The fact that one finds that the winds of the elections seem to have begun to blow in Goa, we seem to notice a reassembling of the political in Goa. What is the political? What makes us political? How it is related to politics? There is the political in the politics that makes us political. It is the political that politicizes us. Hence, we have to discern the political from time to time. May be the questions that are raised here are important to understand the politics of realignment that is playing out in Goa in these days. To come to the politics that is animating Goa today, we may have to come to the understanding of the political in the politics of our society.
We might think of the political as a place holder where a kind of politics is housed in a society. But as a place holder, it is not inert like the zero of mathematics but a simmering dynamic and volatile quantum vacuum. It is the political that becomes the fire in the belly of the kind of politics that assembles in a society. The political has to mainly do with knowledge if we follow the dictum: knowledge is power of Michel Foucault and it can come in both left and right flavours and is also not free from the self-serving ideologies of the privileged power elites. But within this monstrous masculinist power, we have ‘the stone that the builders rejected’ (as Bible puts it) that has the courage to speak truth to power which may be also dismissed as sophistry by the ruling benches.
Within this political, we have the superiority of the charisma of the leader over the masses who exists as a towering figure amidst the multitude of inferiors. The political as knowledge also opens an access to the truth. Someone has access to the truth like the workers in Marxism or the Hindu masses of Hindutva who then pass it to a strong leader who stands for the Super-Ego (Freudian sense) of a society. This leader becomes the one who returns to cave of the Plato with emancipative truth to the inhabitants of the caves chained to darkness of ignorance. The political then becomes the batch of the interest of the masses. Thus, all politics as the art of the possible is truth politics not because it is true but because it thinks it has the truth and the people who subject themselves to that truth become political. In such a situation, it is only people who become the final court of appeal and seizing power or staying in power then becomes the final destiny which might devolve into what Georgio Agamben calls state of exception that can slip into monstrous mass murders and exterminations of demonised sections of a society.
The political that animates politics in Goa has all shades that we have discussed but it has come to reassemble under ‘Goa first’ dynamism. The politics of truth sides Goa, Goans and Goan-ness as a sense of acute loss is felt by Goans everywhere. The long rule of BJP has sent in an exhaustion and a kind of fatigue seems to have set in within the BJP too. People of Goa are looking for fresh breathe in political ecosystem as the grand standing religio-nationalistic identity politics of the BJP and the grand play master in the Prime Minister is steadily on a downward slope. The promotion of the interest of the elite, (particularly outsiders) even to the point of legalizing illegal houses, failure of law and order perceived as goodaraj of the ruling BJP and threat of Goa being turned into a coal hub have changed the das ding (the thing) of the politics in Goa . This has changed the political of the politics in our society. This is why Goa-oriented politics is getting traction among Goans.
The Goa-orientated politics cannot be simply subsumed under our familiar right-wing or left-wing binary. It is closer to the Object Politics of French thinker, Bruno Latour. Goa-oriented politics that is brewing in Goa cannot tolerate the sinister Machiavellian chess play of Delhi based Political Parties like the AAP. Goa-oriented Object Politics is one that animating the political in Goa today. Goans seem to have become ready to wipe the slate that is written from Delhi. Hence, national parties have to write Goan interest on their political slate otherwise face the wrath of the electorate. We do no need Robert Boyles experiment to demonstrate the existence of a vacuum or void in Goan Politics. But this Shunyata or void is explosive like the one we have in Buddhism or quantum physics. It has the people of Goa , the activists and the alignment of Congress , Goa Forward and the Revolutionary Goans on one side. We saw this assembling on the eve of Diwali on the platform of Vijai Sardessai in Fatorda. It almost threw a stone / Fator that made the sound da in Fatorda ! the mission to burn Nakasuras to bring Diwali to Goans was applauded by those present at the function. This politics of getting back seems to be getting ready to catch fire.
The Object-oriented/ Goa -Oriented Politics cannot simply be a regional politics of the hues of the right-wing. It is a regionalistic politics that puts Goa first without outsidering non-Goans. There maybe many irritants that will have to be tackled by this assemblage as it comes to its acid test at the time of elections. It is too early to speculate and even to dismiss it as done by some critics particularly from the ruling benches. The politics of the ruling benches has reassembled the social in Goa. Goans are feeling alienated and exiled in their own land. This discontent has reassembled the Goans on one side and this side is not on the side of the ruling benches. This reassembling of the social is triggering the reassembling of the political in Goa. Goa -centric politics , therefore, has a future .
