Ideology as Contagion Author(s): Madhava Prasad Reviewed work(s): Source: Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 30, No.

11 (Mar. 18, 1995), pp. 587-588 Published by: Economic and Political Weekly Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4402504 . Accessed: 29/06/2012 04:50
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Ideology as Contagion
Madhava Prasad
ARVIND RAJAGOPAL' s clarification letter (EPW. August 13, 1994) regar-ding his analysisof an advertisementin anearlier article ('Ram Janmabhoomi, Consumer Identity and Image-Based Politics', EPW, July2, 1994: pp 1659-68) only exacerbates the methodological problems inistead of doing anything to rectify them. There aremany problems with the essay, not all of which are germane to what seems to me to be the main methodological issue.
For instance, the definition of communalism

keeps shifting throughoutthe essay and the most objectionablever.sionequates the riise of communalism with "tlheexpression of relatively new, vernacularelites vying for power against older, more often Englisheducatedelites, although the last few years have seen a blurringof this distinction, with more and more educated professionals espousing communal views" (p 1660). This does not tally with an identificatioin of caste, elsewherein thearticle,as theaxisof division of thepolity. It also enshrinesas a sociological truth an Anglophone-prone prejudice accordingto which the Anglophone Hiindu is thedegreezerco of caste identity.Secondly, Rajagopal's caution aboutthe functionialist temptationsof an economistic' apprcoachi is ritualisticr-ather than well thoughtout. His appeal for the investigation of desire anid agency remains a guideline for the future, .since such a possibility is negated by equating/reducing it to the study of meanings. La`stly, the article leaves one with a sense that its own unity is dependent on the existence of the master sginiifier 'Hindutva', whiclh .stitches together a wide variety of fragments of analyses, impressions, observations, .statistics, etc, just as, by his own reading, the same master signifier quilts together a wide range of images and ideas to constitute a field of
politics.

of transmission and destination. In this relation, the first two entities retain their originalform.Themessagedoes notundergo any change in the course of transmis-sion. The mediumitselfremainsaneutral relayinig mechanism.It is only the pointof reception, the individual who receives the message, thatundergoesa transformation, becoming infused with the message andbecoming the agent of its furtherunfolding. The cause the discourse of communalism - thus produces effects in the social-violence and destruction - through a channiel of
communication.

It is this naive theory of causality that leads Rajagopal to seek out empirical evidence in the form of marketresponse to back his reading of the Greaves advertisement.To question the logic of the reading - wlich ascribes meaning to the saffroncolourof thesunset - would only be to invite a pluralist defence ('That's just your opinion'). Instead let us look at the
un.stated assumptions (or unrecognised implicationis) behiincdthe r;eading strategy. The starting point for the 'suspicioni' of

s to have been thediscovery infectioni appear that the company which produced the advertisementhlad also heen engaged by the BJP for its campaigns. This could either thatthe virus, takitigadvantageof the meani pidoximity. tranismitted itself to a noni-BJP

advertisementthat was being put together at a nearby desk, or that the management of the ad company was favourablydisposed towards the BJP ideology and undertookto do its mite for its propagationby infusing it into its other products, much as a shopkeeper, if suitably rewarded, might prominentlydisplay andencouragethe sales of a particular brand of commnodity. The problem with the second thesis is that it would require a demonstrationthat at least some of R K Swamy's other advertisement fromthis periodshow symptomsof a similar infection. Further, it is possible that the author is implying a coincidence of sympathips between the BJP, the ad company and the managemenit of Greaves, so that a programme of subliminal communiication could have been devised with the active consent of the industrialist. In which case the industrialistwill have to be accused of a level of commitment to Hindutva ideology thatinduces him to riisklosing the supportof non-BJP investors. We cannot, of course, rule that out. But that would imply thatthe message is concealed. Which gives rise to a furthercomplication: in the first place, wlhyconceal a message behind such an elaborate (one might almost say foolproof) alibi?Wlhatare the chances that the meanings intended will communicate themselves selectively oinly to those who are predisposed to receive it? To any reader, two strategies might suggest themselves: to abstract from the text the concealed messages like 'ancieit

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Rajagopal's basic, though unstated, premise, which I consider a productof the 'masscommunications'approach he adopts, can be termedan epidemiological thesis on ideology.Accordingto this,cultural products andhumanminds are merely the carriersof ideology, whose transmission they enable. Apopularstrand of NorthAtlanticsociology favoured this -body-snatcher model of ideological capture. It now seems to have acquired new uses. Thus the author avers that liberalisation andconsumerism"created... new spacesinto which communal discourse inserted itself' through "adaptation and encroachment" (p 1659). The basicformulaof thediscipline of mass communications research establishes a relation between message, medium

Economic and.Political Weekly

March 18, 1995

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civilisation'. 'symbols of the past'. etc. and then, in a second movement, apply them to theirownsurroundings, thuseliminatingthe materialpresenceandsignifying force of the Egyptianpyramid, making it a transparent carrier/hostof a message in transit:this is what Rajagopal's reading assumes; secondly, the readermight feel too strongly the presence of the pyramid itself, and depending on his/lher inclinations, may either receive the'meAsage for what it is worth, or be affected by the alienness of the symbol. and develop a hostility to this Indian company for ignoring the symbols availablehereandgoing all the way to Egypt (a Muslim countiy at that!). Whichever way you look at it, we are dealing here with a viral infection, a serial processof causalityin which a manipulative ring of conspiring communalists releases a virusinto the social body andreapsa harvest of infected minds. Not surprisingly, Rajagopal's essay unconsciously eclhoes the discourse of epidemiology so consistently that even the general theory of the social that he huilds to explain the process of communalisation is informed by it. Thus he establishes an opposition between commitment and communication.This equation (i e, absence ofcommitment= communication of diseases) became a discursive common place in the US in the course of a moral campaign to prevent the spread of AIDS. Lack of commitment in relationships meant a high indicatingmoral turnoverofsexualpartners, degeneration, breach of communal and familial bonds and a resultant erosion of moral values. Such developments created new spaces where the AIDS virus could propagate itself, accordingto thisthoroughly ideological explanation. Rajagopal's theory equips itself with a similar explanation for the spread of communalism. Not only does the media serve as an instrumentof dissemination of diseases, it is in itself a social affliction. He posits a process of erosion of commitment and the consequent opening up of the social field for the spread of communal ideology. "With the growing distance between lived experience and public culture, however, the commitment impliedby audiences'consent no longer has the guarantees personal presence would entail. Commitmentthen becomes far more fluid and mobile, being based more on the gratificationdifferentimages affordthanon any investmen-t of personal resources" (p 1660). This transformationof 'commitment' into a changeable, promiscuousthing makes it possible for a "highly disciplined and organised force like the RSS" to "exploit this altered form of commitment to present its;own politic.s a.srepresenting tho.se of the public at large" (p 1660). This 'explanation' fails to indicate what

makes the commitment-free space of modern social life more receptive to the, RSS ideology than to any otlher.I suspect that the words "highly disciplined and organised' are supposed to provide the absent justification. In otlher words, a discourse's success is a direct result of the strength and resourcefulness of the disseminating body. There is again, lhere,a tendency to regarda complex, transformed social field as reducible to a tlhree-term equation. Disseminating agent 4 fieldl of communications media -< uncommitted subject. (Part of the problem might arise froma disciplinarywil Ito elevate theobject of mass communications research to a position of pre-eminencein the social.) The of thepiece ae villainis idistanciation andimpersonalisation."Thusindividualsmayshift fromone formof idlentity to anotherwithout necessitatinig a proportional shift in the distributionof their resources" (p 1666). The last quotatiotn points to thediscursive reduction at work in the essay. Having abandonedthe 'economism' of class-based explanations. RajagopaltreatsHindutvaas an ideology whose dissemination can be accomplished without loss of social position, without a transformation of

personial life. This is perhaps true of the proponentsof E-mail fascism buttheentire phenomenon of Hintlunationalismcannot be explainied(away) by recourse to this one idea. For most of the new adherents of Hindutva, no such .security against transformation of personal life exists. Rajagopal's assumption that the Englishspeaking segment of the population is free fromn communal passions and his consequent surprise at what he considers a 'recent' change in its charactermay have led to the explanatory pilority given to a pur ely discursive, 'gratificatoiy'relationto Hindu nationalism. It is doubtful whether the vicarious pleasures of non-committed s voters(Advani' use of thistermis consistentwith itsmeaning in political journalism and can only be accommodated to Rajagopal's definition by force) can serve as the main support base of a partywhose.politics has involved unimaginable levels of violence and planned conifronitation witlh a weak transitionalstate.Buthaving sweptpolitical economy under the carpet anid isolated discourise and its vicissitudes as the sole object, Rajagopal could not have reached uny other conclusion.

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