With a broad sweep glance across the cap­i­tals of two democ­ra­cies, the old­est and the biggest, se­nior jour­nal­ist S P Singh, in this WSN ex­clu­sive com­men­tary jux­ta­poses the lat­est po­lit­i­cal up­surges in the US and In­dia and the re­ac­tion of those at the helm of af­fairs. In this lit­eral com­par­i­son be­tween Moboc­racy and Democ­racy, the au­thor un­der­lines where elec­toral pol­i­tics is fail­ing on the ques­tion of ethics even as the pol­i­tics of re­sis­tance is push­ing it back to the cen­tre stage. Every pol­i­tics needs a crowd — the touch­stone of ethics is in de­cid­ing whether it mar­shals a mob or masses in Guru-roop San­gat.

IT IS NAU­SEOUS TO CON­CEDE but how can one ig­nore the in­ter­na­tional po­lit­i­cal re­al­i­ties and the per­mu­ta­tions and com­bi­na­tions of global power? The truth is that in ways more than one, the pres­i­dent of the United States of Amer­ica is the pres­i­dent of most peo­ple in most coun­tries of the globe, thanks to the skewed equa­tions of wealth, weapons, power and in­flu­ence. It’s not for noth­ing that from Hol­ly­wood to un­der­ground pam­phle­teer­ing, he is of­ten re­ferred to as the most pow­er­ful per­son in the world.

Now, this most pow­er­ful per­son on the planet has been sworn to this high of­fice, the back­drop be­ing pro­vided by thou­sands of troops in cam­ou­flage and armed to the hilt, man­ning rooftops and the Penn­syl­va­nia Av­enue. The world’s most pow­er­ful, equipped and dead­liest se­cret ser­vices agency, the FBI, is­sued warn­ings about pos­si­ble, and im­mi­nent, at­tacks on the sym­bols of democ­racy, in­clud­ing Con­gress and Sen­ate, state cap­i­tals and in­sti­tu­tions, by armed mili­tia that has now won for it­self the new and real name – Amer­i­ca’s home-grown do­mes­tic ter­ror­ists.

Joe Biden is in the White House. A woman of colour is the next in line. The San­gat is on the bor­ders of the cap­i­tal. The tide is turn­ing. The trac­tors are com­ing. The pa­rade will start soon. Things will change.

The dan­ger has been lurk­ing around for a very long time. When white su­prema­cist mobs at­tacked the Capi­tol Hill on Jan­u­ary 6, over­whelm­ing the mighty democ­racy and un­der­min­ing every saner streak of pol­i­tics, even­tu­ally leav­ing be­hind a trail of dead bod­ies — five hu­man be­ings and the façade of Amer­i­can se­cu­rity — the world knew how frag­ile could be the ma­chine called the world’s old­est democ­racy. On show was the shape of the new en­emy, its power, reach, in­tent and pos­si­bil­i­ties. No won­der, it has now been given an of­fi­cial iden­ti­fy­ing tag —the great­est do­mes­tic ter­ror­ism threat to the United States of Amer­ica.

Crowd Fund­ing of Pol­i­tics and the Ques­tion of Ethics

How come a strong, throb­bing democ­racy with all its at­ten­dant tra­di­tions buck­led so fast? What ex­actly was the charisma of a boor­ish Don­ald Trump? Why did his un­in­tel­li­gi­ble gib­ber­ish over Tweets have such a pro­found ef­fect on the vast num­ber of masses? How come a lout on the Hill proved to be a mag­net for the dis­il­lu­sioned and the dis­em­pow­ered? What made thou­sands rush to the aid of some­one who was a cry baby, who could not stom­ach a de­feat in a free and fair elec­tion, who was the mes­siah of the en­ti­tled, and who rep­re­sented es­tab­lish­ment in every which way? What went wrong where that we had to live to see in­san­ity walk­ing around with a con­fed­er­ate flag?

This gap be­tween what it means to be a mob or San­gat is the mea­sure be­tween moral­ity and our politi­cians. Pol­i­tics needs crowds. The ethics of a politi­cian de­ter­mine whether it should be a mob or San­gat.

Trump and the ideals of the United States of Amer­ica are two dif­fer­ent en­ti­ties from two dif­fer­ent plan­ets, and yet, one claimed the own­er­ship of the other, and es­caped scot-free in an Air Force One chop­per from the White House lawns to what­ever fu­ture awaits him in Florida, or Mar-a-Lago?

Now that Trumpian days are be­hind us and he has won the ig­nominy of a sec­ond im­peach­ment, there is talk about press­ing the re­set but­ton on his­tory. Pol­i­tics needs a new nar­ra­tive. It badly needs a re­turn to the is­sue of ethics. We have dis­en­gaged for far too long from this di­men­sion, hop­ing that merely good laws, free elec­tions, ad­min­is­tra­tive tweaks and lip ser­vice to in­sti­tu­tions will fix democ­racy. We needed ethics, and we learnt this from the shod­di­est teacher we could find: a New Yorker called Don­ald J Trump.

You can­not leg­is­late ethics. You can leg­is­late man­age­ment, ad­min­is­tra­tion, econ­omy, elec­tions, traf­fic, lo­cal bod­ies, town hall meet­ings. You can­not leg­is­late good­ness, nicety, de­cency. Moral­ity is not a sub­ject mat­ter of law. Ethics can­not be di­vided into ju­ridi­cal clauses. That is the role of pol­i­tics.

We had for long for­got­ten and com­pro­mised the no­tion of ethics in pol­i­tics. We be­lieved in law-mak­ing, not in the con­struc­tion of an in­ner be­ing. Any stu­dent of democ­racy now un­der­stands that hu­man be­ings have learnt only a few ba­sic things when it comes to fa­cil­i­tat­ing pub­lic life through laws. You can­not leg­is­late ethics. You can leg­is­late man­age­ment, ad­min­is­tra­tion, econ­omy, elec­tions, traf­fic, lo­cal bod­ies, town hall meet­ings. You can­not leg­is­late good­ness, nicety, de­cency. Moral­ity is not a sub­ject mat­ter of law. Ethics can­not be di­vided into ju­ridi­cal clauses. That is the role of pol­i­tics.

The Lord was com­pas­sion­ate not be­cause the law of the land re­quired it; his com­pas­sion must af­fect the laws of the land. You do not, and you can­not pass a law to re­quire some­one to be a nicer per­son.

Trump was the world’s lit­eral procla­ma­tion of the death of ethics in pol­i­tics. Plain bla­tant lies, fla­grant greed, mas­sive tax eva­sion, pro­nounced racism –Trump por­trayed what pol­i­tics could stoop to when the ques­tion of ethics goes out the win­dow. 

Trump was the world’s lit­eral procla­ma­tion of the death of ethics in pol­i­tics. Plain bla­tant lies, fla­grant greed, mas­sive tax eva­sion, pro­nounced racism –Trump por­trayed what pol­i­tics could stoop to when the ques­tion of ethics goes out the win­dow. Once we give up on the eth­i­cal strain, flaws creep in fast. A politi­cian gets greedy, an­other cuts cor­ners, yet an­other is­n’t averse to lin­ing his pock­ets, one evades taxes, one over­looks vi­o­lence, one has a racist streak, one is masochis­tic, an­other cares two hoots about the en­vi­ron­ment.

Once ethics stop mat­ter­ing, we start get­ting these strains in pack­ages. A cor­rupt fel­low who can get elected us­ing a lit­tle bit of vi­o­lence and ill-got­ten money. An agent of the oil lobby who will in­ject cash into the lob­bies to for­mu­late anti-en­vi­ron­ment poli­cies. In Trump, all of these strains came to­gether. We carry pieces of these lit­tle strains in our puny lit­tle minds be­cause, like him, we, too, thought ethics are too both­er­some to be a po­lit­i­cal is­sue.

Af­ter all, we un­der­stood that they are all thugs –Sab Chor Hain. Once such a nar­ra­tive over decades re­in­forces the idea that all are thugs, there comes a thief who smells an op­por­tu­nity and has a mega­phone: a re­al­ity TV star with a gold com­mode at home and claim­ing the tag of an out­sider.

Af­ter all, we un­der­stood that they are all thugs –Sab Chor Hain. Once such a nar­ra­tive over decades re­in­forces the idea that all are thugs, there comes a thief who smells an op­por­tu­nity and has a mega­phone: a re­al­ity TV star with a gold com­mode at home and claim­ing the tag of an out­sider. He goes to the Town­square and ap­peals to all who are sick of the es­tab­lish­ment. Elect me, fol­low me, I’m the mes­siah. The dis­gusted, the dis­ap­pointed, the un­washed, the dis­em­pow­ered join the racists and the su­prema­cists. They see their own im­age in him. Soon, we have a leader: rich, boor­ish, self­ish, un­con­cerned, un­law­ful, pow­er­ful, self-ag­gran­diz­ing lout. In some lit­tle ways, he looks like that devil in us, the beast that we were sup­posed to tame but who is out there with­out a mask.

As we cast such boor to the dust­bin of his­tory, our pol­i­tics once again has a tryst with des­tiny, an op­por­tu­nity to fo­cus on the cen­tral ques­tion we had skipped —How do we harken back to the ques­tion of ethics in pol­i­tics?

The key ques­tion is: How do we harken back to the ques­tion of ethics in pol­i­tics?

It needs work. A re­turn to a nar­ra­tive of eth­i­cal di­men­sion is pre­con­di­tioned on a shared sense of his­tory, a com­mon mem­ory. One has to de­velop a cul­ture of un­der­stand­ing to de­ci­pher the method­ol­ogy to build a shared her­itage of col­lec­tive mem­ory. Our tra­di­tional ed­u­ca­tional sys­tems will not help, as sorely needed as they are. We need a huge pro­ject of pop­u­lar ed­u­ca­tion, an im­mense amount of ground­work to turn the peo­ple into a cit­i­zenry. A cit­i­zenry that knows it has rights. The idea can­not be the con­struc­tion of a cit­i­zen with a sin­gu­lar un­der­stand­ing of na­tion-build­ing but men and women who should have an agency to un­der­stand their place and role in his­tory and na­tion-build­ing.

Once you in­ject ethics into pol­i­tics, it be­comes dif­fi­cult to turn peo­ple into mere crowds. Then they are cit­i­zens. They will in­dulge in com­mu­nity build­ing and com­mu­nity or­ga­ni­za­tion, not crowd form­ing. Cit­i­zens do not turn out as a mob. They turn out as masses. They seek out the like-minded, they sharpen their nar­ra­tive, they set up meets with those at the vari­ance of views, they in­ter­act, they ad­vance ar­gu­ments, they ram through data and sta­tis­tics, they work in build­ing a sense of com­mu­nity and a shared fu­ture. They learn when to part on an agree-to-dis­agree note, they know where they can work on the ba­sis of min­i­mum shared val­ues and con­cepts.

They can­not be turned into mobs with poi­so­nous nar­ra­tives; they may dis­agree but they re­main San­gat.

That is the es­sen­tial dif­fer­ence be­tween a mob and San­gat.

A mob is es­sen­tially de­struc­tive; the San­gat is quin­tes­sen­tially con­struc­tive.

A mob is Sa­tan’s glo­ri­ous achieve­ment; the San­gat is the cul­mi­na­tion of years and cen­turies of hard work in how hu­man be­ings can build a world to­gether.

Wash­ing­ton, DC saw a mob on the Capi­tol Hill; and the world knew it needs to learn a les­son.

Delhi, In­dia is wit­ness­ing the San­gat on the Singhu-Tikri-Gazipur bor­ders; and the world knows In­di­a’s pol­i­tics and politi­cians need to learn a les­son.

And that les­son is what a re­turn to the ques­tion of ethics can do to your pol­i­tics.

A mob can only make head­lines; the San­gat changes what’s deep in­side those heads.

A mob can merely carry a flag-draped around a spear, it can only shed blood on the Capi­tol Hill in 2021, burn a bak­ery and some Mus­lims in the streets of Gu­jarat in 2002 or maim, lynch and burn Sikhs in the by­lanes of Delhi in No­vem­ber 1984, or tar­get Mus­lims in 2020.

A mob can merely carry a flag-draped around a spear, it can only shed blood on the Capi­tol Hill in 2021, burn a bak­ery and some Mus­lims in the streets of Gu­jarat in 2002 or maim, lynch and burn Sikhs in the by­lanes of Delhi in No­vem­ber 1984, or tar­get Mus­lims in 2020.

It can only start search­ing for a Mike Pence to hang, or it can start killing preg­nant women a la Babu Ba­jrangi and his ilk. A mob can find new novel uses for used cy­cle tyres by set­ting them afire and gar­land­ing long-haired peo­ple in the streets of Delhi merely a few thou­sand yards from the Raisina Hill.

A San­gat rather opts to talk to it­self, its own, its pol­i­tics. It gath­ers peace­fully. It re­moves the bar­ri­cades but sits peace­fully at Singhu and Tikri bor­ders for weeks. It trusts the lead­er­ship but keeps a keen eye on the go­ings-on. It ex­poses the hol­low­ness of the sys­tem, the shal­low­ness of the façade of ne­go­ti­a­tions, but it does not stop be­liev­ing in the ques­tion of ethics of its own pol­i­tics.

It lis­tens to lec­tures, par­tic­i­pates in kir­tan, en­cour­ages de­bate. It falls back on its phi­los­o­phy, its legacy, its shared her­itage, the teach­ings of the Gu­rus. It does not give a clar­ion call to ‘Storm the Capi­tol’ or to burn the heretics on the barn. It, in­stead, calls for a Trac­tor March. It does not in­cite a mob to de­stroy a mosque to build a great tem­ple; it, in­stead, talks of har­mony. It does not make dis­tinc­tions be­tween true cit­i­zens and false, it does not need to amend its idea of cit­i­zen­ship; it, in fact, builds a sense of cit­i­zenry, of a shared past and a sharable fu­ture. Such a so­ci­ety un­der­stands the sig­nif­i­cance of ethics in pol­i­tics, it lives those ethics, abides by them.

A San­gat rather opts to talk to it­self, its own, its pol­i­tics. It gath­ers peace­fully. It re­moves the bar­ri­cades but sits peace­fully at Singhu and Tikri bor­ders for weeks. It trusts the lead­er­ship but keeps a keen eye on the go­ings-on. It ex­poses the hol­low­ness of the sys­tem, the shal­low­ness of the façade of ne­go­ti­a­tions, but it does not stop be­liev­ing in the ques­tion of ethics of its own pol­i­tics.

On the other hand, a Trumpian crowd can an­swer the call of vi­o­lence, it may be ready to kill and spread may­hem.

Across the world, pol­i­tics is now di­vided into these canons of crowd for­ma­tion: Mob and San­gat. Mob ver­sus Masses.

One pol­i­tics gave a clar­ion call, and hu­man­ity re­sponded as one. The San­gat joined its heads on the Singhu and Tikri bor­ders. The Lan­gar de­fined San­gat. Rich and poor adopted the hum­ble abode in­side and out­side the trol­leys. De­bate throbbed. Dis­cus­sions hap­pened. Pun­jab was talk­ing to it­self, it was talk­ing to Haryana, it was talk­ing to In­dia, and to the wider world. This was a San­gat in Goshthi -di­a­logue. A procla­ma­tion that of the re­turn of ethics in pol­i­tics.

An­other pol­i­tics gave a call and a mob de­scended on the Hill.

A mob en­ters the lane in which lives a Mo­ham­mad Akhlaq. It lynches a Pehlu Khan to death. It wants young men and women in the city’s parks to not put their arms around each other; it wants to con­trol love, and who to love. It wants to de­cide what to cook. It wants a DNA test of the meat in your fridge. It wants to see from which re­li­gion the boy could be who you could marry your daugh­ter. It de­cides when you can protest or the coro­n­avirus will come to kill you, and it tells you when every­thing is fine and the leader can ad­dress poll ral­lies with­out any­one re­quired to sport a mask.

A San­gat joins the protest. It wants food for the hun­gry, jobs for the un­em­ployed, aid for the poor and rights for cit­i­zens. It knows that laws are not di­vine, they do not de­scend from the skies along with some­one’s Mann Ki Baat; in­stead, these can be amended and even with­drawn if found anti-peo­ple.

A San­gat joins the protest. It wants food for the hun­gry, jobs for the un­em­ployed, aid for the poor and rights for cit­i­zens. It knows that laws are not di­vine, they do not de­scend from the skies along with some­one’s Mann Ki Baat; in­stead, these can be amended and even with­drawn if found anti-peo­ple.

This gap be­tween what it means to be a mob or San­gat is the mea­sure be­tween moral­ity and our politi­cians. Pol­i­tics needs crowds. The ethics of a politi­cian de­ter­mine whether it should be a mob or San­gat.

It is now for the lib­eral, left of cen­tre, sec­u­lar po­lit­i­cal do­main to look in­wards and in­tro­spect how it is guilty of paving the way for the mob. Why did the hordes of Amer­i­cans feel so left out that they re­sponded to a Trump? Why did vast masses in In­dia fell for the saf­fron temp­ta­tions? How a prag­mat­i­cally com­mu­nal ap­proach made way for a pro­gram­mat­i­cally com­mu­nal force? How a pro-poor agenda be­came mar­ket-dri­ven and a slave to crony cap­i­tal­ism?

The ethics are back in the play. The Right is trem­bling in fear. Is the lib­eral ready for the change? Will the Left look in­wards? Or will it take the San­gat to un­mask them as the se­cret part­ners of the Right? It is a ques­tion of ethics.

You brought the mob to the Capi­tol Hill. Your pol­i­tics de­stroyed in­sti­tu­tions. You are the rene­gades from the pro­ject of ed­u­ca­tion and health for all. You the lib­er­als made space for the rad­i­cal right.

You an­swered the mobs. You are now an­swer­able to the San­gat.

It is now a choice be­tween the mob and the San­gat. Choose care­fully, very very care­fully.

Joe Biden is in the White House. A woman of colour is the next in line. The San­gat is on the bor­ders of the cap­i­tal. The tide is turn­ing. The trac­tors are com­ing. The pa­rade will start soon. Things will change.

The ethics are back in the play. The Right is trem­bling in fear. Is the lib­eral ready for the change? Will the Left look in­wards? Or will it take the San­gat to un­mask them as the se­cret part­ners of the Right? It is a ques­tion of ethics.

Be the San­gat, un­less you are the Mob. We will catch you – at the Capi­tol Hill or on the Raisina Hill.

The au­thor is a se­nior jour­nal­ist, colum­nist and an­chor of the long-run­ning pop­u­lar but cere­bral Pun­jabi po­lit­i­cal de­bate show, Daleel with SP Singh. A Pun­jabi it­er­a­tion of this ar­ti­cle was pub­lished in the Pun­jabi Tri­bune. You can ac­cess it here. This much ex­pan­sive piece in Eng­lish is ex­clu­sive to the WSN.