Vote of confidence and new Brahminism

Much was written about horse-trading in the run-up to the recent vote of confidence in the Lok Sabha in the media. One could see images of Mayawati and Mulayam being flashed across newspapers as they speculated how and how much money was changing hands. Significantly, this one-sided flashing of images reflected the frog-in-the-well brand of latent caste bias that is rampant both in the English media and its readership.

Throughout the run-up to the vote, the media would have readers believe – and readers, I have little doubt, would have no problems lapping up this sort of stuff – that the whole plot was about two committed, foreign-educated leaders – Manmohan and Karat – who represented two sides of a no-nonsense, visionary, ideological debate, with the media siding with Manmohan. There was a sub-plot too, with cent per cent corruption and no ideological commitment, represented by two non-Dwija, non-anglicised, non-foreign-returned leaders, Mayawati and Mulayam.

While our clean elites were fighting over morally elevated future visions, these “rustics” were just buying out MPs. That the anglicized, upper caste elite thinks and envisions, and the low caste politician pollutes the public space is the underlying message of the media.

All channels and papers somehow believe that Manmohan and Karat, leading two sides of the alleged MP market, were entirely oblivious of horse-trading that was going on under their noses in the supervision of their new-found allies.

I think this whole thing about clean visionaries versus corrupt upstarts is the old Brahmanical bias playing itself out again. The “new Brahmins” ( Manmohan and Karat) dispute, think, envision and debate, while those at the bottom of this middle class hierarchy pollute!