George Orwell could not have been more right about the games kings and would-be kingmakers play. He wrote, “We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now you begin to understand me.”
This is the real anatomy of power stripped of all verbiage and pretension. In moments of vain hope, Mahatma Gandhi said that “the day the power of love overrules the love of power, the world will know peace”. This hasn’t yet happened and will not certainly come about in the foreseeable future as the love of power is eternal, fiercely possessive and also a universal yearning of all genders. If the power of love has to flourish in our world, we need another planet and start all over again. No matter how we disguise our intent to work for the benefit of mankind, the real driver is the quest for power. Let’s not mistake that about politics and even all relationships.
Power has a direct correlation with fear; fear of the unknown, the unseen and the unheard. They all have a latent presence in every human bosom. These are conditions of a state of mind and their effect is variable. By contrast, the fear of the known, the seen and the audible is also a reality that is experienced daily. For power to sustain and perpetuate itself, these cumulative fears have to be nurtured and used by all those who seek to acquire and wield power as a vocation. The when and how of the engagement is another matter. History of mankind is full of such narratives that were initiated at the instance of monarchs, or their courtiers or an ambitious invader who covets the wealth of another kingdom or even the friends of the ruling cliques. Time after time has shown that a kingdom can be brought down by the duplicity of one’s friends rather than the hostility of the enemies. This holds true for our family businesses, corporate worlds and governments of all leanings, be they Left or Right, democratic or authoritarian. One noticeable fact in such narratives is that they often begin in a fake and unverifiable stream of innuendos. Fakeness is a much maligned art but has seemingly beneficial effects, in the power games, at least in the short term.
The famous Harvard economist, Prof John Kenneth Galbraith in his book Anatomy of Power, had sought to classify power in three types: “Compensatory power in which submission is bought, condign power in which submission is sought by making the alternative sufficiently painful, and conditioned power in which submission is gained by persuasion, money, force and ideology.” What has been added to this lethal cocktail is the abundant use of deceit in gaining power and then legitimising the gains by a thick coat of noble sentiments camouflaged in a language that sounds like music to the ears of the gullible.
The world appears to have become a murky place since the power games began. Might has been right as the pre-eminent law of the jungle. Some of us thought that the civilising influences of education, laws of nature supplemented by the laws of the state would have made this world as one of ethical and honest engagement. Nothing could be further from reality. Giving or taking one’s word at face value is heretical. Even the written word is reneged. The pursuit of power has been structured as a series of spectacles designed to dazzle, charm and beguile. Deals under the table, so to speak, or stabbing in the back are another name for being smart, savvy and looking after the interests of oneself. The catch phrase for the current times is not trust but trust albeit verify. This holds true for friends and foes alike. The Trumps, Bolsanaros, the Erdogans and the like everywhere are proliferating making this world a more dangerous place than ever.
Politics has perhaps always been dirty, except its seamy side was limited to its participants. Despite the emphasis on the integrity of the means to achieve desirable ends, the ruling norm is about all being fair in love and war. We are now witness to the use of fair or foul means to achieve the pivots of power in government, the military, religion and the media which have become the play centres of the competing interests, individuals or in groups. Masses are merely the pawns of manipulations. At any rate rulers in ancient times never told truth to their people and it has got worse in our times because the fourth estate, the only one to ask questions and speak truth to power, has become complicit not in holding back but in spreading the lie. It is really this that has made the contest for power an organised hypocrisy.
Going forward, will we all be anonymous footnotes in the power games that are now deeply stratified in human interactions around the world. This direction will lead to every strata getting further solidified, then calcified because of its innate rottenness to become a relic in the course of time, for historians to read the fossil remains to see how power games end. The glory will be of the survivors and the follies will be of the losers and the dead. It is time to turn the clock back and listen to just one Gandhian edict: Means are important as much as ends. Empires, conquerors and scalawags alike have been consigned to extinction. Only nobility of thought and action should inspire the present. Perception disguises are as good as masks and will fall off in time, sooner than later.
The writer is former director, India Habitat Centre, and a former civil servant who writes on public issues.
