Sloganeering
Democarcy anywhere is a saga. If India is merely an electoral democracy; then looking at elections is the right place to understand it. Elections get widespread coverage in national media.
In the decade of 1950 when India started taking baby steps as a democracy, political symbols held a prime place. This was potentially due to rampant illiteracy. With increasing social and political awareness around elections political parties developed sophisticated tools to disseminate their messaging. There was a distinct era of abundant usage of each wall writing, pamphlets, posters, hoardings, news paper advertising, radio and tv adverts as tools. Now political parties have active campaigns on social media. Now, messaging is an important aspect of political campaigns and it all starts with launch of a slogan.
Election slogans have been there in every election. They are used to convey messages in to constituents in a lucid way. Its hard to imagine any election without them. Electoral politics becomes colourful with a catchy slogan (these days politicians invest in making a campaign song around it too), providing an easy access point to dialogue with constituents.
American scholars have studied slogans in the presidential elections and agree that slogans are deployed as a rhetoric tool, not meaningful in any way. The primary purpose of an election slogan is to lure the audience in, and then take them on a ride. The slogans in United States, are meant for you to agree; making sure you lose the debate at the onset if you question the intent of slogan.
With the exception of Eisenhower’s “I like Ike” and “I still like Ike” (Ike was his nickname), Every winning campaign slogan since 1948 is something you have to agree to. Kennedy’s slogan “A time for greatness” can’t be refuted. As an citizen/opponent you cant say that this is not the time to aspire for greatness. Yes, there can be a debate on how will this greatness will be achieved? But, if you ask this you have already given in accepting the debating frame of the candidate. It becomes easy for the candidate to debate on emotions associated with the word “greatness” rather than merit of his/her policies.
In India, the slogans of political parties take multi -dimensional approach. They target party, persons and in rare cases their opponents policy. Indian political parties tend to highlight failures of competition instead promoting their own visions. They don’t mean nothing, they have a target to attack and a segment to appease.
This approach has paid dividends, if you have been associated with election campaigns or keenly follow elections then you must have felt the importance of slogans in public debates. Indian political debates are breeding grounds of quirky, sarcastic and borderline funny slogans.
One common theme is to mock the opposition, using socially acceptable cliches. A point to ponder is why mocking is utilised very commonly in the slogans. The leaders of modern India have not shied from projecting them as the rescuer/leader of the masses. There is a certain tendency of glorifying one leader from the party in a particular election and slogans are reflective of this god’s complex.
There is a certain fascination for a rhyme scheme in most of the slogans; I guess is that it helps in popularity and memorisation. Well, that might be a bias as the slogans represented here are predominantly in Hindi.
Slogans of Indian politics easily lead to a observant voter ask why?, like take the slogan given by Jayprakash Narayan(JP) in his post emergency Janta party campaign against Indira Gandhi’s government “Indira Hatao, Desh Bachao” (remove Indira to save country). A voter could easily ask JP “why? Why should I remove Indira government to save country?” and then the reasons could be debated. The premise of Indian political slogans can be questioned without losing the debate. I feel this is healthy for our democracy, that its India’s politicians have not yet cracked the code of politically safe slogans as US politicians have done.
Understanding the evolution of election slogans is the key to sense the direction of a country’s political discourse. It tells a lot about the political awareness of citizens and the acumen of political parties there. I hope the deliberations of political parties on election slogan will strengthen. They will keep us influencing and surprising with their slogans.