At around six in the morning on the 1st of May 1997, I was on Magdalen Bridge in Oxford, listening as the Magdalen choir sang in the summer, while the sun came up from behind and shone brighter with each clear note. I then walked slowly to the polling station near home, gathering friends along the way, and cast my vote in a historic election: a landslide victory for Labour, a resounding defeat for the Conservatives after eighteen years of Tory rule. I could vote in the national polls because I was a member of the Commonwealth, and in the local elections because I had been resident in Britain for over six months by then. It was a deeply satisfying, if quirky, event for an Indian to participate in: an acknowledgment, if you like, of the crooked and sometimes unexpected pathways of colonisation, the bound histories of coloniser and colonised.
I’ve thought about those elections a great deal in the past few months, and particularly yesterday. Not in the least because much of that process was about the overwhelming support for Tony Blair, amidst Labour slogans of ‘Enough is Enough’ and ‘Britain Deserves Better’. Personality is key to political victories of this kind, and I can only hope that Obama’s course in history will not end up feeling like betrayal, the broken promise of Blair.
There is much to be critiqued, and even more to be analysed, about these American elections. Including the irritating – and dubious – notion of US exceptionalism when it comes to electing a black man as President. As some of us felt last night while watching the results come in, it wasn’t only ‘Yes, We Can’, and ‘Yes, We Did’, though these were powerful thoughts. For the rest of the world, it was also a sense of ‘Yes, About Time You Did’.
But let those analyses be for tomorrow. For today, I was privileged to be part of an extraordinary moment in a nation’s history, even if as visitor not citizen. The weight of that history came home to me not while listening to the somewhat fatuous commentaries of the news anchors, but through the tears of Congressman John Lewis – a man who was left beaten and bloody on an Alabama bridge forty years ago, as he marched for the right of African Americans to vote. He called it “a wonderful night… a night of thanksgiving,” and I thought to myself about another elections in 1994, when apartheid was dismantled in South Africa, not blow by blow, but vote by vote.
A South African poet, Adam Schwartzman, wrote this poem at that time, and it rings true for first time voters across the world, and for those, like me, who invest in the notion of participation, who spend years, months, days, working and waiting for that opportunity. Lucky to be born as a voting citizen in a complex country, I try not to take that destiny for granted; in my first elections in India, I went to nearly 20 polling stations before I found my name on the rolls (and Yes, It Wasn’t Easy).
However flawed our democracies, however complicated our experiences of citizenship, casting our vote is a moment of arrival, as well as of continued journey: as voters, as citizens, we bear witness to both.
Vote
I could hear our air over the radio, being everywhere
differently, belonging to no man. I cried for you
—you dumb girl—standing in line with the naughty, safe emigrés,
too far from my home and thinking how you might be now—
water in Retief’s Kloof, night on the Malutis,
silence in the suburbs. When I was a boy I
had you. We were growing ready, learning to be blessed
and slightly forgetful for the time we’d grow away.
I’ve waited to do this with you. I saw the very last day
out with one soft cross. It was my first time too.
Adam Schwartzman (from The Good Life. The Dirty Life. and other stories, Carcanet 1995)
London, 26 April 1994
Yes, About Time You Did — lovely!
but what – no Silence?! 😉
Ah, TR, that’s another story. I mean… and the rest is Silence. 🙂
Enjoyed your musings. You need to do this more often.
A beautiful piece, Alo.
And as for questions of disappointment: As I was walking down Berkeley’s telegraph avenue, watching hundreds of liberal college kids climbing the traffic lights, I couldn’t help wondering what exactly is it that “we can.” Somewhere behind this euphoria, I think, hides the cold truth which I saw at ABC when I came back home: the three leading candidates for the secretary of treasury are Paul Volker, Lawrence Summers, and Warren Buffet.
Shall we say “no, we can’t”?
What bridge did you walk on today? It’s a great day in California…you elect a black man, and take away rights from gay couples, on the same day! Gays are the new blacks…when do we get the first gay president?? 🙂 Just kidding, of course.
@Aditi: Glad you did, and yes, I’ll do my best to keep writing blog posts (as a useful procrastination device for doctoral dissertations). Keep dropping by!
@Roi: Thank you, and I know how you feel. As we were walking home last night, post the celebrations, the two homeless guys who live every night in the doorway of the well-named Goodwill store, were already asleep in their raggedy sleeping bags, with shopping carts as windbreakers. Clearly they didn’t think change was coming to them. Still, hope does matter. Symbolically, even if it doesn’t always mean material change.
And yes, I am definitely waiting to see if Obama surprises us with his choice of Treasury Secretary. My views on Lawrence Summers have been expressed on these pages – and to you – before!
@Manu: I’m really disappointed with the Yes on Prop 8. I was up till late at night, watching the five per cent difference between the Ayes and Nays, and it never got whittled down. Some bridges take time being constructed.
Dearest Alo,
Wonderful write-up and revealing information regarding who can vote in Britain. And yes, in democracy, the power of vote is amazing.
I do recognize the elation and the sense of “yes, we too can” feel that was in the heart and mind of the black americans yesterday. I do see how it would work to help a community to shed some of its collective deep depression that they carry from the shadows of slavery. But still, how would it affect the discrimination that goes on everyday in this country, now, or even ten years from now? Did having a Mayabati or a K.R. Naryanan change anything for the people in the margin in India?
– Sonadidi.
Hey Sonadi, didn’t know you read my blog! I agree with you that symbolism isn’t enough, and that iconography is suspect, but I honestly do believe it’s a start. When Mayawati became CM, friends on the ground talked about how Dalits said that for the first time in their lives, they didn’t fear going into a police station; when KR Narayan became Pres., it was held up to me by a lot of Dalit groups that this too was possible. How far this shifts the ground realities of material discrimination is tough to measure – and I absolutely agree that is what we need in the end, but I’m certain it will begin causing some shifts. Perhaps not enough, certainly not straight away, but some.
At the very least, a different kind of attention gets paid to the issues of discrimination. I’m not sure how easy it will be for the cops who beat up Rodney King to be acquitted in an Obama Presidency, for instance.
A beautiful piece of writing – as I indicated to you over email. It has taken me this long to articulate the same as a comment on the blog.
There were several deep insights in this pithy note. With the elections over and done with, I will steer the conversation in a different direction.
The one insight that struck a chord with me was the one on the exaggerated sense of US exceptionalism. I see this sense on display very loudly in the media. Not sure if the average American Citizen shares this sense of uniqueness. However, I see this same sense of exceptionalism in India as well – usually in the context of “tradition” and “cultural/family values”. I am willing to wager that this sense of being exceptional is a trait shared to varying degrees by most nations – probably an existential necessity, like patriotism (a blind version of which I am a strong opponent of).
Would love to hear your thoughts on this…