. Over the years his approach loses credibility because of people perceiving that the bargaining that he was doing was benefiting only a few, to the detriment of others. This culminates in his fast, which he was quite relieved to break in a couple of days, but the pressure came piling on from students groups who said he was a fake, and this put pressure on him to resume his fast. This was happening since casteism was coming to the forefront with different Telanganas being demanded by caste groups. For reasons unknown to me the Union Govt/Chidambaram panic and make the now famous statement on 9-12-2009. Then came the backlash from the other side and the appointment of the Sri Krishna Committee on the 5-1-2010.
A year later today there is a rejection of the report of the Sri Krishna Committee by almost everyone. The statistics pointed out in the report are not being disputed, they are being dismissed as fake. The agitations are on again. The Telangana leader have all driven themselves into a corner from which they cannot back out and therefore will have no option but to insist on the bifurcation of the state. In the one year that the Sri Krishna Committee was doing its work, the politicians were trying to be more loyal to the cause than the other. What began as TRS, found its way into the Telugu Desam and the Congress because the Telangana leaders were afraid that their bases will be eroded. The death of YSR and a disinterested Rosaiah ensured that the Congress legislators from the region could start their posturing. The Telugu Desam President found himself in a corner with nothing to say since anything that he said could be used against him by both sides. So the Telangana group in the party tries to drown out the TRS and the Congress. The Praja Rajyam started off grandly by throwing their support behind a social justice Telangana but ended up saying that they wanted a united state. The party has no leadership and therefore no followers as well. So now we are back to where we were in Jan, 2010, only this time the leaders are all now in the holes into which they backed themselves in the last one year. There is no leadership worth talking about even in the central government or in the UPA. The BJP is not believed by anyone. Hence now the saying that anything is possible gains a new credibility. The tragedy is that before that anything happens, lives will be lost, careers will be destroyed, the entire region of Hyderabad, Telangana, Coastal Andhra and Rayalseema will go back by a few decades. Instead of building on what we have today, we will first have rebuild that which we have destroyed and pay for the mistakes of our political leaders who are not even short sighted, they seem to be sightless without even a perception of light. I will quote Roger Waters here, from the song Two Suns in the Sunset from the Pink Floyd album, The Final Cut.
"Finally I understand the feeling of the few,
Ashes and diamonds, foe and friend,
We were all equal in the end". - Roger Waters
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