The power of political symbols

Symbols have always been an important feature in the elections we have gone through in our part of the world. There is often the literary which comes associated with them. Again, some symbols are reflective of the state of politics which exists at a given time in a nation's history.

It is such a tradition which has been maintained in Bangladesh, always. That is to be observed in the ubiquity of the symbols through which the political parties have recently been doing all they could to draw voters into their orbit. The larger parties had, of course, little requirement of going from door to door to explain the policies they meant to undertake in line with their symbols should they win power. The problem is generally with the smaller parties, which must struggle really hard to enlighten the electorate on their perspectives on politics.

The boat, 'nouka' as we know it, has consistently been a representation of the Awami League, a symbol which certainly is in tune with Bangladesh's nature. In a land crisscrossed by rivers and possessed of poetry resting on endless paeans to the boat, to a crossing of the river, it is only proper that this traditional mode of transport will serve as the motif of the party's politics.

But that does not keep the Bangladesh Nationalist Party much behind the Awami League. A relatively young organization, the BNP has since its inception been making full and effective use of the sheaf of paddy --- dhaaner sheesh --- as its electoral symbol. Paddy, like boats, is a hearkening back to heritage. It is reflective of the delta that is Bangladesh, of soil which yields rice for a people whose lives are bereft of meaning without that bowl of steaming rice, or 'gorom bhaat', on the table or the mat as the case may be.

There have been instances where some wrong people have taken advantage of perfectly good symbols in their appeals for public support at elections. In the Ayub Khan era, elections were but a circumscribed affair in that not the entire adult population could vote. The regime was unwilling to believe that good governance could be ensured through an exercise of universal adult suffrage.

And thus was devised the Basic Democracy system, through which 80,000 Basic Democrats elected the members of the national and provincial assemblies as well as the president of Pakistan in a country of a hundred million-plus people. In the January 1965 presidential election, Ayub Khan chose the rose as his symbol as he went into battle with the elderly Fatima Jinnah.

If Ayub's supporters thought the rose would give off a mesmerizing scent for the country, Ms. Jinnah's supporters had a more literary idea. They chose for her the lantern, a powerful suggestion that Pakistan was in need not so much of the rose as of light in every hearth and every home. By that reasoning, the Ayub darkness could be put to flight by Fatima Jinnah's luminosity.

Ayub Khan's rose carried the day in however questionable a manner, but the lantern had conveyed its message to the electorate. At the 1970 elections, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto needed to give out a more pungent message to the people, which is when the sword became an important symbol for his Pakistan People's Party.

One could argue that the sword not only proved a useful instrument for Bhutto's politics to draw people to the polling centres but also, in the larger form of imagery, eventually served as a tool which effectively sliced Pakistan down the middle through the PPP's bad politics in 1971. In the twilight struggle between the Awami League's boat and the PPP's sword, the last laugh was the boat's.

In Bangladesh, the Jatiyo Samajtantrik Dal, once a machine which drew thousands of young men and women to what was seen by some as a revolutionary move in national politics, knew that the torch or flame or 'moshaal' would speak volumes about its brand of politics. In the early 1970s, as the JSD's leaders mounted a spirited challenge to the ruling Awami League, it was the torch they put to purposeful use.

It is of course another matter that through the twists and turns of history, the moshaal regressed, lost its fire where passing on electrifying thoughts to the country should have been. Not many are enthused about the JSD or its fiercely burning flame today. But, then again, much a similar sentiment is out there about the hut, or 'kurhe ghar', symbol of Professor Muzaffar Ahmed's National Awami Party. In all these years since the liberation of Bangladesh, the NAP has remained stunted in form and appeal. Little wonder that the hut has not been heard of or seen of late.

The Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) is these days effectively on the fringes of politics in West Bengal, with no one able to predict its re-emergence into sunlight. That, however, does nothing to keep the party going with the hammer-and-sickle as its symbol. Every time one spots this symbol anywhere in West Bengal, one cannot but pass into nostalgia about the red flag being a call for unity among the world's workers. The sadness is in knowing that the flag and the hammer-and-sickle are there, minus the communism which once was the promise of the future.

Political symbols are a fast route to an understanding of the myriad messages disseminated by political parties. In Bangladesh, the bicycle, inkpot, crescent-and-star, weighing scales, kites, chairs, pigeons, tigers, locks and a host of other images have been employed at elections.

But few of these can outpace or outbid the plough, or 'langol' in local parlance, employed by the Jatiyo Party, in popular appeal. The plough, like the boat and the sheaf of paddy, are in sync with national culture. That tells us something of our tradition, which is that Bengali politics must be rooted in the soil.
And symbols are a pointer to how deep such roots are or could be.


The writer is Editor-in-Charge,
The Asian Age