The onerous political beyond

As elections approach in an unnamed North Indian capital, an unanticipated crisis befalls the leading political party. When the chief suffers a paralytic stroke, the powerful dynasty that heads the party forks into two sibling factions (with characters whose similarity to real-life individuals has been widely commented on) that must now fight it out for the top post, as the fracas spirals into a desperate cycle of murder and betrayal. In broad outline, this is the plot of Prakash Jha's portentously titled new film, Raajneeti. Yet despite the title, the subject and the setting, one must refuse to see this as a political film. We should not only resist the temptation of making crass analogies between the film's characters and actual political figures, but we should also deny altogether that the on-screen shenanigans has anything to do with politics proper.

First, some reflections are crucial. A recent visitor to India, French philosopher Jacques Ranciere, often stresses that the question of politics arises when those with no means and no permanent position in the social structure insist that they be given equal foothold as those who have these advantages. Politics as the assertion of the unrepresented is perpetually contentious and destabilising. Accepting this axiom, another recent traveller to India, the Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek, argues that the disavowal of political conflicts and their corresponding ideological visions is vital to the current form of politics. This non-committal, non-ideological version of politics – which he calls 'post-politics' – relies not on contentions but on pacts, whereby political decisions are arrived at through compromise, collaboration and apparent consensus that is less about representing people and more about administrating them.