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By:

Correspondent

23 August 2024 at 4:29:04 pm

Manufactured Martyrs

The attempt by the Cockroach Janata Party (CJP) to turn activist Sonam Wangchuk into the next Anna Hazare has exposed how manufactured symbolism cannot compensate for the absence of genuine public outrage. What began as a grievance over the NEET paper leak, one of India’s gravest examination scandals in recent times, has drifted into an exercise in political pageantry, where the cause has been eclipsed by its chosen mascots. Wangchuk’s indefinite hunger strike was plainly meant to recreate a...

Manufactured Martyrs

The attempt by the Cockroach Janata Party (CJP) to turn activist Sonam Wangchuk into the next Anna Hazare has exposed how manufactured symbolism cannot compensate for the absence of genuine public outrage. What began as a grievance over the NEET paper leak, one of India’s gravest examination scandals in recent times, has drifted into an exercise in political pageantry, where the cause has been eclipsed by its chosen mascots. Wangchuk’s indefinite hunger strike was plainly meant to recreate a familiar script where an allegedly unassuming public figure embraces personal sacrifice and a reluctant government buckles under mounting moral pressure. But history does not repeat itself on command. Anna Hazare’s fast in 2011 succeeded not because fasting possesses mystical political powers, but because it rode a tidal wave of public anger against corruption. Millions identified with the cause. That equation is conspicuously absent today. The platform that ought to have belonged to students who suffered from the NEET paper leak, or to parents whose children bore its consequences, instead became crowded with the usual constellation of professional activists, ideological campaigners and political fellow travellers. The faces dominating the stage were not those most directly affected by the scandal. A movement demanding educational accountability gradually came to look like another gathering of Delhi’s permanently aggrieved activist class. Even Wangchuk appeared to sense the contradiction. During the protest he reportedly lamented that while he was observing an indefinite fast, many around him were happily eating meals, urging at least a token one-day fast in solidarity. Successful protest movements depend upon authenticity. Once the public begins suspecting that an individual is being deployed less as a leader than as a moral accessory for someone else’s ideological project, sympathy quickly evaporates. Nor does Wangchuk arrive without controversy. Questions have been raised over the cancellation of the FCRA licence of SECMOL, the educational organisation associated with him, and over allegations regarding subsequent foreign funding arrangements. Critics have also challenged aspects of the carefully cultivated public mythology surrounding his achievements, from the origins of the ice-stupa concept to the popular belief that he inspired the protagonist of 3 Idiots. These matters deserve scrutiny on their own merits rather than hagiography or character assassination. The greater failure here surely belongs to the protest’s organisers. The CJP has mistaken optics for momentum and symbolism for public sentiment. Instead of allowing the victims of the NEET scandal to speak for themselves, they attempted to manufacture another national conscience by placing a familiar face at the centre of the stage. Political legitimacy cannot be outsourced to celebrity. Nor can mass movements be assembled from social-media influencers and habitual protesters. Anna Hazare became powerful because the public chose him. Attempts to manufacture his successor merely underline how rare such moments really are.

Peace Theatre

Donald Trump’s new ‘Board of Peace’ has arrived with all the thump and glitter of a Las Vegas unveiling. Big, brash and self-regarding, it is riddled with contradictions so glaring that they scarcely need pointing out. India, the world’s most populous democracy and a country with a long record in peacekeeping, has wisely abstained itself from Trump’s jamboree. Pakistan, a state whose relationship with militancy has been documented for decades, has predictably joined in, clinging on to the US’ coattails.


The board was inaugurated as an instrument to shore up Gaza’s brittle ceasefire. Trump, who will chair it himself, insists it could eventually rival the United Nations even while claiming it will work alongside that much-maligned institution. Once fully formed, Trump boasted that they can do pretty much whatever we want to do. That sentence alone explains why many US allies have politely stayed away.


The membership is eclectic to the point of incoherence. Alongside Middle Eastern powers such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey and Egypt sit Hungary, Belarus, Mongolia and Uzbekistan. Argentina is in; Canada was briefly in, then publicly expelled on social media for declining to pay the $1bn membership fee. France and Britain have declined to join while China is silent. Putin’s Russia says it is “studying” the idea while offering to pay its fee out of frozen American assets, a suggestion akin to performance art than sober diplomacy.


No other permanent member of the UN Security Council has committed to join. Nor, at the launch, were representatives of Israel or the Palestinian Authority present, despite Gaza being the board’s ostensible reason for existence.


The inclusion of Pakistan is particularly striking. Islamabad has spent years insisting it is a victim, not a patron, of terrorism.


To elevate such a state as a custodian of peace, is either an act of staggering insouciance or calculated provocation. Either way, it drains the board of credibility before it has begun.


Trump’s defenders argue that the board is pragmatic, given that it demands serious money to ensure seriousness of intent. But peace is not a country club. By charging a $1bn entry fee, Trump is already principle out of the window.


Is the board meant to be a parallel United Nations, or a substitute for it? Trump’s rhetoric has long veered between contempt for multilateral institutions and a desire to eclipse them. The UN, flawed though it is, rests on universality, procedure and consent. The Board of Peace rests on invitation, payment and presidential whim.


Peace processes are complex things depending on trust, inclusion and a shared sense of fairness. A body that sidelines key stakeholders, embraces dubious ones, and concentrates power in a single-chairman risks achieving the opposite of its stated aim. The danger is not that Trump will replace the UN. It is that, by turning peace into a spectacle, he will cheapen it and leave the world more divided than before.

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