Valson Thampu

It is at once inadequate and inaccurate to dismiss the irrepressible PC either as a political gimmick, or as a communal vaudeville, or as a special brand of entertainment. He is none of these. Why else would he have such a widespread appeal to people of different hues and dispositions? Even those who won’t vote for PC might applaud him.
The truth about PC is that he is more a socio-cultural type than a political personage. He is our quintessential ‘mass-man’, which is not quite the same as being a demagogue. A mass-man is one of the masses; or, one who is in himself the mass. That is why PC strikes you often as in himself a crowd. He is many, like the demon-afflicted man in Gadara. This is often mistaken as PC’s idiosyncratic conduct or Quixote-like tilting against authority. He tilts also, when it is opportune to do so, also victims, as in the Franco Mulakkal rape case. PC behaves as a crowd does when squeezed into a single human body. Here’s how it works-
Can you win an argument against PC? You can’t. Why? Not because he is immaculate in facts, irresistible in his oratory. In both respects, he is pretty mediocre. PC is to politics what Arnab Goswami is to journalism. Both are crowds conducting themselves as individuals. Or, they are individual-as-mobs, for which a neologism like ‘mobidulas’ may have to be coined. You can argue with them if you can converse with a hysterical crowd.
It is hilarious, therefore, when journalists recall instances of PC’s political summersaults, overlooking the fact that PC is a creature of the moment, as a mass is. Expect consistency from him, if you can expect a crowd to be consistent over a period of time. All mobs are ad hoc. None endures for long. In Julius Caesar, Shakespeare demonstrates how a mob can be made to act in self-contradictory ways within minutes.
I find PC fascinating for the insights he affords into what it takes to be human. This involves choosing between two possible options. The first is to subject to be under the demands of one’s ‘higher’ or noble self. The second is to serial eruptions of one’s lower self. In the former one makes high demands on oneself; in the second, one expects everyone else, except oneself, to be bound by such obligations. Put in the PC-mode, this distinction could read: you are either a mass-man, or a perfection-oriented person.
Now we are in a position to ask: Why does PC appeal to so many among us, even when he embarrasses us with what he does and says? The answer is simple: he is more visibly and successfully what most of us secretly likes to be. If we don’t conduct ourselves as he does, it is because we would get into serious trouble, if we tried.
Like PC, most of us feel secure only when we belong to some organized mass or the other: a people-group, a faction, an ideology, a denomination, a sub-culture, etc. Like PC, not many of us want to be constricted by any consistent commitment to principles and ideals. We too are, in our own ways, shape-shifters and colour-changers. Survival, not being at one’s noblest, is our innate priority. PC is not one who will make high demands on himself. He leaves such high fundas to others?
A familiar characteristic of the mass-man is zeal. His zeal is not based on any enduring personal conviction. It is contextually-induced fervour; or, fervour on account of when or where one happens to be. We are, say, Catholics, Marthomites, Methodists, and so son; so, as religious mass-men, we’d be zealous when the parochial interests of our churches arise, unmindful of whether or not they run counter to the teachings of Jesus Christ. We feel awkward to act like thinking individuals. Similarly, ask not PC what politics should mean. He will give you a mouthful, and dismiss you as a fool. The substance of his zeal depends on what he covets at the given moment and in which camp he happens to be. I am not sure, if I am quite unlike him in this respect.
Those who do not know this basic aspect of the freedom that the mass-man enjoys, now compare the speeches that PC made in the past from PFI and SDPI podiums with the incendiary speech he made at the Hindu Convention in Trivandrum recently. They do so with relish as though it would embarrass PC. No, they’d only embarrass themselves. In PC’s case, there needs to be no correspondence between his SDPI-edition and the Sangh Parivar-avatar. I won’t be surprised if the two PCs met, they punched each other on the nose.
Is this a rare phenomenon? I’m afraid, it isn’t. In the last five years, I have had hundreds of my fellow Christians weep over my shoulders about the decay and disarray in our churches. But not one of them would talk the same, much less walk the talk, where or when they should. Why are we afraid to be true to ourselves? Why can’t we be consistently ourselves wherever we are? So long as we dare not, the terrible fascination that PC has for us will remain. PC is our alter ego, liberated from our taboos and inhibitions.
It is only too obvious that he is making gambling investments in shoring up his sagging political fortunes. He wants to survive. Who doesn’t? We too do. The contexts vary; but the goal remains the same. We can’t disown PC. He knows it!