"Blood will have blood": A Study in Indian Political Ritual

“BLOOD WILL HAVE BLOOD” A Study in Indian Political Ritual Jacob Copeman Abstract: This article considers the significance of the incorporation of blood donation as a widespread feature of commemorative political rituals in India. It places the rituals in the context of the current campaign in India to replace paid with non-remunerated donation, and explains how this campaign has led to the circulation of a store of ethical capital that the ritual organizers endeavor—through these blood-shedding commemorations—to capture for political ends. It is argued that there is nothing purely political about memorial blood donation—that its performance relies upon certain established religious themes in order to achieve political efficacy, and that this works both ways. The article highlights the role of blood donation in facilitating bodily transactions across and between different temporal locations, and finishes with a case study that demonstrates the risk involved in these rituals of remembrance. Key words: blood donation, death, Hinduism, India, kingship, memory, ritual, sacrifice Introduction This article examines blood donation in the context of its inclusion in public political rituals in India. Blood giving is a pervasive feature of commemorative ceremonies held to remember dead politicians, and is also enacted in other anniversary ceremonies such as those held on politicians’ birthdays. Hansen identifies what he calls a “proliferation of political performances at all levels of public life” in India (2001: 230). Attention is paid to the incorporation of blood donation as a crucial attribute of these performances, particularly those held on politicians’ death anniversaries, and to the ways in which ‘ethical’ and religious Social Analysis, Volume 48, Issue 3, Fall 2004, 126–148 A Study in Indian Political Ritual 127 imperatives figure in political and public life in India. It is proposed that that these rituals represent a compelling conjunction of bodily mnemonics and highly structured temporal maneuverings, and that their performance is motivated both by a desire to ‘worship’ deceased political figures and to secure the desired political futures of the ritual organizers and participants. It is acknowledged at the outset that this is a preliminary exploration of Indian commemorative ritual, based largely on media reportage. It is an account then, not so much of what people actually do, but of what they say they do, and what the media reports them to do. Background The deployment of blood donation as a principal attribute of political ‘ritual marketing’ capitalizes on the practice’s status as ‘ethically admirable.’ Through being seen to encourage or perform it, politicians and political parties can acquire ‘political merit.’ Like the child kissed by the politician in political rallies, blood donation is too much of an inviting and expedient store of symbolic and ethical capital to be overlooked by politicians who need to be needed.1 These commemorative blood-shedding events are recent innovations performed largely to accumulate the ethical capital, ripe for political extraction, that a recently formulated ‘ethical campaign’ to encourage voluntary blood donation has afforded to these practices. The Indian government’s aim of eliminating paid and family replacement donation—forms of donation held to put recipients at risk2—has required an increase in voluntary donation. A set of campaigns for this purpose has been fitfully in existence since the mid-1990s, with little coordination between different centers of blood procurement. Social marketing initiatives have appeared and quickly disappeared. The aim, though, has been clear: to counter popular reluctance among all sections of Indian society to donate voluntarily. The reasons for this reluctance are complex and manifold, but stated briefly, blood was and continues to be seen by many in South Asia as a repository of strength, its loss understood as weakening (Starr 1998: 186). Equivalence between semen and blood is a prominent theme in South Asia generally (cf. Alter 1994, 1999; Parry 1994: 214). Fear of impotence, linked to issues of strength, has been depicted as a critical reason for people’s unwillingness to give blood in India (Vicziany 2001). Parry’s informants in Banaras held that a man should ideally drink milk after sexual intercourse ‘to replace what he has just discharged’ (1994: 202). I was told several times by both donors and doctors in Delhi (2004) that some donors in north India similarly seek to replenish their extracted blood by drinking milk. This, added to Parry’s data, again points to an important association between blood and semen loss that negatively affects people’s willingness to give blood. Blood has additionally been described by anthropologists as a particularly defiling substance in South Asia. As Bayly writes: “[T]hroughout India bodily 128 Jacob Copeman secretions, especially blood, semen, saliva and human wastes, are thought of as being charged with a form of power and energy which may be both menacing and protective” (1989: 127). If the belief that, along with food (Appadurai 1981; Dumont 1966) and cloth (Bayly 1986), “detached parts of the body … can be conduits of spiritual and personal qualities” (Laidlaw 2000: 629), were to coincide with deeply held investments in certain differentiations, as it does, for example, in the ideology of the caste system, then practices of blood donation and transfusion might imply “moral entanglement” (ibid.) of the highest degree. Vicziany, however, argues forcefully in reference to colonial medical interventions in South Asia, that these ideas “vanished in the twentieth-century quest for longevity” (2001: 383), that “revulsion” toward these substances has been “overcome,” indeed, that “there are no cultural obstacles to the development of world class blood banks in contemporary India” (ibid.: 286). Vicziany is largely correct that ‘purity and pollution’ issues are not significant barriers to blood collection. At the same time, however, ‘traditional’ beliefs in “the transforming power of blood” (Bayly 1989: 264) in India should not so easily be dismissed. Donors do on occasion construct themselves as agents of purification. This is the case especially in Hindu and Sikh revivalist organizations like the Nirankaris and Radha Soamis, which arrange regular and impressive blood collection events throughout India. For many in these groups, the blood they donate as part of seva (service) remains a significant means of transmission and diffusion where, usually it is their professed love for others, enacted in donation and contained in the substance, that is being extended, possibly effecting changes in the recipient other than merely physical.3 There is also an emphasis in recruitment lectures and materials in the national capital Delhi on blood donation as a means to “take care of thyself” (Rabinow 1994: xxv)—one should donate to purify one’s body, to expel one’s aged, “senile blood,” in the words of one blood bank director, so that the work of new, purer blood formation can be assisted. Experience in Delhi suggests this view has attained fairly wide currency.4 The director’s claim, of course, potentially renders recipients as being in receipt of ‘polluted,’ or ‘senile’ blood. The theme of accepting the donor’s ‘sin’ or impurities as an effect of the donor’s daan (donation) is certainly prominent in South Asia (Parry 1994; Raheja 1988). For some, blood donation is a chance to purify their bodies; for others it is an opportunity to purify or positively affect others in a manner that transcends the gift’s official purpose. Purity and pollution issues are thus present in the Indian blood donation scenario, but not in ways that necessarily hinder collection. Fieldwork experience in Delhi (2003–2004) suggests that the main factors inhibiting donation, at least in that region, are (1) widespread fear of strength loss from giving blood (often expressed in the Hindi phrase khuun kii kami, meaning ‘less blood’), an expectation at odds with modern medicine’s stress on blood’s rapid self-replenishment, and (2) a tendency to consider blood giving as worthwhile only when there is a specific object in mind (like a relative in need, as in family replacement donation). In the examples to be discussed below, blood is given on a voluntary basis (materially it goes to anyone), while A Study in Indian Political Ritual 129 at the same time, on an emotional level, it is directed at the specific personality whose death anniversary or birthday is being celebrated. In this way, the desired ‘centrifugal’ material trajectory of blood donation (from being given to someone in replacement, to anyone in voluntary giving) is buttressed by the centripetal foci of these events (the persons being celebrated or remembered). The voluntary blood gift’s route to m/any depends on alternations in directional perspective from many, to one, and then again to many. A specific object is relied upon to facilitate the abstracted gift. The second objection that I outlined—reluctance to donate without an immediate object—is ameliorated by this model of specificity within abstraction. In his history of the reception of Western medicine introduced to India in the colonial era, Arnold (1993: 58) contends that the British viewed this medicine’s introduction as a way of not just curing bodies, but also superstition. In the current ‘ethical campaign,’ the latter is held to be indispensable to fulfillment of the former. The recent National Blood Policy (2003) calls for a “great awareness campaign” to encourage non-remunerated giving; it thus aims to “decommodify the commodity” (Tober 2001: 157). Dr. P. Srinivasan, director of the Jeevan blood bank in Chennai, prominent in this motivational campaign, “aims at [the] creation of a culture of donation … the culture of helping somebody.”5 In order for this giving, caring ‘culture’ to be ‘created,’ however, creation must go hand in hand with destruction: the ‘culture’ of superstition must be removed in order for the ‘culture’ of donation to flourish. For example, Dr. Kum Kum Sharma, head of transfusion medicine at the Government Medical College in Jammu, asserts that “a lot still remains to be done and there is the need to remove misconceptions about blood transfusion which can help in giving life to another.”6 This ‘ethical’ alliance requires that the mind “shed its old content as the new is poured in” (Macfarlane 1997: 23); there should be an emptying out of currently held “internalities” to be replaced with a new set of “internalities,” “externally” provided (cf. Strathern 2002). What medical professionals refer to as the “tremendous task” of recruitment and retention of voluntary donors “for adequate and safe blood supply,” necessitates “a massive communication campaign aimed at involving all sections of society in building a reliable transfusion system.”7 To achieve these bold aims, “techniques of social marketing” (Das 1999: 104) are employed as a component of “ethical publicity” (Cohen 2001: 9). The media is enrolled in order to provide “institutional advertisements” (Bharadwaj 2000: 70) for the campaign, but its role is more multiplex than that. As Addlakha (2001: 153) has demonstrated in relation to a recent outbreak of dengue fever in Delhi, the media assumes a special importance during medical ‘crisis’ situations, performing the multiple roles of “commentator, communicator, educator and watchdog.” It is through the media that a particular public discourse is constructed that formulates blood donation as an idiom for the articulation of ‘ethical’ and patriotic citizenship (cf. Addlakha 2001: 154). My purpose here is not to describe in detail these techniques of social marketing, but rather to locate the ethical campaign’s significance as principal 130 Jacob Copeman generator of the ethical capital which political parties now seek to convert into political merit via commemorative rituals. A key point in this regard is the designating rhetoric employed by exponents of the campaign which makes much of the ‘singularity’ of donors: one is concurrently selfless (because one donates for others) and singular (people can make themselves unique this way and acquire distinguishing ethical capital: “A blood donor has no equal” is a slogan on Red Cross posters in Delhi). One could say that the more ‘selfless’ someone is the more they attain the status of exemplary individual. For example, the umbrella Web site for blood banks in Delhi states that the “desire to share something of oneself is what singles out a blood donor from the others” (my emphasis).8 At the same time as campaigners exhort people to act ‘selflessly’ for the good of ‘society’ and ‘community,’ those that do act ‘selflessly,’ according to their definition, must be afforded recognition in special schemes for the purpose—awards,9 temple privileges,10 extra marks at school,11 etc.— that is, homage is paid to their personal particularity as distinct persons (cf. Mines 1994). The framing here is in terms of individuals, but ‘framing’ produces ‘overflows’ (Strathern 2002: 260); the ‘ethical’ recognition afforded to individuals can be ‘captured’ for other purposes. Following Mazzarella’s discussion of “cultural enclosure” in which publicly circulating narratives are imagined as a form of “symbolic commons” over which corporate promotional rituals (adverts, etc.) attempt “to proclaim exclusive ownership” (2002: 388), we begin to appreciate why—despite the fact that many Indians remain reluctant to donate blood—political parties now compete with one another for the available ethical capital through the organization of gargantuan blood collecting feats. That is, ethical capital generated in one domain for the purpose of encouraging voluntary donation (mainly through appeals to ‘selflessly’ donate which simultaneously depict acts of donation as a means for the self to reach its apotheosis), overflows into a more demonstrably political domain when, in acts of ritual marketing, parties attempt to enclose the available ethical capital for their own ends. In parallel, both blood and ethical capital are extracted in these events. A prefatory note is required to explain what is meant in the following by ‘experiential time’ in the context of blood donation: transfusions facilitate the possibility of the continuation of lifetime, defined here as experiential time. Blood is transfused largely in order to avert death so that the patient is able to continue their lifetime. The experiential time resulting from transfusions is a form of time that more than any other is “contingent on the significance of death” (Greenhouse 1996: 21). Blood incorporation thus creates ‘extra’ time in the senses of both ‘additional’ and ‘situated outside.’ As ‘extra-corporeal’ means situated outside of the body, so the ‘extra’ experiential time enabled by donated blood is a time ‘outside’ of common experiential time because differently appreciated; that is, it is a time that substitutes for deathtime—a form of nottime—a ‘time’ that, on the experiential level of the person, would not otherwise have been. A Study in Indian Political Ritual 131 Political Extraction Strathern (2001: 7) remarks that the “enchantment” of New Ireland ritual art objects called malanggan is achieved “through the technique by which the form simultaneously extends into past and future while holding it all in a single moment in time and space.” Proceeding from this statement helps immediately to locate a significant aspect of the social efficacy of blood donation as it appears in these political rituals. This quality of an instant or object being able to draw different dimensions toward itself will be supplemented in this article with a focus on identification. I argue that the blood shed (donated) in commemoration becomes identified with the blood of the person being commemorated. In being identified (usually, but not always) with the blood of a dead person, the blood holds the past within it. In being propelled into the veins of others in order to produce experiential time for them—enabling continued lifetime in others—it simultaneously holds the future within it. I aim to demonstrate the significant political and social consequences of these coterminous, oppositional temporal extensions being enfolded together within ‘blood donation’ in these contexts. The two most prominently ‘remembered’ politicians in these rituals are Indira and Rajiv Gandhi, both assassinated. They are remembered as martyrs who shed their blood for the nation. Two Sikh members of her security guard shot Prime Minister Indira Gandhi dead on 31 October 1984. She had estranged a large part of the Sikh community after government troops had stormed their most holy site, the Golden Temple in Punjab, in an effort to flush out secessionist ‘terrorists’ that the temple was apparently harboring.12 She was succeeded by her son Rajiv, who was ousted from office in 1989 after allegations of corruption. He was killed on 21 May 1991 by a suicide bomber who approached him under the guise of offering him a garland of flowers. The assassination was considered to be a revenge attack by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE); murderous retaliation for Rajiv’s decision in 1987 to send Indian troops to Sri Lanka to help the Colombo government crush the LTTE.13 These terrible acts of assassination, of wasted life, can be transmuted (converted) via these rituals into ‘sacrifice’ because out of their death, others will now live.14 From destruction, creation; their deaths become meaningful. The donated blood thus becomes identified with the blood shed by the politicians. Indeed, part of the power of blood donation as a political tool is acquired through the analogy it creates with other kinds of blood shedding. There is thus a parallel here with Frazer’s concept of sympathetic magic (1922: 14–63), which hinges on resonance between similar entities causing one to have influence over the other: “[T]he magician infers that he can produce any effect he desires merely by imitating it” (ibid.: 52). Religious rituals in India, in particular, Hindu rituals, contain identification between worshipper and deity as a central theme and objective (in puja), and as in these blood donation enactments, identification is reinforced subsequently after puja through transferal and incorporation of substance (prasad). I argue, therefore, that the power of these ceremonies 132 Jacob Copeman relies upon themes that are central in Hindu ritual; and if one were to disagree with this article’s contention that the ‘logic’ of puja and prasad informs the conduct of political rituals discussed in this article, I would argue that the comparison nevertheless retains validity due to a resemblance of function between the practices that is mutually illuminating. In her last speech before being assassinated in 1984, Indira Gandhi strikingly associated her blood with the health of the nation. Her blood would continue to nurture the nation even after her death: “I was attacked with pistols and also with lathis [wooden stick used as weapon in India]. Here at Bhubaneswar I was attacked with brickbats. All sorts of attacks were made on me. I am not worried whether I live or die. I have lived a long life and if I am proud of anything it is that I have devoted all my life to the service of the people. Of this I am proud, and not of anything else. And so long as I am alive it will be for the service of the people and even when I die, I can say that each drop of my blood will keep India alive, will make India strong.”15 In 2002, eighteen years later, newspaper articles such as the following almost make the association between blood sacrifice and blood donation, but not quite: “The late prime minister Indira Gandhi sacrificed her last drop of blood for the sake of the nation, Transport Minister Ramanath Rai said speaking at the death anniversary of the late prime minister here on Thursday.” Then follows a list of her achievements. The article concludes: “As part of the death anniversary, the DCC [municipal authority of Mangalore] held a blood donation camp at Moodabidri in collaboration with local Congress party units yesterday.”16 If the blood donated were to be identified and made consubstantial with the blood sacrificed, then such practices could be interpreted as a literalization of her statement—her blood continues to keep India alive. If, however, such an association did not inform the motivation, conscious or unconscious, of the event organizers, it remains the case that the event and the blood shed in the course of it, do not merely represent, but actively possess “the agentive capacity of the deceased” (Gell 1998: 227). Indira Gandhi continues to be ‘socially effective,’ but in objectified form. The blood shed in donation concentrates in its physicality and tangible effects the dispersed agency of the remembered politician. Political parties and other organizations affiliated to them (youth wings, etc.), also stage mass blood donation sessions to mark the birthdays of live politicians. In Mumbai on the seventy-sixth birthday of the leader and founder of the Shiv Sena political party Bal Thackeray,17 members of the party “riding on an elephant, distributed ladoos, fruits and uniforms to schoolchildren and organized blood donation camps all over the metropolis.”18 As part of a “cultural-patriotic extravaganza” on the birthday of former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, the BJP political party19 in Delhi arranged a photo exhibition to display the government’s achievements, and a blood donation camp that it was claimed would be repeated every week in order to “ensure there was no shortage of blood in the city.”20 These events serve to accumulate valuable ethical capital for political parties. The commitment of the organizing group to A Study in Indian Political Ritual 133 ‘society’ and ‘nation’ can be expressed in this highly visible manner, in a bodily idiom that unites inscription and description—bodily inscriptions of civicmindedness one could call them. On the level of the personality being celebrated, these rituals are analogous to the death anniversary donations discussed above in relation to Indira Gandhi. They “spatio-temporally extend” (Gell 1998: 229) the name and fame of the celebrated person—and not only that, the blood that is symbolically identified with that personality (the mechanisms through which this occurs are described later), literally creates life in others. This extension of celebrated and remembered persons into the bodies of others occurs additionally in rituals organized by fans on the birthdays of film stars. One such film star is Chiranjeevi, here described by his fans: I do not worship him as a hero, I worship him as a great human being as he has the ability and inner motivation to reach out to the poor and needy just like Mother Teresa … His fans, being young and energetic, should take his spirit forward and help the society become a better place. When we started meeting Chiranjeevi fifteen years back, we used to tell him how we decorated theatres and how we celebrated the success of his films. He used to pat us and encourage us. But Chiranjeevi changed his outlook in the past four years. When we meet Chiranjeevi now and tell about the records and theatre decorations, we don’t see that interest in him anymore. But when we tell him about the deeds of our trust and blood donations we see a sparkle in his eyes. Chiranjeevi called us to Hyderabad in 1998 on the eve of his birthday. We carried out a procession from the YMCA where Chiranjeevi donated blood first and then all of us donated blood.21 There is much of interest here. Connerton interprets commemoration in terms of re-presentation, i.e., “to cause to re-appear that which has disappeared” (1989: 69). Both he and Gell (1998) are at pains to stress that what is represented is present in that which represents it such that the representation becomes literal re-presentation. The fan describes the processional recreation of the first time the film star donated, and in the light of Connerton’s remarks, we might describe this as a making contemporaneous of temporally divided events. This is suggestive in light of the political rituals in which I argue for an identification between the blood shed by the celebrated person and that shed by celebrants. The expression “take his spirit forward” is also important because it points to the way in which the agency of the film star is expanded and disseminated through the actions of his followers, and that the followers might see it in this way too. This holds for both birthday celebrations and death anniversaries. Congress activists similarly conduct blood donation events in order to take Rajiv Gandhi’s “spirit forward” through drawing forth his continued agentive capacity and distributing it into the bodies of others so that he gives life even in death. Just as the fans are able to “take the spirit forward” of Chiranjeevi through distributing the blood symbolically identified with their hero, so too Congress members, in the words of Delhi’s Chief Minister Sheila Dixit, 134 Jacob Copeman “aspire to live his [Rajiv’s] dream” through the organization of blood donation events.22 There are numerous examples of such rhetoric. According to one organizer of a commemorative blood donation camp, the “best way to pay tribute to Rajiv Gandhi is to follow his path in nation building and therefore Youth Congress has been organizing blood donation camps for the last two years.” It is a “mission that signifies Rajiv Gandhi’s vision for humanity.”23 Deified Politicians The example of Chiranjeevi is particularly illuminating because of the repeated use of the word ‘worship’ by the fan. This points toward connotations of worship as a further dimension of political blood donation commemorations. As Congress spokesperson, Anand Sharma, asserts of Rajiv: “He is being remembered with respect for his martyrdom. We observe this day religiously, without any political motive.”24 That is, the blood donation event is a form of worship: Rajiv Gandhi has been deified.25 Now let us examine Fuller’s (1992: 48–49) description of ‘little deities’ in India. Most little deities in India have a nondivine origin, unlike the great deities such as Shiva and Vishnu who have always been divine. Prominent types of little deity are those who have died gloriously in battle. These are often known as viras, though they have various names and titles in different regions. The existence of little deities exemplifies the absence of a clear distinction between the human and the divine in popular Hinduism (cf. Gold 1987), and they are, Fuller says, widely worshipped as powerful beings all over India (see Mines 2002 for some vivid examples). Rajiv and Indira Gandhi are both people who are seen (by Congress members especially) to have heroically sacrificed themselves for the nation, and at the very least, I assert that they illustrate the truth of the absence of an unambiguous human-divine distinction. The ‘little deities’ that Fuller describes are most usually worshipped with blood offerings in animal sacrifice. This form of sacrifice is still common in Hindu village temple rituals, and in the cities of West Bengal (Samanta 1994; Shulman 1980: 91). That gifts of blood are made in other contexts than the blood gifts of modern political ritual forces us to engage more precisely with the structure of the identification that I am arguing for between the ‘bloodstreams’ of different temporal locations: it is possible that blood donations in commemorative ceremonies are gifts (sacrifices) to these deified, ‘martyr’ politicians— gifts that augment and enlarge the perceived ‘vision’ of the remembered person. Such a dynamic might appear to jeopardize the process of identification between the blood donated by persons, and the blood ‘sacrificed’ for the nation by the deity-politician: the end result is the seeming paradox that the blood offered to the deity is also that which becomes identified with the deity’s own blood (despite putative “momentary equalization,” anthropologists tend to view sacrificial gifts as denoting separation because transferred between “two parties”; see Strathern 1988: 361n). But this is actually not paradoxical in the A Study in Indian Political Ritual 135 least—the blood given to the deified politician elicits a kind of counter-gift which is the same blood as initially given, but now divinely invested, i.e., identification occurs between the blood of different spatial and temporal locations. Rather than disrupting consubstantial identification between the blood shed by the celebrated persons in sacrifice and the blood donated by celebrants, I argue that it is this dynamic that facilitates the identification. The forging of identification is important because it is the unique aspect of the ritual. I have established that the agentive capacity of the celebrated person is evinced in the donation events under discussion: their ‘projects’ are carried forward. However, this capacity is evinced in many ways, not only through blood donation. As Gell makes clear, the connections and traces of ongoing agency left behind by the deceased are multiple and varied—in the Melanesian example that he gives, gardens, wealth, houses, and future organizations and adjustments are all scattered in various locations, continuing to effect growth and change (1998: 225). Blood donation events are only one way in which this occurs—in the case of Indira Gandhi, Aids awareness events are held in her name,26 the Indira Gandhi Children’s Institute conducts rural pediatric camps,27 and so on. This all continues her presumed ‘project’ and represents her ongoing agentive capacity. It is, however, the process of identification in commemorative blood donation that heightens and makes unique this continued agentive capacity—the blood of the celebrated persons creating life in others in spite of (because of) their deaths. It is this identification between the blood of different temporal locations that distinguishes blood donation from the multiple other attachments and connections of the deceased. This identification can be elucidated through an examination of the popular Hindu rituals of puja and prasad consumption. Puja (worship) has been widely characterized as the central ritual in popular theistic Hinduism, consisting of “the worshiper’s reception and entertainment of a distinguished and adored guest … it can also create a unity between deity and worshiper that dissolves the difference between them” (Fuller 1992: 57). The deity as image is cared for, often by being undressed, bathed, dressed again, fed, and garlanded. It is also gazed at. This ‘vision’ (darshan) of the deity is reciprocated so that there is “exchange of vision” (Eck 1981: 6). The power of the deity is absorbed visually. Fuller describes the process in terms of the deity “coming down” to the human level, and the human “going up” to the divine level, in order for there to be identification (1992: 72); Logan describes puja as a process of “embodying the image and disembodying man” (1980: 123). As Fuller explains, consumption of prasad supplements this identification as a kind of sequel to puja: “Prasada is the material symbol of the deities’ power and grace. During puja, different substances—ash, water, flowers, food, or other items—have been transferred to the deity, so that they have been in contact with the deities or, as with food, have been symbolically consumed by the deity in its image form. As a result, these substances have been ritually transmuted to become prasada imbued with divine power and grace, which are absorbed or internalized when the prasada is placed on the devotee’s body or swallowed” (1992: 85). 136 Jacob Copeman In photographs accompanying news articles describing political blood donation commemorations, large pictures (images) of the remembered persons are visible, reinforcing the earlier observation that they may be identified as akin to ‘little deities’—deified politicians. As is the case for deity images in puja, a statue of Rajiv Gandhi was garlanded at a blood donation event on the twelfth anniversary of his death in 2003, and a portrait of him “was taken in a procession in a jeep” after the “reading out of excerpts from religious books.”28 Tarlo remarks that Indira Gandhi would give daily darshan to her followers at her prime ministerial residence in New Delhi; and on a recent tour of the residence which has become a kind of Gandhi dynasty museum and memorial, Tarlo was told by the director that most of the (very many) visitors “‘think of her as a goddess [devi] and want to see the place where she was killed … they really consider her a goddess’” (Tarlo 2003: 51–52). An absolute human-divine distinction is clearly not present in these examples. I am not arguing, however, that blood donation actions as part of commemorations for Indira and Rajiv Gandhi are unproblematic instances of the rituals of puja or prasad, but that traces of their logic underpin the conjunctive structure of the inclusion of controlled blood shedding (donation) in political memorial rites. Blood donation becomes a kind of analogical “sacred repetition” (Mann 1981: 49), a “reanimation of prototypes” (Connerton 1989: 62) which positively reinterprets the blood shed by the deified politician in sacrifice—the blood shed in donation causing life rather than death. Blood donation in these events, like puja, is a process of identification between worshipper and deity, identification being capitalized on through the transfer of substance that is divinely imbued. As in blood sacrifice to the ‘little deities’ that Fuller describes, the blood that is identified with the deity is also an offering to them; the ‘counter-gift’ is the divine investment of the blood, a reinforcement of divine identification. What has been in contact with the deity in these rituals gets ‘consumed’ by the transfusion recipient, a prasad ‘moment’ that consolidates the transfer of divine power and grace.29 Blood is certainly not excluded from being a legitimate form of prasad. Fuller, for example, notes that the blood of animals is consumed as prasad in West Bengal (1992: 89). In a study of goat sacrifice to the goddess Kali in a Calcutta temple, Samanta (1994: 790) explains that “the blood of the immolated animal is described as ‘ambrosia.’ Drinking this is believed to confer immortality … worshipers may smear the blood from the post directly onto their foreheads in the region of the ‘center of consciousness’ in a perceptual mode of ingesting the qualities of what is now ambrosia.” The ingestion of blood as prasad is described as “transfusing” the worshiper with well-being (ibid.: 791). This example also stresses the striking temporal effect of blood ingestion: longer life (experiential time), to the extent of immortality. The goddess Kali is indeed ‘Time’ itself. The worship of Time as a god in some parts of India makes the study of transfusion as the creation of experiential time additionally interesting: if blood transfusion ‘creates’ time, transcending the normal vicissitudes of temporal ebb and flow, the goddess Kali also is Time Transcendent (cf. Samanta 1994: 781). As in blood transfusion, the ingestion of her prasad ‘transfuses’ well-being and perpetuates A Study in Indian Political Ritual 137 experiential time in the recipient-worshipper.30 It is ‘time’ too in the sense of its reanimation that is conferred upon those being remembered (the dead politicians), whose blood continues to circulate in the veins of others—others (recipients) who are given ‘extra’ life (experiential time) as a result of these politicians’ continued agentive capacity, as objectified in blood prasad. Temporal transactions are facilitated by transactions in substance; blood here the material analogue of the temporal dimension. Transactions of substance between the living and dead are an important Hindu ritual theme that bears strongly on the rituals under discussion. Parry’s (1994) description of pinda-daan, the giving of various substances to the dead, is particularly germane here. Reminiscent of death anniversary blood donation, certain of the pindadaan should be offered on the anniversary of the death (1994: 203), and both idioms are, as Parry says of pinda-daan, “explicitly transactional” (1994: 191). As part of post-cremation mortuary rites in Banaras, mourners give to the deceased substances such as rice, flour, and milk, and receive substance/sustenance back from them in the form of bountiful food and progeny (1994: 191). Furthermore, “the symbolism of consuming the body of the deceased is quite transparent at various … points in the ritual sequence” (ibid.: 195). As part of the same sequence, pinds are given to the deceased as offerings to relieve the debt of the living to them, but also to construct a new body for the departed: “Bhringraj leaves give [the new body its] blood, the wool gives it hair and resin makes its vital breath” (ibid.: 196). Thus, not only is food given, bodily substances such as blood are given too. The central correlation between Parry’s description of pinda-daan for ancestors and mine of blood for deceased politicians is that in both cases ‘transactions’ of substance with the dead take place: first, substance is offered to the remembered political figure or ancestor; and second, substance of the dead is consumed by the living (mourner, transfusion recipient, or donor, in the case to be discussed below). In both instances, the paradox of self-consumption emerges: as Parry asserts, “Since … the pind [is conceptualized as] the bodily substance of the departed, there would seem to be some sense in which the deceased eats himself” (ibid.: 195). Similarly in blood donation, what is offered to the ancestor, it can be argued as a result of the identification processes I have outlined, is the ancestor’s own blood. These parallels suggest that donated blood can potentially be understood as a transfigured form of pinda-daan that has been brought into the political arena. This will become clearer with an example. I was told by a BJP politician in Delhi (2004) that several years ago, the RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh—Association of National Volunteers, coordinating body of the Hindu Right in India) held a donation camp in Amritsar on India’s Martyrs’ Day (23 March), the day on which in 1931, Bhagat Singh and his fellow freedom fighters were hung by the British and cremated in Ferozepur, Punjab. At this camp, donors received, post-donation, a tilak of dust that had been brought in a kalash31 from Bhagat Singh’s cremation grounds on the bank of the Sutlej in Ferozepur. The dust that donors received on their foreheads materially embodied the ashes of the martyrs. I cited earlier Samanta’s description of 138 Jacob Copeman the forehead as the location of the perceptual mode of ingestion. The smearing of the martyrs’ ashes on the foreheads of donors who had offered the martyrs their blood, is explicitly like the consumption of prasad, donation an act of puja. Transaction of substance takes place with the dead that accords with pinda-daan. Those that offer the martyrs their blood-substance in turn consume the body-substance of the martyrs.32 The purpose of the mortuary rites Parry describes is to transform the ghostly departed into ancestors. The purpose of blood donation in political settings is to reinvigorate the political life of the deceased politician-deity in order to reinvigorate the political life of the organizing party—this via the medium of ‘reinvigorating’ transfusion recipients. Substantive transactions with the dead facilitate and organize ongoing lives and progeny, whether understood in political or personal terms. I continue to probe the form of this transaction in the following discussion. Royal Politicians Having identified processes of the deification of politicians and the role of puja and prasad, a further key theme which develops aspects of the transactions under discussion is that of royalty. There are strong linkages between deities and royalty in India (Bayly 1989: chap. 1; Fuller 1992: chap. 5).33 The argument that certain politicians are in a sense deified logically implies further associations with kingship, and indeed I now seek to demonstrate that there are significant connotations of kingship in the instances under discussion, and that memorial blood donation enactments can partly be explained by revisiting classic anthropological studies of kingship in which the deaths of monarchs are perceived to rejuvenate life in others. I argue that the dead politician and the blood-collecting political party each attain a form of life, or animate existence, through dependency on the other, and that the third party—the recipient—in being given life, in turn confers life on those that have given them life in a reciprocally structured triangle of life-giving and death-overcoming. The political party ‘excavates’ deceased political figures, channeling them in objectified form into the veins of others. It is through the giving of life to others that these figures attain life; the gift entails simultaneous receipt. The deceased are thus resurrected in order that the party can in turn be resurrected into healthy political life through acquiring the ethical (electoral) capital extractable from publicly visible blood giving. These dependencies, and the transactions of animate existence that they cause and require, will be elucidated through a discussion of kingship and its continued relevance in Indian life. First, a note on auspiciousness and birthdays: the birthdays of kings are widely held to be quintessentially auspicious in popular Hinduism (Fuller 1992: 126), and “the probability that any venture will succeed is enhanced by starting at an auspicious time” (ibid.: 242). The Blood Donors Council in Punjab instantiate this logic in planning their donation events: “Under its blood motivation A Study in Indian Political Ritual 139 drive, the Council has been organizing blood donation camps on auspicious occasions like birthdays, gurpurbs (a Sikh guru’s birth or death anniversary), and melas (religious festivals). It has been organizing camps at Ananadapur Sahib and Khatkar Kalan on the occasion of Hola Mohalla (an annual Sikh festival in the Punjab) and the martyrdom day of Bhagat Singh, respectively.”34 The Blood Donors Council in Punjab defines both death anniversaries and birthdays as auspicious, and hence, to use Fuller’s terminology, the “success” of the blood donation “ventures” will be “enhanced” by being initiated on such days. If royal birthdays and anniversaries are held to be archetypal, exemplary auspicious occasions, we can legitimately infer that blood donation events on politicians’ birthdays or death anniversaries tacitly acknowledge the ‘royal’ status of the personality in whose honor the events are conducted. Politicians in the southern state of Tamil Nadu are depicted in murals and newspaper advertisements in royal apparel, and are frequently addressed as royalty (Bate 2002: 318). Additionally, various descendants of royalty are the now democratically elected political incumbents of territories their ancestors formerly ruled,35 clearly indicating one way in which royal status continues to figure within ‘democratic’ politics. More suggestive still is Indira Gandhi’s self-conscious portrayal of herself and her family in monarchical terms: “I don’t come from a royal family but we have acquired the status by our dedicated service to the nation, by sincerity of purpose and hard work” (cited in Chatterjee 1999: 81). Chatterjee describes the Gandhian “dynastic succession” in terms of “democratic monarchy” (ibid.). The first Indian prime minister after independence was Jawaharlal Nehru, succeeded soon after his death in 1964 by his daughter Indira Gandhi. Her youngest son Sanjay, responsible for many of the authoritarian measures of control undertaken during the 1970s Emergency (Tarlo 2000), was presumed her heir apparent, but was killed in an airplane accident in 1980. Indira thus turned to her other son Rajiv for grooming as her “legitimate successor” (Chatterjee 1999: 81). After her assassination in 1984, she received “the full ritual grandeur of a royal funeral,” as in “some ancient Hindu monarchy” (ibid.: 98). Rajiv and the rest of the party took it for granted that he would “succeed” to leadership of the Congress Parliamentary Party (ibid.: 96). These observations can be linked to anthropological studies of the symbolic and physical deaths of kings where such deaths are held to be temporary, the king being seen to return from a liminal place as a “strengthened rejuvenator of himself and others” (Gledhill 1994: 145). It is legitimate here to propose a parallel with commemorative blood donation, in which the dead person, on a certain level being identified with royalty, does indeed ‘return’ to rejuvenate and restore ailing life. Certainly, in reference to the Congress Party in 1984, the shedding of Indira Gandhi’s blood meant that she “had acted as their savior, miraculously transforming what looked like a precarious electoral prospect into one in which the ruling party had only to romp home to a new term in office” (Chatterjee 1999: 98). The shedding of her blood—her death—thus gave life to the party. And now, the shedding of blood symbolically identified with hers in donation practices gives life not only to the recipients and to her 140 Jacob Copeman (objectified in the blood of others), but potentially to the failing political party (see note).36 Let us agree that ‘life’ is animate existence stretched out over experiential time. In reference to the death of kings in Africa, Heusch (1997: 216) hints at a transactional logic that relates to the exchange of animate existence: “In the end it is the power of giving life, inherent in the very body of the king, which is recovered at the point of death” (my emphasis). In a similar fashion, Indira Gandhi is given life (reanimated) that she may restore the life of those that give her life. I am proposing, therefore, that the conjunction between the ‘sympathetic magic’ that creates resonance and identification between different spatiotemporally located blood-streams via puja and prasad, and the strong connotations of structural isomorphism with aspects of royalty, suggests a particular exchange logic, whereby political commemorations give the deceased foci of the rituals life in death, in order that these resurrected foci (Indira and Rajiv Gandhi) might in turn give the political groups that organize the commemorations life in death. A compelling conjunction of various heterogeneous constituents structure and inhabit the political rituals under discussion: kingship, worship, mortuary rites, and sacrifice work here both as explanatory devices for the anthropologist and as principles that inform the logic of these occasions. The Risk in Ritual Marketing I have sought to demonstrate that to treat the ‘political’ and the ‘religious’ separately here would be to leave unexplained the way that each serves as a source of power for the other—religious ritual is perpetuated and made fit and relevant for public life in these altered forms as a result of these political occasions, occasions that acquire a heightened identification between the blood donated and the blood of the original sacrifice, through being informed by the religious concepts of puja and prasad. I now elucidate further the political purpose of memorial blood donation by way of a concluding cautionary tale that refers to donation events sponsored by the Congress Party in 2003 to commemorate the death of Rajiv Gandhi. These events draw attention to the political and ethical capital that is meant to result from these rituals, and on their risky nature, and remind us that these performances are a form of what I am calling ‘ritual marketing’: designed for an audience of ‘political consumers,’ they are staged as a form of political merit-making. Howe reminds us that “there is always something at stake” in ritual performance: “Because the outcome cannot be known in advance, success and failure … are contingent” (2000: 67). The political ‘end’ of these death anniversary commemorations is the accumulation of ethical capital. This very ‘political’ motive does not, I repeat, preclude the ‘genuine’ religious worship and ritual elements that are at work and which give power to the political expression of the commemoration—as Howe asserts, “rituals … may have several aims” (2000: 75). A Study in Indian Political Ritual 141 Asserting that “the best way to pay tribute to Rajiv Gandhi [on his death anniversary] is to follow his path in nation building,”37 in 2003 the Andhra Pradesh Youth Congress (APYC) attempted to surpass all previous records in blood donation.38 In 2002, according to APYC president Venkata Rao, they “managed to gain an entry in the Limca Book of Records, but it was rejected by the Guinness Book of Records for lack of proper documentation … This time, the YC had taken care to file all the documents, affidavits, videos and photos of the blood camps.”39 It seemed that in 2003 everything had been done to militate against the “risk of incorrect performance” (Howe 2000: 69), so that due recognition would be granted to their amazing blood collecting feats. The key ritual props of affidavits, videos, and photos would aid proper inscription of these acts and thus not inhibit due recognition as their absence had done the previous year. Collection fever was also manifested on the national level. It was claimed that “blood would be collected from 35,000 donors all over the country, which would be a world record. From Karnataka, blood would be collected from over 3,000 donors.”40 Specifying the precise ritual intention prior to its carrying out, however, leaves little room for innovation or for explaining away results that may differ from the stated intention. In Andhra Pradesh, on the twelfth death anniversary of Rajiv, it was reported that “a total of 5,558 activists donated blood to various government and private hospitals.” This, the APYC immediately claimed, “had beaten the record in blood donation held by the American Red Cross/University of Missouri [which] collected blood from 3,539 persons in a day.”41 There are shades here of a modern, mediatized variant of potlatch—the creation of lasting debts to effect one’s own superiority (Godelier 1999: 56). Also germane is Das’s observation that resorting to “the politics of numbers” is a currently prevalent means of attempting to build public trust (1999: 110). Newspaper articles that emerged in the week following the ceremonies, however, stated that the APYC “has recommended action against its presidents in five districts for not properly organizing blood donation camps on Rajiv’s death anniversary.” A spokesman said that the Khammam and Anantapur Youth Congress wings “failed to organize even a single blood donation camp despite reminders.”42 The Karaikal Youth Congress leader was suspended for failing to participate in the party’s blood donation program.43 Thus, a scheme that was designed to enhance the status of the party, to show its commitment to society and nation and its ability to mobilize its activists for a quintessentially ethically admirable cause, ended up resulting in inglorious and rather humiliating headlines such as “Karaikal Youth Cong. leader suspended”44 and “Youth Congress for action on its presidents.”45 Rather than mobilizing and motivating the nation for a noble cause, the party failed even to mobilize and motivate many of its own local leaders to organize donation camps—the party became its own opponent, and was symbolically toppled by the forces that it itself had released.46 142 Jacob Copeman Conclusion This cautionary tale of a ritual that was meant to accumulate ethical capital putting the organizers themselves on trial clearly underlines the status of blood donation as a pliable practice that is deployed for the purposes of political meritmaking. Political parties that need to be needed can be seen to engage in what a Delhi-based cardiologist describes as “the most pious of all the donations, serving society in a big way.”47 A way to worship and pay homage to deceased political figures, blood donation literalizes the perceived ‘visions’ and ‘dreams’ of the celebrated persons; distributed in the schemes named after them, the social efficacy of the deceased is impelled forward and made ‘ongoing.’ Blood donation becomes an aspect of the development of India, of nation building. The ex-corporation of blood is thus the simultaneous and demonstrable in-corporation of certain key values such as the primacy of selfless service and sacrifice for the nation: “[T]he sign and the flesh are one” (Haraway 2003: 17). Designed for an audience of political consumers whose support is required for future political success, the past event of political assassination is reinvented as sacrifice in the present—a form of creative remembering that seeks to instantiate desired political futures. Not only is present blood extracted in donation, but blood shed in past sacrifices is additionally extracted from the past (through processes of identification) in order to circulate in the present— this confers life on the dead politician whose animate existence is objectified in the blood of present donors. The propelling of blood-substance between the dead and the living shares a structural affinity with aspects of pinda-daan in which transactions of substance are also made across differentiated temporal domains. And, like divine kings whose deaths manifest more fully their life-giving propensities, the politician partakes of an exchange logic in which the object of transaction is animate existence: in being given life, the deceased politician in turn gives life to recipients in the form of the experiential time that they are granted (analogous to ingestion of ambrosial blood prasad from the goddess Kali), and life is restored too, it is hoped, in the political party which accrues ethical capital and political merit. The exchange is immediate: the restoration of life for recipients and political party is, in the same instant, the restoration of life of the dead politician that restores them. There is thus reciprocal recuperation of animate existence. The excavation of past events as a function of the “futurial orientation” (Weiner 1999: 250) of present ritual organizers and participants, indicates that, at least as far as these rituals are concerned, “Past, present and future are strung together, as it were, on the thread of the wish that runs through them” (Freud 1959: 148). Acknowledgments My thanks to Susan Bayly for very helpful comments. The article also benefited from referees’ insights. I am grateful to the Economic and Social Research Council for financial assistance. A Study in Indian Political Ritual 143 Notes 1. “Need to be needed” derives from Battaglia’s usage (1995: 10) in a different context. ‘Ethical capital’ is adapted from Bourdieu’s ‘symbolic capital’ (1985, 1986; and see Cohen 2001). For an elaboration of different forms of ‘capital’ (economic, social, and cultural being primary), see Bourdieu (1986). Distinctions wrought by other forms of capital become meaningful only through the mediating function of symbolic capital which causes certain social positions to be “recognized as self-evident” (Bourdieu 1985: 204). 2. It is global public policy orthodoxy that voluntary, non-remunerated blood donation is the safest form. It is not without its critics however. Titmuss’s (1997) is the most widely cited—and contested—critique of paid donation. His view is supported by WHO and the Red Cross, but challenged by Schwartz (1999) and others. See Eastlund (1998), Los and Sibinga (2001), and Vicziany (2001) on these debates. 3. Devotional blood giving by Nirankari and Radha Soami group members is a key concern of my current research. The Nirankari organization, in particular, has incorporated blood donation as a key tenet of its theology and ritual. Parallel to blood donation directed at politicians, devotees give to fulfill the wishes of the ‘living saints’ that preside over the movement. On ‘saints’ in India, see Gold (1987). On the Radha Soamis, see Babb (1987). 4. These assertions form one side of a debate taking place within the Delhi blood banking community: should donors be figured as selfless (altruistic) in recruitment materials, or should appeals be made for them to donate on the basis of donation as a form of self-enhancement? 5. http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/2001/07/31/stories/0431401y.htm 6. http://www.dailyexcelsior.com/02oct31/state.htm 7. http://www.ambedkar.org/News/News071202.htm 8. http://www.bloodbanksdelhi.com/content/WhyDonateBlood.htm 9. http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/2001/07/31/stories/0431401y.htm 10. http://www.indianexpress.com/ie/daily/19980812/22450484.html. 11. http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/2003/08/15/stories/2003081501660500.htm 12. Chatterjee (1999) provides an interesting discussion of Indira Gandhi’s final year in office. 13. http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/COL158907.htm 14. Parry (1994: 186) articulates several techniques used by mourners in Banaras, Uttar Pradesh, to convert ‘bad’ (untimely) deaths into ‘good’ deaths. 15. http://www.top-education.com/Speeches/IndiraGandhi.htm 16. http://www.deccanherald.com/deccanherald/nov02/d2.asp 17. Until 2003, Thackeray was the leader of the Shiv Sena (Shivaji’s Army) party that he founded in 1966. It was begun as a vehicle to promote the interests of the Marathi-speaking population of Maharashtra, but in the 1980s, turned to “rabid Hindu communal rhetoric” (Hansen 1999: 162). The Shiv Sena epitomizes the politics of violence and has engaged in numerous anti-Muslim pogroms. Hansen describes the Sena’s public spectacles of violence, as “the very generative and performative core of its being” (2001: 65). Hansen’s (2001) is the definitive study of the party. 18. http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/2003/01/24/stories/2003012405121100.htm 19. The BJP, or Bharatiya Janata Party (Indian People’s’ Party), was founded in 1980 and is affiliated to certain right-wing Hindu groups. It headed the National Democratic Alliance coalition that was ousted from office in the 2004 elections. On the BJP, see Jaffrelot (1996); Hansen and Jaffrelot (1998). 20. http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/cms.dll/html/uncomp/articleshow?artid=32338672 &sType=1; http://www.tribuneindia.com/2002/20021226/ncr3.htm 21. http://www.idlebrain.com/community/utopia/. This is not an isolated instance of fans donating on behalf of their idols. See, for example, http://www.screenindia.com/ 20000922/50b.htm. 144 22. 23. 24. 25. Jacob Copeman http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/cms.dll/html/uncomp/articleshow?msid=47060175 http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/cms.dll/html/uncomp/articleshow?msid=47112107 http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/cms.dll/html/uncomp/articleshow?msid=47060175 Bate provides an example from the south of India of politician deification. He cites poetry published in Tamil newspapers directed at Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalitha, e.g.: O Auspicious Leader Whom we worship daily … Every movement of your tongue Results in beneficial development schemes. (2002: 308) Bate views these remarkable poems as belonging to the Tamil tradition of bhakti (devotional love) in which devotional poetry is written to personal deities. 26. http://www.konkandaiz.com/LN_3110news.html 27. http://www.deccanherald.com/deccanherald/jun06/spt6.asp 28. http://in.news.yahoo.com/030522/54/24hxh.html 29. Religious identification between blood streams differently located in time and space can also be found historically in Western contexts. In 1667, a Bachelor of Divinity at Cambridge University received the blood of a lamb in order to better his character and personality, for he was a “debauched” person, “cracked a little in the head.” When asked why he had been given a lamb’s blood, he replied: “Sanguis ovis symbolicam quamdam facultatem habet cum sanguine Christi, quia Christus est agnus Dei”(Sheep’s blood possesses a symbolic relationship with the blood of Christ, since Christ is the lamb of God) (Saunders 1972: 12). 30. Parry (1982: 80) cites a reported instance of the blood of others being seen to confer immortality. He notes that “the Guardian newspaper (Thursday, 6 March 1980) reported the death in police custody of an old ascetic who was living on a south Indian cremation ground and who was suspected of the sacrifice of five children whose blood he collected in bottles for the performance in rituals by which he sought to attain immortality.” 31. A kalash is a brass or copper urn, sometimes adorned with vermilion or mango leaves and worshipped as the embodiment of Vishnu. 32. This memorial blood collection was highly successful, according to my informant, inducing great fervor among devotees who exceeded all requirements of the local blood banks. The dust tilak was, in a sense, very fitting. Bhagat Singh as a young boy of fourteen is said to have gathered soil from Jalianwala Park where, in 1919, the British massacred over four hundred people. Collected in his lunch box, it was “sanctified by the blood of the innocent and kept as a memento for life” (http://www.kamat.com/kalranga/itihas/sbsingh.htm). Political parties in India wrestle over the powerful legacy of Bhagat Singh, seeking to co-opt it for themselves. The camp took place in this context, and can partly be held to represent the RSS staking their claim. 33. See also Peabody (2003) on precolonial Hindu kingship, and compare to Dirks (1987). Laidlaw (1995) discusses kingship in relation to Indian Jain communities. Another classic study is Dumézil (1973). 34. http://www.tribuneindia.com/2000/20000628/punjab.htm#9 35. The Congress MP for Guna constituency in Madhya Pradesh is Jyotiraditya Scindia; he is also the region’s ‘Maharaja’: “[A]sking for votes may be a democratic exercise, but Gwalior’s Maharaja is no plebian, even to his electorate. He is the king to his subjects. The world’s biggest and most thriving democracy still uses such feudal means to get its mandate” (Times of India, 7 May 2004). 36. The Congress Party was considered for many years after independence the natural party of governance. However, the Party sat in opposition from 1998 until its surprise election victory in 2004. It had become widely distrusted as a result of repeated allegations of corruption and A Study in Indian Political Ritual 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 145 mismanagement (Jaffrelot 1996: 433). For differing anthropological perspectives on corruption in India, see Gupta (1995) and Parry (2000). http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/cms.dll/html/uncomp/articleshow?msid=47112107 There is a long history of youth organizations in India acting as dynamic vanguard ‘fronts’ for political parties and other organizations. A notorious example is the Bajrang Dal, the militant youth wing of the Hindu supremacist organization, Vishwa Hindu Parishad (World Hindu Council). http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/cms.dll/html/uncomp/articleshow?msid=47617357 http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/2003/05/20/stories/2003052002690400.htm http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/cms.dll/html/uncomp/articleshow?msid=47617357 http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/cms.dll/html/uncomp/articleshow?msid=47208507 http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/2003/05/24/stories/2003052405560300.htm Ibid. http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/cms.dll/html/uncomp/articleshow?msid=47208507 This sentence paraphrases Howe (2000: 77). http://www.tribuneindia.com/2001/20011002/ldh1.htm References Addlakha, Renu. 2001. “State Legitimacy and Social Suffering in a Modern Epidemic: A Case Study of Dengue Haemorrhagic Fever in Delhi.” Contributions to Indian Sociology 35, no. 2: 151–179. 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