The New Divine Comedy of Politics: The Priest is back

John Samuel argues that the opiates of new conservatism, fundamentalism and other forms of politics of exclusion- make a bad divine comedy of Politics and makes a tragedy of democratic process.?

??In the beginning there was word, word was with God and word was God. Then the Priest came to represent the Word and the God. Then came the sword. Sword was with the Prince. And sword was the Prince. Then prince became the state and State became the sword. Then came the trade. Trade was with the merchant. Trade was Merchant. Merchant became the Market. Market became the Missionary. Hence, the World was made of words, swords and trade. Word was spread through the sword. Words sustained the sword. Then trade helped to spread the word and the sword. Here began the divine comedy of words, sword and trade. Priests, Prince and Merchant ran the world with their words, swords and trade. This divine comedy is the mother of all politics.??

Politics is the dynamics of power-relations in a given society at a given point in time. Power relations often get channeled thorough and negotiated by social institutions. Historically, socio-cultural institutions like religion, clans, tribe and family played a very important role in channeling, mediating and negotiating power and political process. ??Divinity was evoked to legitimize and sustain power in the realm of religious institutions and religion often subcontracted such process to family by “legalizing” and legitimizing the most important events of human life- birth, death, and procreation through male-female relationships.

Religion created the soft-power through beliefs, knowledge, myths, rituals and institutions. Such a sense of soft-power was a pre-requisite to build hard power through the sword. Priest became the first ideologue of political power. He gave moral legitimacy for domination through patriarchy. The Brahmin, Mullah, Monk, or the Bishops interpreted the world and legalized the words- by making the norms, canons and law. Priests played multiple roles as philosophers, theologians, teachers, sorcerer and alchemists. Priests created the “order of things”. Priest was a necessity for the entry and sustenance of the Prince. The most common form of evident power was always the “physical” contestation to acquire and dominate. This gets institutionalized through weapons, army and war. Military provided the bull-work to dominate and sustain power for the Prince- from Darius to Alexander to the Romans, from Genghis Khan to Ottomans Turks, from Napoleon to Hitler, and from Stalin to George Bush!??

Power was legitimized by the Priests, disguised as philosophers or teachers, and sustained by the Military of the Prince. The hegemony at given time was managed through the process of creating consent (often through religious –social networks) and coercion (by the Military power of the Prince). Priest and the prince together made the Law and Order- where they combined the power of the word and the sword.??

With the emergence of trade, market, and surpluses, money began to play a role in shaping politics. Eventually the art of politics was managed by the Prince (with weapons and army), Priest (who derive authority from the divine) and the Merchant (who financed war). The entire colonial project and imperialist politics were driven by the old power trinity of the Prince- Priest and Merchant. They used trade, sword and bible to appropriate territories, markets, culture and human mind. In many ways religions and priests provided the moral and ideological framework to capture and dominate the world. Most of the major religions spread across the world either through sword or trade. Hence, the priest was an ideological necessity to give moral veneer to any act of atrocity and domination. All major religions have the smell of blood acquired through war and plunder at one point or other point in history. Patriarchy, totem and taboo and identity based contestation became the underlying factors to acquire, sustain and manage power relationships.??

Then the nation-state came. Prince, Priest and Merchants were not supposed to be in charge. “We the people” were supposed to be in charge of the modern manifestation of power. New institutional formations came into being to channel, negotiate and sustain power. That is how political parties came in as a modern social- and political institution, in the context of the liberal democratic politics and state. ??With the separation of the Church and State, a relatively secular democratic process emerged in many of the countries in Europe and other parts of the world. Secular democracy became the flavour of the month. Thus the priest and the merchant retreated to background of the political process. The emergence of the political parties helped to replace the old political nexus of Prince-Priest and the Merchant. In the process, the new power-elites competed with each other, in the name of various political parties, to capture and sustain the state power. Those leaders in the business of capturing and sustaining state power, through “democratic processes, became the modern day equivalent of the Prince.?????

In the course of democratic exercise of capturing and sustaining the state power, merchants once again came to the forefront as the financiers of the political parties and electoral process. This nexus of political elites and powerful corporate elites appropriated the modern state and institutions of governance. With the emergence of neo-liberal policy framework, the cash-rich corporate leaders began to influence political and policy making process through financing political parties, electoral process and through knowledge- media network. ??While this new nexus subverted the democratic process and appropriated the policy making process, political party leaders lost the moral authority to influence society or people. This made them increasingly dependent on religious institutions and networks to seek social legitimacy and to gather votes. They needed the blessings of Bishops- Mullahs or Swamis or Monks to sustain to their State power and electoral base. Thus, the priest too returned to the forefront of the political process.?

So the old nexus of the Prince, Priest and Merchants are back in their new avatar of the power trinity of political leaders- transnational corporations- new religious networks and leaders. In spite of secularism and democracy, religion refuses to fade away from politics (with their divine commissions, sanctions, authority and vested interests). Religious leaders and networks too adopted a marketing approach, using modern media, advertisement, high-tech networking and strategic influence to increase their power and presence. Military and market are still in charge in most of the countries in the world. In many cases, both the religious institutions and the military are in the business of discrediting, undermining and sabotaging political parties to sustain their power. Media often play a subservient role to Market and Religion- as both are sources of revenue. Instead of being the fourth-estate among the democratic institutions, Media has become the pimp of the new power trinity... They have successfully appropriated the state power and institutions of governance- by subverting the political process.??

The interesting thing is that most of the authoritarian military regimes do not touch religion and many a time they rule in collusion with religion or religious institutions. Such religious institutions or network are also well entrenched social network to channel power, to collect information, to manage, to control and to dominate through power-networks of the prince and the priests. The prince and the priest tend to seek validation and resources from the merchant to sustain the power. All three of the “power-characters” see political parities as a necessary modern evil! This new power nexus has either appropriated political parties as an instrument to capture state power or discredited political parties to directly capture the state power through military coup. ??Thus democracy has been reduced to a formal electoral mechanism or a farce. Democracy is often used as a mere veneer of legitimacy to capture and sustain State- Power. In fact, the priest is back in the form of new conservatism, in the form of vote-bank, in the form of new fundamentalism and in the form of new identity politics. As the political parties and leaders get seduced into the big money and corrupt practices, the religious leaders (Bishops, Mullahs, Swamis and Monks) tend to influence society through their media, social network and identity politics; harvesting on the new insecurities and paranoia in the context of consumerism, advanced capitalism and terrorism.?

Thus Politics itself is being turned into a Divine Comedy- where Priests once again return to the centre stage with their divine aura and new marketing techniques to become the king-makers in the postmodern world. Prince and Merchants get into in to a new power-sharing. In the process, state becomes subservient to market, with the blessings of the Priest. Citizens are reduced to consumers or believers- who are ready to buy and follow, who are ready to kill themselves or be killed for their beliefs. When the citizens are robbed off their sense of agency, most of the “mass” end up as the puppets of the merchant or priests and they dance to tune of the prince. This dancing of “mass” –alienated from the sense of agency- to the tune of Priests – to the tune of new conservatism, fundamentalism and politics of exclusion- make a bad divine comedy of Politics. It makes a tragedy of democratic process.?

It is high time to reclaim the state and democratic process from the new avatars of the old nexus of Prince-Priest – Merchants. It is also time to ensure that the Bishops-Mullahs Swamis and Monks do not make a divine comedy out of democracy.

* John Samuel is a human rights activist and is currently International Director of Actionaid, based in Bangkok.

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