Other people’s politics
180 | Vandavasi, India | Avoiding 969 million votes during the world’s biggest election
Could there be anything less democratic than two foreign powers at war in your town to decide which gets to dominate your country?
I doubt the word 'democracy' crossed the minds of the Tamil people living in Vandavasi in 1760 during the Battle of Wandiwash, but bitter feelings probably did. Given that nearly 2,000 Indians went to war on behalf of the British against the French, the townspeople must have been horrified.
It’s here, however, some 260 years later, that I enjoyed my first taste of democracy in India. Here’s what happened.
*
Vandavasi is the first Indian town I explore. To my delight, it’s inconspicuous and ordinary (which is why I stopped over). Western tourists don’t come here as the town's only tourist spot, the fort where the British fought the French, is overgrown rubble.
I stay in SR’s guest house, and over the first-floor balcony, you would, were it not for the pollution, be able to see the full kilometre of the high street. Each morning, beckoned by the raw purple dawn, most of the seventy-five thousand townspeople come to the high street for work or to take a bus to school. Two-wheelers stand in rows, blocking the shops and stalls selling religious iconography or fruits or bicycle parts. Piles of apples and clementines stack like pyramids, and bananas hang from strings. From the shade within the shops, Tamil men smile and offer a circular nod.
*
2024 is the year of elections. India is by far the largest, with ~969 million registered voters, more than the registered voters of Indonesia, the US, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Russia, Mexico, and South Africa combined.
India’s elections will run from the end of April to the beginning of June when the results will be announced, and it’s already a feature everywhere. Restaurants have signs reading, ‘Bar closes at 10 pm because of elections’. Flying Squads in 4x4s race me on country lanes, enforcing rules set by the electoral commission.
*
I wander the high street and watch the yellow buses fill with kids in blue and pink check shirts. The buses sink on their suspensions, groan forward and kick dust into the morning light, so there’s an atmospheric thickness — a golden glow to the streetscape. There is permanent gridlock, echoed with unceasing honking.
As the buses depart, a group of a dozen men in white shirts walk into the centre of the road.
The dozen block the traffic and in an instant gather a crowd — which I walk past. The white shirts spot me and wave. I, of course, ignore them. It’s best to avoid groups of men, no matter how well-starched their shirts.
One of the men has a tray of baked goods; another carries a video camera. A third lays some kind of rope on the floor — smarties tubes or something.
I stoop to blend with the crowd, though I’m not as invisible as I’d like. More of the dozen men clock on and start to wave furiously. “Come here come here come come come,” they say. I can either run away or join them; loitering is not an option.
I decide to join them, out of interest, and shake some hands. Now I can see on the ground the rope is not smarties tubes but a string of large explosives, like fireworks.
Someone is bending over to set them off. What are these? I say, stepping back, “It’s safe sir, safe sir... safe…” he says, looking up. “Won’t they go bang?” I say. “No, no, here, smoke,” he replies, pointing at his feet.
Each tube is an inch thick; just smoke? Must be a hell of a lot of smoke. Several more men gather, and I find myself beside the baked goods — fried raisins and oats. The cameraman zooms in, and everyone begins to do peace fingers, including me.
“Victory!” they shout, but I don’t say anything.
By now, only an idiot would think this has nothing to do with the elections. Only an idiot would hang around, too. So I try leaving, but I am the most conspicuous man here, and the camera is centred on my peace fingers, and the baked goods man holds my arm like a vice. The baker smiles and looks me in the eye as if apologising for dropping some family relic, but he doesn’t let me go.
The camera pulls closer.
The man on the floor with the fireworks curses in Tamil when another match blows out in the swirling dust. He throws it aside.
More men (from where? I wonder) huddle around the rope to block the wind.
I am hot. Trapped under the sun and caught in some rally. Again, I move my arm, but it can’t break free. The baker has strong hands. Good for kneading dough? Good for holding people prisoner?? Good for strangling???
“What is your name?” says the baker. “Hamish,” I say (it’s my plausible fake name for situations like this).
“Hamish is for Victory!” They all shout. “Victory!”
Then we hear a hiss.
I look at the floor.
The cord of explosives has caught. A gentle tail of smoke rises from the huddle — they leap aside, as if electrocuted.
Before I can ask what happens, that first cursed tube detonates. An instant later, the next. A din-din-din beats us back. It roars. My ears ring. The rope twists as a snake. It’s intense and ferocious, like a platoon of machine gunners.
The men are filled with fear: They cower and they run. They forget themselves in the midst of spent gunpowder, which gusts down the street.
As the snake twists, the baker and I turn to run and are blocked by a van. Smoke billows between us. In the fury of the self-inflicted shelling, his grip loosens; I take the opportunity and, in the chaos, walk away from the smoke and into the dust.
*
It’s the morning after the fireworks, and I meet up with Ramu, an extraordinarily smart and well-travelled man from Vandavasi. We met over a street-side masala chai, and now we’re sitting with five of his friends on the porch of his Tamil house, with its traditional pale blue porch, built nearly a hundred years ago. Many of the men speak English, and one of them pulls out his phone.
“You were on Facebook yesterday,” he says, “they were saying even the English are in support of Modi’s political party!”
I watch the video, and I’m ashamed. This, I think to myself, is the last time I get wrapped up in other people’s politics.
Who is Mody? Is he bad??