To Cast or Not to Cast

Election has an ‘alchemy’ … it singularizes each citizen, responsible for his vote (his choice), at the same time as it unifies the ‘moral’ body of the citizens: Balibar; Citizen-Subject

I had gone over for some work to the neighbour’s place. When I was sipping a cup of mandatory tea and saying every five minutes that I needed to leave, and politely dodged curious questions, their domestic help Sabita walked in. Mrs Madam suddenly turned furious – apparently Sabita, a woman in her late 30s had not come in the earlier day and that too without prior notice. Sabita nonchalantly replied that she had gone to cast her vote and after she returned she had a bad enough headache and so could neither inform nor come. I stood half-apologetic myself, expecting Mrs Madam to lambast Mrs Subaltern as to why she still did not at least go to the nearest booth and make a call etc. But what madam said was this: “Eeeshh! Uni gecchen vote dite! Aami-e jayi na, ar toder vote na dite parle hochhe na, na?” [Rough translation = Oh! She grandly goes to cast her vote! I do not go myself and you people can’t afford to stay back from voting?]. While a paper can be written on this one line, I shall afford to hold myself back and speak only a few words.

Too many currents are playing themselves out here; what immediately struck me was this – while I generally echo many others that in as much as the nation-state claims itself to be a democracy, one that runs on regular representative elections, it is this very democratic principle that one might deploy to abstain from casting the vote. I myself have not cast a vote ever – primarily because I have never been at the place where my identity card was issued from at a time when elections were taking place. Of course the experience of the polling booth and the determining button that all leaders asked to be pressed on their behalf is something I have badly missed, but then, whenever I tried to think who I would cast the vote for, I almost never came up with an answer. Unlike Dhorai I have never stood inside the booth wondering at the long term magic my vote would create – that’s what we have been taught to believe. That’s the belief that helps the democratic machinery run smoothly. That somewhere someone will be informed by my vote. S/he will never see me, know me, touch me, feel me, love me or go for a coffee, but I can make a difference…and that little difference in turn will make my life better. Another difference. Thus, betting all hopes on this chain of differences we go to case the vote. Unknown to each other. “The vote is the great anonymous performance of citizenship” (Partha Chatterjee)

However democracy by definition allows for choice, for freedom. And thus anonymous or not, we remain free to not cast the vote, to not dream about differences and changes. Though we keep on hearing occasionally that voting will be made mandatory, since percentage of willing voters are dropping like population rate in Japan. But then, the interesting point that struck me is this: while intellectuals, academicians, even some politically inclined people and social scientists claim they will not cast that vote, that they did not go to the booth this time, we are either proud or awe-struck at their strength – strength to speak the truth that no party is worth voting for, that this democracy is a sham, and that democracy should thus be rethought, redefined. They do not say these in as many words though. We understand, we assume. When the same one-liner is said by some obscure housewife, we pity her, we realize she is so “pre-modern”. Are we being inconsistent here? Or are we being guided by some pre-given set of notions – under what circumstances should one be allowed to abstain from voting. The circumstances include an intimate awareness of the political and social scenario around us, a sincere political investment, a somewhere transcendental idealism and love for the nation-state beyond democratic dramas…?

That’s one question I was left with that day. Moving to the next problematization, we know, we have read that it is the civil society that is organized, is partaking of state benefits and often operates within the bound serialities made possible government functionings like census and the vote. All these and so on, as opposed to the political society that accesses entitlements not rights, that is unorganized and slipping away before being serially contained. And the implicit assumption is that the civil society-political society divide will more or less map onto an urban-rural divide, an elite-subaltern divide. And this made my calculations messed up: the decked up, eyebrow-plucked and speaking-english-at-home-with-children Mrs Madam, the symbol of the urban elite and thus a member of the civil society, was not only showing off the fact that she did not go to cast her vote, but also inquiring why her domestic help – the rural, barely literate, subaltern member of the political society – did. I felt this was an abject understanding of social activities/responsibilities/what-you-will, only and only in terms of what the elite/urban/capital-wielding-agents do and think right to be done; that it was reading, validating and justifying the world from their privileged standpoint. If I did not go, I being the knowledgeable, affluent, with more social power being, how dare you, the illiterate, ignorant, poor and powerless, go to cast the vote? I was also bemused at the interesting subversion (or mere reversal maybe?) of my own trained expectations! I was intrigued, such that I did not say anything. I silently admired Sabita as she casually turned to say “Aha, tumi jaoni bole ki aamio jabona?” [Since you did not go, I too should stay back?], and vanished into the kitchen to attend to the pile of unwashed utensils.