Primate democracy

When we ponder over our political parties, we often wonder why they are so frequently fighting off internally and why they often behave in ways that are so clearly detrimental to their organisation? Most of us have strong likes and dislikes for politicians. Our democracy is based on a competition for power between political parties. Yet, the notion of a political party does not feature in our Constitution. Ironically enough, it is countries like China with no semblance of democracy, as we know it, which has the notion of political parties enshrined in its Constitution. When the American founding fathers met to decide on their Constitution, people like James Madison warned against factions (parties), as they would violate the pristine notion of democracy. But even during his lifetime Madison saw the emergence of parties. It would seem that people are by nature fractious and parties are the consequence of competing ambitions and combative temperaments.

A political party is an organisation that seeks to achieve goals common to its members through the acquisition and exercise of political power. The French political scientist Maurice Duverger, who taught at the University of Bordeaux, makes a distinction between “cadre parties” and “mass parties”. According to him, cadre parties were political elites that were concerned with contesting elections and restricted the influence of outsiders, who were only required to assist in election campaigns. The Bharatiya Janata Party is a typical cadre-based party where only membership of the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh can ensure meaningful leadership opportunities.

Mass parties depend on constantly-recruited new members, who are a source of party income. They act as unpaid political workers and are expected to spread party ideology or promote the supreme leaders, and provide assistance in elections. India abounds in mass-based parties such as the Congress and other personality cult-based parties. In the United States, both major parties were once cadre-based parties. But the introduction of primaries and other reforms has transformed them to very different mass parties where power is held by activists who compete over influence and decide on the nomination of candidates. The freedom to form, declare membership in, or campaign for candidates from a political party is considered the measure of a state’s adherence to liberal democracy as a political value. By this yardstick, India is very free. We have 1,761 registered political parties including six national and 49 states and the remaining 1,706 are considered unrecognised parties. Many of these unrecognised parties are actually fronts that large corporations and businessmen use to park money and take a tax break also.

Mass-based political parties, like any other large group, comprise many shades of opinion and ideas on how things must be done and why and a host of competing ambitions. Competition for power within and without is the essential driving force of political participation and activity. The irony here is that the more democratic in its inner processes a political party is, the greater will be the spectrum of opinion within it. So when you see what appears to be a party, united strongly behind — actually under — one leader, you are really looking at a party that has the principles of democracy beaten out of it, pretty much like a village dhobi beats out the dirt from clothes on a slab of stone.

That we are all equal is a notion that has validity only in the constitutional sense of the term. We are all created unequal and differently. Whether this is by intelligent design as creationists would have it or by gradual evolution as Darwinists would, is immaterial. We cannot and will not be the same. It implies we will think differently and the dynamics of ape social behaviour will always be present in us.

Edward Maslow, who is now more celebrated for evolving the hierarchy of needs to explain human behaviour and motivations, did a seminal study of primate behaviour. This may provide a basis of understanding political party behaviour in India. Maslow studied the behaviour of chimpanzees and baboons, the former being an ape and the other being, well, a primate.

In his study, Maslow observed that the host environment played a definitive role in their very different group behaviours. Chimpan-zees, which often lived in temperate conditions with abundance of food sources and water, evolved with more humane behaviours. Females often nursed offspring of other chimps and adopted orphans. They groomed each other and were sympathetic to another’s pain and loss. When a female grieved over the loss of a child, other mothers offered her their offspring to nurse. When a male was dislodged as the leader of the troop, he was allowed to settle with or near the group and retirement was made as painless as possible.

But not so with baboons. Baboons lived in harsh environments, mostly in the open that made them extremely vulnerable to all manner of predators. The constantly lurking threats also made them aggressive and competitive amongst themselves. There was no place for orphans among them. Young males were constantly jousting with each other to assert dominance. And woe descended upon a displaced leader. Displacement was always violent and the humiliation didn’t end with defeat. The displaced leader would be humiliated by sodomisation and other forms of aggression.

We see huge differences in India on how political groups treat their fallen leaders. Post the 1977 debacle, Indira Gandhi was ejected by the Congress Party’s collective leadership and persons like Devkant Barua, S.S. Ray, Ambika Soni, A.K. Antony, Brahmananda Reddy, Karan Singh and Sharad Pawar, who hitherto lauded her leadership and lorded over bits of turf allocated to them, turned on her with a ferocity so uncharacteristic of them till then. On the other hand the current treatment of the fallen patriarch of the BJP, L.K. Advani, and of the Karats by the Communist Party of India (Marxist) indicates a very different socialisation.

The Janata Parivar which fragments frequently by meiosis and mitosis and whose parts then come together by homotypic and heterotypic fusions, frequently displays baboon-like characteristics. See how the Mulayam Singh Yadav’s clan treated Amar Singh or how Nitish Kumar pursued his erstwhile comrade in arms, Lalu Prasad Yadav, through the judicial process. Even the BJP often lapses into this manner of behavior. One only has to see how Narendra Modi has treated Sanjay Joshi or how Balraj Madhok was treated by the Atal Behari Vajpayee-Advani duo. Mr Advani was given a bit of the same treatment when he was not invited to Deendayal Upadhyay’s village in Mathura on the Modi government’s first anniversary.

Yogendra Yadav and Prashant Bhushan are like two challenger lions externed from the pride by a dominant male. They roam the veldt but are never far from the pride, lest they miss an opportunity to re-enter the pride by taking over from a depleted alpha male. Other bachelor lions frequently join externed bachelor lions, but these associations are only for temporary comfort and security, for the real game is in procreation and bachelors cannot perpetuate their legacy without a pride. There you go, Mr Yadav and Mr Bhushan, bachelors to the end.

So there you are, having to take a pick from cadre-based parties, such as the BJP and CPI(M), closed to outsiders unless they subscribe to obsolete philosophies and illogical economic and political formulations. Or from parties which believe in little more than the fact that power must be enjoyed and politics is just the perpetuation of dynastic fiefdoms. We really have to choose between the devil and the deep sea.

The writer held senior positions in government and industry, and is a policy analyst studying economic and security issues. He also specialises in the Chinese economy.