• Abstract and Figures
• Public Full-text

COMMENTARY the character Arturo Ui on the model of The Resistible Rise of a typical small-time mobster who takes over the city’s grocery trade, by aligning Narendra Modi with a corrupt local administration and by ruthlessly destroying all opposition. We also discover shades of the well-known Sumanta Banerjee contemporary mafi a don Al Capone. It was a satirical allegory of Hitler’s rise A rereading of Bertolt Brecht’s t takes a great deal of optimism to to power, which was taking place in The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui imagine the next government at the Germany at the same time. But the mes- (1941) and Sinclair Lewis’s Icentre without the disquietingly loom- sage of Brecht’s play moves beyond the ing presence of Narendra Modi. Yet, such contemporaneity of his days. We recog- It Can’t Happen Here (1935) is an eventuality could have been prevented, nise in Arturo Ui the all too familiar local helpful in understanding the and its onward rush can still be resisted. gangster-cum-politician who gets elected social psyche in India today that We are paying the price for forgetting a to today’s Indian Parliament. We discern is being moulded by Narendra not too distant past. today the same fears and compulsions The heading of this article is a re- among the common citizens, whom Brecht Modi and is greasing his – and his phrasing of the title of Bertolt Brecht’s portrayed as victims of economic reces- party’s – path to power. play The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui. sion, who were either frightened into It can happen here. B ertolt wrote it in 1941 after escaping submission to Arturo Ui, or lured by from Germany, and while in exile in Hel- money to join his gang. sinki, waiting for a visa to enter the Unit- Brecht probes into this mass psychology ed States (US). Curiously enough, during that bolsters fascism, by pointing to the Brecht’s stay in the US (1941-47), the play propensity among the underprivileged to was never staged there. Another work of respect and worship the local gangster, fi ction – this time by a famous American who enjoys power at the micro level author – shared a similar fate of boycott thanks to the support that he gets from by the establishment in his country. This those in power at the macro level. Yet, was the novel, It Can’t Happen Here, Brecht reminds us, the rise of Arturo Ui written by Sinclair Lewis in 1935. Both (alias Hitler) could not have been possi- the play and the novel were written dur- ble without the connivance of the com- ing a period which saw the rise of Nazism mon people and their local politicians. and its consolidation as a ruling power All that is necessary for the triumph of in Germany. such creatures is that the majority of A rereading of the two may help us people hesitate to oppose them, and today to understand the social psyche thereby acquiesce in their rise. in India that is being moulded by But it is not popular opposition alone Narendra Modi, and which in its turn that can resist the rise of the types of is greasing his – and his party’s – path Arturo Ui. It is also the responsibility to power. The rereading should also of states which swear by democracy, to awaken us to the need for resisting in oppose fascism. When Bertolt Brecht India the repetition of a political experi- wrote this play on his way to the US, he ment that gained currency in Germany had the American audience in mind, and Italy during 1930-40, but which and expected them to understand what ultimately ended up in a global disaster. was happening in Germany. He tried to Thankfully, the Hindu right has not present it in terms of the American experi- yet been able to assume that monstrous ence of mobster politics, so that they could global dimension. pressurise their government to resist Hitler. The US till then had remained a The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui Sumanta Banerjee ([email protected]) silent spectator to Hitler’s genocide of is a long-time contributor to EPW and is best To come back to Brecht’s play, signifi - Jews within Germany, and increasing known for his book In the Wake of Naxalbari: cantly enough, he chose for his hero an territorial ambitions abroad – in the sur- A History of the Naxalite Movement in India American gangster. He situated his story reptitious hope that Hitler would destroy (1980). in Chicago of the 1930s, and moulded its main enemy, the Soviet Union. It was 10 may 3, 2014 vol xlIX no 18 EPW Economic & Political Weekly COMMENTARY only after the Japanese attack on Pearl 1950s (named after the Republican sena- bombast of defending the nation to draw Harbour in December 1941 that the US tor who unleashed a ruthless campaign support from the armed forces and their joined the war. Not surprisingly there- against communists and liberals, and top brass, and invokes his childhood fore, as mentioned earlier, this play of persecuted eminent writers like Lillian memories as a chai-wala to solicit votes Brecht’s was never staged in the US dur- Hellman and fi lm personalities like from the poor. Like his German and ing the 1940s. It cut too close to the Charles Chaplin). Italian predecessors, he also uses his foot bones of the ruling syndicate of US sena- Sinclair Lewis, when writing his novel soldiers – the Rashtriya Swayamsevak tors and the mafi a. in 1935, had a premonition of the things Sangh (RSS)- Bajrang Dal goons – to bull- that were coming. Observing from close doze into submission those who o ppose It Can’t Happen Here quarters his contemporary American him. He eminently fi ts the standards The next work of fi ction that I am taking middle classes, he could discern their laid down in an ancient Sanskrit proverb: up was written by the American author smug self-contentedness and indifference “Manasya-anyad, bachasya-anyat, kar- Sinclair Lewis who won the Nobel Prize in in the face of the growth of corruption and manya-anyad, duratma-nam” (A villain’s 1930. Five years later – in 1935 – he wrote gangsterism among their own politicians thoughts, utterances and actions differ this semi-satirical novel, against the back- – tendencies that were to fertilise the from each other). drop of the rise of fascism in the interna- seeds of the McCarthy type fascist order But there is a method in this contra- tional arena, and the simultaneous con- that emerged in the US in the 1950s. diction in Modi’s strategy and tactics, by solidation of the mafi a-politician nexus These two literary works, in their which he had built up an image that has within the US. It is signifi cant that the respective ways, reawaken us to our elevated him from a villain (of the 2002 l ocale chosen by both Bertolt Brecht and responsibilities today in resisting the rise Gujarat genocide) to a hero (of economic Sinclair Lewis for the operations of their of a new ruling dispensation in India development) in the popular psyche. respective heroes/villains is the US. that threatens the secular fabric of our The mainstream media, bankrolled by Sinclair Lewis’s novel describes the rise Constitution and the pluralistic culture the corporate sector, are fostering his of Berzelius Windrip (popularly known of our society. We can go on quibbling electoral potentialities, picking upon only as “Buzz”), a fi ctional US senator who over the question whether “fascism” is those aspects of his party’s agenda that during his election speeches promises the appropriate term to describe it – an suit them (like promises of industrial drastic economic and social reforms, exercise which certain intellectuals are growth) while ignoring the other con- while promoting a return to chauvinist fond of indulging in. But the stark reality troversial aspects (like his promise to patriotism and traditional conservative is that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) build a temple on the disputed site of values (anticipatory echoes of Narendra leaders by their announcements, and Babri masjid, abrogate Article 370, and Modi?). Once he gets elected as the pres- their cadres by their acts, demonstrate impose a uniform civil code). The media ident, Windrip takes complete control of the same personality-based political hype around Modi is reminiscent of the administration, and imposes totali- strategy of combining populist rhetoric the role of the European press in the tarian rule with the help of a ruthless from public platforms at the macro level, 1930s, when it continued to depict paramilitary force. Although fi ctional, the and intimidation and terrorisation of the Hitler and Mussolini as amiable guys character of Windrip was based on a real citizens at the micro level that Hitler and who were expected to defeat the com- life politician – Huey Long, who was pre- Mussolini followed in the 1930s. munists, till the Axis powers reached paring to run for president at the time right on the doorstep of the Western when Lewis was writing the novel. Neo-Hindutva in the Era capitalist states. The title of the novel refl ected the of Neo-liberalism But while recalling the past and iden- mood of complacency of the American Narendra Modi, who has been chosen by tifying the similarities, we should take a liberal-minded voters at that time, who the Sangh parivar as the prime ministe- more astute view of the Hindu right in felt that such authoritarianism could rial candidate, has turned out to be the India today.

Load more

  4

Copy Link