As we are seeing elections everywhere, in India, BREXIT, various blockchains, trusts/foundations etc I wanted to reflect on the exposure to elections. I feel this is important as for many the exposure to democratic or semi-automatic election processes they have participated helps to form the opinion.
First encounter with an election
The first time I came across an election is while I was in 5th Standard and when I was 9 (Nine!) years old. I studied in Kerala, India which is a politically literate state with history of having the first elected communist government in the world. (Yes!)
In India has the following parties
- Indian National Congress - A left over from the Independence Movement with members like Gandhiji & Sardar Vallabahi Patel
- Various Janatha (People's party) factions
- Communist Parties - Marxist and Stalinist factions.
- BJP (Bharathiya Janatha Party) - A Hitler/Mussolini Era Hindu Nationalist (Supremacy) out-fit RSS's political unit. This is also the only outfit which didn't participate in the Indian Independence movement.
- In addition to this there are a zillion religion, caste & language based groups in various states. (I will call them as opportunistic-political-bargainers in the rest of the article.)
- There is also The Pirate Party, A young Pirate Party like initiative called AAP aka common man's party etc.
Catch them young
The political parties which have more or less lost their relevance due to the fact that the original principles they represent are not longer valid, attempts to recruit party members from the young age. The sad truth is that the only parties which has any relevance are the caste/religion/language/region based ones as all these "agendas" still exist and finds acceptance. The Pirate Party also seem to have its relevance. We also have this comical scenario of movie stars becoming politicians and people voting for them.
(Slogan Says : Participative democracy & they stand for freedom in the modern Digital Age)
(Mr Praveen, 2014 Indian Parliamentary Election Candidate, Pirate Party of India)
Each of the major irrelevant parties and Opportunistic-Political-Bargainers will have their student unites specially targeted at school and college (University) students. In my province & the schools I studied, it was Indian National Congress, Communist Party Of India (Marxist) & BJP-RSS who had their outfits targeted at younger age groups. The special little parties for the young-and-teens where called KSU, SFI and ABVP respectively and each represented the 3 major irrelevant national level political parties in India. Other states and specific regions will have student units for the applicable Opportunistic-Political-Bargainer outfits as well.
Democracy, Religion and Caste
Needless to say students get first hand experience of the usefulness or lack of each of the political parties, democracy, election process etc from the school and university elections. We also got to understand that beyond the political groups created based on some agenda, religion or caste also plays a big role. As a young kid, I was under the impression that democracy is the 100% means towards a greater society and was quite amused by the school elections. Hailing from a very politically active family, I had a good grasp of the entire affair from the early childhood and I kept an equal distance from all the parties. Sadly, my uncle and aunt had to sacrifice their wealth, career and family lives to give me the life long lesson about the fruitlessness of the political parties.
There were schools sometimes run by NGOs belonging to various religious groups or sometimes casts. In such schools the candidates mostly used to be from the same caste as that of the school management. I have felt that the religion was not as evident as the caste based divide in selecting the candidates. Another observation is that in the younger classes the caste/religious bias worked fine but as we were in high-school we almost always had candidates from parties without the importance to their caste or religion. Now looking back what I feel is in the lower classes the teachers used to influence the candidate selection and that resulted in the religious-caste bias. As we grew older, we became bolder and we choose the right candidate.
Glimpse of a School Election
Obviously I don't remember much about the first exposure to school politics. I was just nine years old and all I remember is that there were 2 candidates belonging from 2 major parties - KSU and SFI.
The campaigns used to run for a week during the period the candidates were allowed to speak to the students in the class. In the case of school-wide positions, the candidates were given 10 or 15 minute time in each class. The candidates used to go to each class with few of their close aids/supporters. Then they give a vigorous political speech followed by few slogans.
(Screen shot from a Movie on College Politics)
The entire school compound used to be decorated in Red and White and occasional Saffron. We had posters printed or photostatted affixed everywhere. The political parties assigned representatives for each school and the candidates used to get guidance and training from the older peers on their strategy. This helped the students to understand more about the politics than the text books and also establish relationships. Many of the political leaders after 1960s were active politicians from school or college days. May who might have not attended the colleges/universities claimed to part of activities from the young age.
From my faint memory, the school/university elections had the following guidelines:
- Nominations were accepted by a proceeding officer who will be professor or teacher
- A scrutiny was done and nominations were rejected if someone put a wrong roll number!
- Two weeks of campaign is allowed from the campaign start date
- Involvement of external people were not allowed (but used to happen always)
- Any form of rewards or bribing for voting was strictly prevented. (But pencils etc were given ;-)
- Once the 1 week campaign is over, 1 or 2 days of no campaign time was strictly imposed. During this time no public campaigning was allowed. The candidates used this time to circle the play ground, classes during the lunch break, carry love letters etc to reach the voters on a one to one basis.
- Posters, Slogans etc were allowed - I don't remember the exact guidelines.
- While it was not part of the norms, the candidates were often accompanied by "Good looking girls!". There was no rules against it & this was a time we, the students used to get a good glimpse of the beauties in the school.
- Symbols were assigned to each candidate and often these symbols were nation wide & very easy to understand.
- There was ballot boxes made of card board boxes, some sort of ballot paper & a very secretive voting and counting process.
My Schools & their Tradition
The Schools I studied were the "Most Notorious" ones in-terms of political activity. Both my schools were in the middle of the city and it attracted tons of external interference. Sometime in the high school the external influence was banned by a Government order. All of us were agitated against the order & irrespective of the political view, everyone opposed it. During this time, I was "declared" as the class-leader without my permission. I liked the class-teacher very much and pretty much all of us liked her the same way. She was with us for the entire high school era & we had to accept her opinion. There were protests against the decision to cancel the elections and finally the school decided to conduct the elections. I, then the class-leader denied to be a candidate and I am quite proud about it. Though I was against the entire politics aspect, I supported the need for an election. Well, I have never told anyone but I was more interested in the school leader post and if someone had nominated me, I would have accepted it and (mostly lost the election!).
(Screen shot from a movie about college politics - my school campus looked similar in all aspects)
Though eventually the final year (10th standard @ 15 years old) active politics in the school came to an end, we continued to enjoy the political drama. My school was in a college campus & we shared football grounds. The college was one of the most politically active campuses with very dramatic external interference. From my 7th grade (11 years of age), I was fortunate or unfortunate to witness political violence in the college campus. We used to see trade union workers, fisher men and other external forces come to the school-college campus with peculiar weapons which included the "dried-tail-of-a-fish" among common weapons. The most common weapons were DIY swords, big and small sticks specially manufactured, cycle chains, cricket bats etc. Hockey sticks was somehow not part of the whole show. I studied in this school-college-campus for 5 years witnessing all the action and we had plenty of holidays depending upon the political activity in the college. Looking back growing up in such an environment gave me good insights in the world of politics, violence and lack of necessity. My classmates who were from various walks of life are also least political which I believe is due to the same early exposure to politics.
(Again a screen shot - my school campus looked very similar on many days. We even had those pillars .... just that they were white in color.)
Epilogue
I have often failed to explain my lack of interest in politics, a belief system that is based on the need to bring about the changes from within ourselves as opposed by a any group, religion, foundation, political movement or country. Knowledge, experience and resulting wisdom should be the foundation on which we should build our world and nothing else can help us. My childhood experiences and exposure to politics greatly helped me to become the person that I am. We definitely need politics, if possible from younger days to understand it & lack of interest in politics doesn't mean that its not needed. Politics is a necessary evil.
Credits: The screenshots are from a friend's movie called "Oru Mexican Aparatha" which means "A Mexican Odessy "