All the king's publicists and all the king’s truth managers cannot quite put the aura together again.
No political figure in recent time has built his authority more deliberately on the management of solemnity. For more than a decade, Narendra Modi's public relations team curated an image of extraordinary sublimity - fakir, warrior, global guru, civilisational redeemer. The gen Z dragged him to its own favourite ground , a chaotic universe in which almost nothing remains permanently sacred which is why Gen Z's irreverence strikes at him with particular precision . Power does not merely demand obedience. It demands solemnity. The novelty of the CJP lies in its refusal to be solemn. The meme removes the ground from beneath him. How do you rebut a joke? How do you contradict a cartoon? How do you manage a viral meme?
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A casual remark by the Chief Justice of India Surya Kant, calling persons with fake degrees "cockroaches" and "parasites," escaped the courtroom and echoed through cyberspace. In an act of breath taking subversion of meaning and norms they made a welcome of the insult and a whole generation of the young swore allegiance to the Cockroach Janta Party which was a facetious parody of the ruling BJP .
After a brief existence in cyberspace the CJP materialised at Jantar Mantar and has ever since been engaging in a semiological guerrilla warfare, assigning meaning to political messages with characteristic irreverence, insouciance and abandon.
Kafka was stood on his head. Gregor Samsa wakes up as a monstrous insect and a family increasingly repelled by him forces him into hiding. The Indian cockroaches arrive at the protest accompanied by supportive, indulgent and sometimes positively fawning parents. Kafka's nightmare has been converted into carnival. The object of contempt is elevated to be the mascot of a generation.
Umberto Eco observed that the most effective way of sabotaging a system is to introduce into it something for which it possesses neither a code nor a prepared response. The police have been trained to handle protest and control crowd in a certain way . Slogans are answered by warnings, defiance by tear gas, persistence by arrest - are befuddled by protesters unique way of turning the whole thing into a caricature , a farce , a carnival . The police erect a barricade ; the protesters hijack it and use it as roller skates. Tear gas, instead of producing fear, inspires idle curiosity . Delivered best in demotic Bihari Hindi: a young man asks whether arrangements have been made for lobbing the tear gas shells. They demand that police use water cannon, ordinarily meant to punish and disperse, and spontaneously break int to rain dance. A technology of crowd control is converted into entertainment at the cost of the State.
Live telecast by channels supplemented by hundreds of mobile phones is an added advantage . While it effectively binds police to minimum violence gestures like a young man offering sweets makes the police look quaintly absurd ? The contrast between the playful protester and the ponderous coercive apparatus makes excessive force appear not merely brutal but ridiculous. Foucault’s panopticon has been reversed. If the State has the citizen under its continues gaze the citizen is also watching the State 24/7. This reverse surveillance becomes the most potent weapon in their arsenal. Gen Z was born digital while others acquired it , they wear it like a second skin . Coupled with their huge inventiveness they come up with a bewildering variety of jokes , mimics , witticisms which is particularly destructive of political sanctity . The viewing public laps it .Leviathan is humbled by sheer levity .
Mr. Modi did realise that it was he who was paying the price for every single day that Pradhan stayed . Altruism has its limits and finally Pradhan quit. But all the king's publicists and all the king’s truth managers cannot quite put the aura together again.
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