Politics is a polysemic word. It could mean different things to different people – and here the category, ‘people’ includes political theorists. Political Scientists agree among their tribe that politics is more than what the politicians do. This is because politics is a capacious word that covers not only what the politicians do but also who supports them and why, why is the state needed, how should a polity be ruled, with what purpose and with what ideals. In its widest sense, politics is about how to build an ideal society and an ideal polity.

In today’s world democracy is seen by most people as the best form of government. Many countries are democratic and those that are not (probably) want to be democratic. In a democratic polity, politicians appeal to the people to bring them into power. In so doing, they place policies and ways of governance before the people. People too persuade politicians to implement certain ideas of governance and follow certain policies. In this way different politicians and political parties come to represent different sections of the people. Politicians may come up with slogans such as ‘Sab Ka Saath, Sab Ka Vikas’. But history shows that very few politicians are able to gather ‘sab ka saath’. Mahatma Gandhi has been one of the leading mass-mobilizers in the world, yet even his mobilization was not ‘perfect’: in the sense that it did not include all the people. How could it? This means that politicians and political parties tend to represent the interests of specific classes and groups of people more than those of others. The early-twentieth-century Soviet political theorist, Lev B. Kamenev, writing about the early modern Italian diplomat and thinker, N. Machiavelli (1469-1527) called such a representation of social groups and classes the ’sociology of power’. He contrasted this to the intense competition between individuals and factions wherein politicians try to oust each other from the political space. Kamenev called the latter type of politics, ‘zoology of power’.

As mentioned above, different people have varying visions about their country or society. In any polity, views and ideas clash. In India, for instance, the RSS has wanted to create a strong sense of Hindutva. In this, the RSS is supported by the BJP and by groups of radical Hindus. On the other hand, many other Hindus and most non-Hindus want a secular India. But what is meant by ‘secular India’? On this latter question too there are contestations.

Another example of a fierce contestation is that of caste-based reservations. Several people view caste-based reservations as discriminatory while others think of them as affirmative action or positive discrimination and as a significant tool of social equity. Here is one more example: although universal adult suffrage seems to be a settled matter today, yet we sometimes hear people say that the right to vote should be limited to those who are educated or well-off.

These different perspectives either arise from or get connected to varying political ideas, values, principles and different strands of political theory and thought. From ancient times, political philosophers have written about the role of the state in society and about rights, duties, liberty, equality, justice, unity, fraternity, democracy, secularism and other political ideals. Thinkers such as Socrates, Aristotle, Plato, Confucius, the Buddha, Kautilya, Prophet Muhammad, Guru Gobind Singh, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Hegel, Marx, Bentham, Mill, Green, Periyar, Gandhi, Ambedkar, Namboodiripad etc. have wrestled with political ideas and theorized political issues. In so doing, they have created concepts and definitions. In Political Science, definitions can never be as fixed as they may be in science or mathematics, even so they too can be marked by rigor. Modern-day constitutions have been devised from an interplay of theory and thought and specific socio-political contexts. Hence, our understanding of ‘politics’ should include the zoology of power, the sociology of power, constitutions, political theory and political thought as also perhaps public administration and international relations.

The sociology of power also manifests itself in popular struggles. To illustrate this, let me offer two examples. The first of these comes from the grand tussle between British colonialism and Indian nationalism. Why were Indians dissatisfied with British Rule? Because they felt powerless and helpless but right in the face of British might.

Let us disaggregate and see who these ‘Indians’ were. Unlike the past, the tribal people were not allowed to freely use the resources of the forests. Several forests were ‘reserved’ by the government for its use or that of private mining and industrial giants. For the peasants, land revenue rates were high. The colonial state provided little welfare during floods and famines. The railways connected ports to the hinterland and our peasants to the (forced) commercialization of agriculture. But the peasantry suffered from information gaps regarding prices of agricultural commodities in the world market, and this could lead to their ruin. From the capitalist’s perspective, Indian industry was not protected and no (or little) duties levied on Lancashire imports. For intellectuals, journalists, political workers and others, there were times when the freedoms of speech, movement and association remained suspended for long as was the case during the two world wars. For the people as a whole, necessities of daily use such as salt were taxed and the people reminded that their civilization, if any, was inferior to the Western one.

The Indians enjoyed no sovereignty; they had little control over their ‘national’ life. Hence, the numerous movements against British rule including the huge Gandhian battles of 1919-1921, 1930 and 1942. The 1942 movement brought the Raj to its knees. The British lost control of Satara, Maharashtra and Tamluk, Bengal, where Indians formed parallel ‘nationalist governments’ for three and two years respectively. The British could check the advance of the

Quit India Movement only by resorting to extreme measures such as bombardment from the air. The Indian freedom movement is a great example of a mass struggle not only because it was huge but also because it was a platform for a variety of social classes and groups to come together as a people to wrest power from the colonizers.

An instance of popular struggles from independent India is the Narmada Bachao Andolan. This was a social movement led by Medha Patkar and Baba Aamte in the period, 1985-1993 against the development of the Sardar Sarovar Project on the river Narmada. The Project in fact included the construction of several dams in the Narmada Valley in the states of Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat and Maharashtra. Lakhs of tribals from districts such as Jhabua and Dhar rallied round Patkar and Aamte because they got displaced from their homes without prior information and only with offers of compensation for loss of standing crops, not full-fledged rehabilitation. They knew that the irrigation and electricity that the Project would produce would not benefit them. It would benefit rich peasants, industrialists and urban people. Environmentalists and human rights activists joined the ‘oustees’ (oustee: An Indian coinage!). This was a struggle for power and voice between people at the bottom of the pyramid and those at the top. Some of the leadership came from the middle, and many of these leaders chose to live like the poorest tribals.

Last but not least, politics also exist in the everyday lives of ordinary people. Let us look at politics within families. In Pokhrama – and, I suspect, in many other parts of our subcontinent – the male householder of the joint family takes almost all decisions regarding family matters. This is likely to include issues concerning personal matters of individual family members, especially if they are young girls or women. Usually, this male householder is not a grandpa-like figure because several grandfathers retire into vanaprastha (or so they say!). He is a middle- aged grihastha (householder). This male grihastha is sovereign; sovereignty in such families is rarely parcellized. The oldest brother of a ‘joint family’, for instance, will decide whether the wife of a younger brother will visit her natal home or not; and if so, when and for how long! (And it is a ‘joint family’ even if the families of two or more brothers live a thousand kilometers apart.) I wish to underscore that my interest in history and politics was triggered by such everyday political matters as they unfolded in my surroundings. The powerlessness of my mother, my own powerlessness and that of other women, young and old, made me read a book on patriarchy in School. This in turn took me to women’s histories!

There is politics in other daily matters too such as sport. Selections to teams in our country, especially to junior teams, are based on subjectivity and on the kind of narrative that gets created about the players in question. In India, sports teams and organizations also practise a stiff hierarchy. This means players and others are made to kowtow to senior players and officials. An unequal distribution of power influences relationships and outcomes. Then there is the politics of the curriculum. What precisely is to be taught and how? History, for instance, is a profoundly political discipline: what space should be given to medieval Muslim dynasties in the textbooks and how should the key historical figures be portrayed? Should the Partition of India be assigned a separate chapter or should it be reduced to a footnote in the chapter on the national movement? Uttarakhand has now begun to teach the Ramayana as part of History rather than Literature! Struggles for a voice, struggles for power, namely politics, are to be seen all around us.

In the ultimate analysis, politics is about the kind of society a people want to create. It is about the unending debate regarding the ideal society. It is therefore also about who we are as a people. Are we a Hindu nation? Should we be a nation where the rich benefit far more than the poor; the dominant castes much more than the lower ones; the men more than the women? Are we a nation where places such as Kashmir, the North-East, even the deep South feel alienated from time to time? These are profoundly political questions. Engaging with these questions means that politics is much more than what the politicians do.