http://www.greaterkashmir.com/news/2008/Mar/29/power-politics-and-kashmir-13.asp
‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.’
‘The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you CAN make words mean so many different things.’
‘The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master— that’s all.’
(Lewis Carroll)
The control of language directly leads to power in Foucauldian concept of ‘discourse’, which for him ‘is a strongly bound area of social knowledge, a system of statements within which the world can be known… it is also in such a discourse that speakers and hearers, writers and readers come to an understanding about themselves, their relationship to each other and their place in the world’.
Discourse thus joins power and knowledge together. ‘Those who have Power have control of what is known and the way it is known, and those who have such knowledge have power over those who do not.’ This discourse is held by groups in power through ‘Ideology’. ‘Ideology is a term developed in Marxist tradition to talk about how cultures are structured in ways that enable the group holding power to have maximum control within minimum of conflict.’
The discourse writes and constructs YOU, and discourse can be politics as well as art, which studies, analyses and categorizes you. For example as a Kashmiri I am being constructed continuously in Indian movies. In these discourses, I am a dimpled cute village girl, who needs a macho man (like Sunny Deol) to survive or I am a blind helpless girl who needs man -a symbol of power- to survive in an otherwise harsh world. Thus, I am being continuously constructed as a ‘KASHMIRI’, categorized as suffering from ‘Cinderella Syndrome’—where a helpless Cinderella waits for a prince charming to liberate her.
The ideology is continuously worked on a mass level through commercials, where a new sign-signifier system is created to produce a consumer. A simple sentence, “Tanya’s skin is fair. She is very beautiful”, is a complex sentence. The sentence does not tell a fact but creates it. The sentence maintains that for being beautiful the only thing you need is ‘fair skin’, dismissing all the other crucial categories. Similarly, the television reality shows maintain that stars are attainable and create a ‘false consciousness’ that everybody can become a singer, an actor, a movie or a rock star.
These false associations – fair skin/beautiful, reality shows/fame, bikes/masculinity, Airtel/Shahrukh Khan and so on – through ‘commodification’ produce ‘conspicuous consumption’. “The attitude of valuing things not for their utility but for their power to impress or for their resale possibilities” is commodification and “the obvious acquisition of things only for their sign value and/or exchange value” is known as conspicuous consumption.
This commercial system helps the group in power to alter the economy. It leads them from ‘will to truth’ to ‘will to power’. For example, the simple sign of map of Kashmir on Khyber Products especially Milk products helps the company to associate the Khyber products with Kashmir, thus suggesting the truth that it is a true Kashmiri product. Once we accept the truthfulness of the product, we are in direct control of the producers so much so that they give the same product for Rs 12 per litre. And in just last few years, it stealthily rises to Rs 20 per litre, with an increase in the overall market price of other milk and milk products. You cannot question it because the name has been associated with Kashmir and given so much importance that conspicuous consumption is evident.
Now coming to the crucial question, what is Kashmir? It is a piece of disputed land lying between two powers – both claimers of the land. What is Masla-e-Kashmir? It is a thing to be worked out, out there in the field. Nevertheless, what do we have? We have the power discourses rather language games - Jannat-e-Kashmir, Naya Kashmir, Safar-e-Azaadi, Healing Touch, Peace Process – what I am pointing to is that Kashmir has never been dealt practically, it is a language construct of both pro-Indian and pro-Pakistani groups, which is worked out in every meeting in AC rooms with no solution at all. You cannot question…you cannot challenge. The power is maintained through Ideology. This is not a matter of groups deliberately planning to oppress people or alter their consciousness, but rather a matter of how the dominant institutions in the society work through values, conceptions of the world, and symbol systems in order to legitimize the current order.
The pro-Pakistani groups, e.g. by itself become pro-Islamic groups because of a fixed symbol system association of Pakistan with Islam. These groups have Pakistan/Islam as their centre and derive their power from it (holding meeting and preaching in Mosques). You cannot challenge…you cannot question…because this trinity: pro-Pakistani groups/Pakistan/Islam, questions your faith before you challenge or question it. I always confront the people who say “you are not a Pakistani; you are not a Muslim”, whenever I challenge the Pakistani support. The same is true of pro-Indian groups where I am materially challenged – “don’t you eat of India, don’t they give you jobs”, whenever I challenge Indian support.
These ideas orient peoples’ thinking in such a way that they accept the current way of doing things, the current sense of what is ‘natural’, and the current understanding of their roles in the society. This socialization process, the shaping of our cognitive and affective interpretations of our social world, is called by Gramsci, ‘hegemony’, it is carried out, as Althusser writes, by the state ideological apparatuses – by the churches (in our case Masjids and Darul Alooms), the schools, the family, and through cultural forms such as literature (Indian books on Kashmir), music, advertising, sitcoms etc.
Any Ideology will tend to ‘disappear’ which contradicts it or exposes its repressions. Ideology’s cultural activity will include the construction of pseudo-problems which are given pseudo-solutions, e.g. the highlighting of meetings on Kashmir to such an extent that it seems the problem is solved every time the meetings are held, while every time there is only a “process”. In these meetings language games are played and solved in such a manner as if these issues are really central to our most fundamental human concerns, our moral and mental health, justice and equity for which the world is calling out. And all sorts of social and moral problems get disappeared in the process. Under the totem of “peace process” and “peace talks”, these groups are being exempted of all other significant and vital social and moral issues by us.
We have to see beyond these meta-narratives or grand-narratives, “to form ourselves as individuals, as against being formed by, and within, the social apparatus”. We are not to fight these grand narratives but simply stop believing in them; in which case they will be assumed to wither away.
29 MARCH 2008
‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.’
‘The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you CAN make words mean so many different things.’
‘The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master— that’s all.’
(Lewis Carroll)
The control of language directly leads to power in Foucauldian concept of ‘discourse’, which for him ‘is a strongly bound area of social knowledge, a system of statements within which the world can be known… it is also in such a discourse that speakers and hearers, writers and readers come to an understanding about themselves, their relationship to each other and their place in the world’.
Discourse thus joins power and knowledge together. ‘Those who have Power have control of what is known and the way it is known, and those who have such knowledge have power over those who do not.’ This discourse is held by groups in power through ‘Ideology’. ‘Ideology is a term developed in Marxist tradition to talk about how cultures are structured in ways that enable the group holding power to have maximum control within minimum of conflict.’
The discourse writes and constructs YOU, and discourse can be politics as well as art, which studies, analyses and categorizes you. For example as a Kashmiri I am being constructed continuously in Indian movies. In these discourses, I am a dimpled cute village girl, who needs a macho man (like Sunny Deol) to survive or I am a blind helpless girl who needs man -a symbol of power- to survive in an otherwise harsh world. Thus, I am being continuously constructed as a ‘KASHMIRI’, categorized as suffering from ‘Cinderella Syndrome’—where a helpless Cinderella waits for a prince charming to liberate her.
The ideology is continuously worked on a mass level through commercials, where a new sign-signifier system is created to produce a consumer. A simple sentence, “Tanya’s skin is fair. She is very beautiful”, is a complex sentence. The sentence does not tell a fact but creates it. The sentence maintains that for being beautiful the only thing you need is ‘fair skin’, dismissing all the other crucial categories. Similarly, the television reality shows maintain that stars are attainable and create a ‘false consciousness’ that everybody can become a singer, an actor, a movie or a rock star.
These false associations – fair skin/beautiful, reality shows/fame, bikes/masculinity, Airtel/Shahrukh Khan and so on – through ‘commodification’ produce ‘conspicuous consumption’. “The attitude of valuing things not for their utility but for their power to impress or for their resale possibilities” is commodification and “the obvious acquisition of things only for their sign value and/or exchange value” is known as conspicuous consumption.
This commercial system helps the group in power to alter the economy. It leads them from ‘will to truth’ to ‘will to power’. For example, the simple sign of map of Kashmir on Khyber Products especially Milk products helps the company to associate the Khyber products with Kashmir, thus suggesting the truth that it is a true Kashmiri product. Once we accept the truthfulness of the product, we are in direct control of the producers so much so that they give the same product for Rs 12 per litre. And in just last few years, it stealthily rises to Rs 20 per litre, with an increase in the overall market price of other milk and milk products. You cannot question it because the name has been associated with Kashmir and given so much importance that conspicuous consumption is evident.
Now coming to the crucial question, what is Kashmir? It is a piece of disputed land lying between two powers – both claimers of the land. What is Masla-e-Kashmir? It is a thing to be worked out, out there in the field. Nevertheless, what do we have? We have the power discourses rather language games - Jannat-e-Kashmir, Naya Kashmir, Safar-e-Azaadi, Healing Touch, Peace Process – what I am pointing to is that Kashmir has never been dealt practically, it is a language construct of both pro-Indian and pro-Pakistani groups, which is worked out in every meeting in AC rooms with no solution at all. You cannot question…you cannot challenge. The power is maintained through Ideology. This is not a matter of groups deliberately planning to oppress people or alter their consciousness, but rather a matter of how the dominant institutions in the society work through values, conceptions of the world, and symbol systems in order to legitimize the current order.
The pro-Pakistani groups, e.g. by itself become pro-Islamic groups because of a fixed symbol system association of Pakistan with Islam. These groups have Pakistan/Islam as their centre and derive their power from it (holding meeting and preaching in Mosques). You cannot challenge…you cannot question…because this trinity: pro-Pakistani groups/Pakistan/Islam, questions your faith before you challenge or question it. I always confront the people who say “you are not a Pakistani; you are not a Muslim”, whenever I challenge the Pakistani support. The same is true of pro-Indian groups where I am materially challenged – “don’t you eat of India, don’t they give you jobs”, whenever I challenge Indian support.
These ideas orient peoples’ thinking in such a way that they accept the current way of doing things, the current sense of what is ‘natural’, and the current understanding of their roles in the society. This socialization process, the shaping of our cognitive and affective interpretations of our social world, is called by Gramsci, ‘hegemony’, it is carried out, as Althusser writes, by the state ideological apparatuses – by the churches (in our case Masjids and Darul Alooms), the schools, the family, and through cultural forms such as literature (Indian books on Kashmir), music, advertising, sitcoms etc.
Any Ideology will tend to ‘disappear’ which contradicts it or exposes its repressions. Ideology’s cultural activity will include the construction of pseudo-problems which are given pseudo-solutions, e.g. the highlighting of meetings on Kashmir to such an extent that it seems the problem is solved every time the meetings are held, while every time there is only a “process”. In these meetings language games are played and solved in such a manner as if these issues are really central to our most fundamental human concerns, our moral and mental health, justice and equity for which the world is calling out. And all sorts of social and moral problems get disappeared in the process. Under the totem of “peace process” and “peace talks”, these groups are being exempted of all other significant and vital social and moral issues by us.
We have to see beyond these meta-narratives or grand-narratives, “to form ourselves as individuals, as against being formed by, and within, the social apparatus”. We are not to fight these grand narratives but simply stop believing in them; in which case they will be assumed to wither away.
29 MARCH 2008
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