6 - ‘In the Name of Politics’: Sovereignty, Democracy and the Multitude in India

Summary

The first of the great operations of discipline is [to] … transform the confused, useless or dangerous multitudes into ordered multiplicities.

Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish (Foucault 1979: 148–49)

‘To take part in demonstrations and hooliganism in the name of politics’ [my emphasis], said Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Prime Minister of India, speaking to a group of college students in the city of Patna in Bihar on August 30 1955, ‘is, apart from the right or wrong of it, not proper for students of any country’ (Nehru 2001b [1955]: 83). A ‘minor’ conflict between the students of the B. N. College, Patna, and the State Transport Employees had led to police firing on the students on August 12 and 13 1955. The Independence Day celebrations on August 15 were marred by ‘desecration of the National Flag, student–police clashes and black flag demonstrations in Chhapra, Biharsharif, Daltonganj, and Nawada’ (editors' note, see Nehru 2001b [1955]: 47). Nehru had gone to Patna to assess the situation. In retrospect, it is possible to read Nehru's speech as addressing a question that would be important for post-colonial India: what kind of political behaviour would be appropriate for the citizens of an independent nation? Nehru's expression ‘in the name of politics’ suggests that he did not see ‘demonstrations and hooliganism’ as the proper stuff of the politics that students could take part in.