Can listening transform Indian politics? Rahul Gandhi thinks so

Rahul’s approach, rooted in concepts of “heteronomy” and “self-annihilation”, challenges traditional power dynamics.

Rahul Gandhi listens to children during the Bharat Jodo Yatra, in Makthal in Telangana’s Narayanpet district on October 27, 2022. | Photo Credit: NAGARA GOPAL

For dialogue,

first ask,

then… listen.

From Proverbs and Songs by Spanish poet Antonio Machado

In a conversation at Texas University, Dallas, on September 9, opposition leader Rahul Gandhi touched on some key principles of his politics that hold much promise for the future of Indian democracy. I want to unpack some of the ideas he mentioned in this illuminating meeting.

Rahul shared his current conclusion that for a political leader, “listening is more important than speaking.” The act of listening as a political act, according to Rahul, is more important than speech. He introduces the idea that the relational aspect of politics demands that the political actor has a more other-centric than self-centric attitude. It is only by listening to the people that you can better understand their woes and concerns, and learn what your real political task is.

Speaking about the high points of the Bharat Jodo Yatra, Rahul shared his unique realisation that when he was in the yatra, it was “speaking on its own”. This is to admit that the language of his self was dictated by a heteronomous force, where others spoke through him. To allow the force of heteronomy to work upon you is the opposite of the idea of the autonomous self.

Autonomy is the key modern principle to define individual freedom that includes freedom from harm. In the discourse of autonomy, the power of heteronomy— a force that dictates the self from the outside—is understood to be dangerous and risky. But in the sphere of relationality, the affective self cannot escape the lure of heteronomy. Rahul understands it as a part of political responsibility. If you claim to be a political leader, you need to go out of yourself to merge with the larger force, or movement that surrounds you and experience how much you can absorb the world. To allow the world to speak through you brings a sense of intimacy with the people.

Rahul referred to his slogan that has taken on a life of its own: “nafrat ke bazar mein mohabbat ki dukaan” (in the marketplace of hate, open a love store). He revealed he can’t be credited for it. The slogan came from a man who desperately wanted to cross the rope and reach Rahul, but the police disallowed him. Rahul wanted to hear the man and looked for him, but he had disappeared. He reappeared shortly and, pointing a finger, told Rahul in Hindi, “I know what you are doing. You are opening a love store in the marketplace of hate.” The man was the source of the slogan. The yatra produced the encounter that threw up verbal and gestural possibilities, and Rahul responded to them by absorbing them and making them his own. Rahul interpreted the yatra as an embodied force that produced numerous voices (and “sentiments” as he put it) and he realised his task was to add his own voice to those voices that were speaking to him.

Rahul went on to define the “job” of the political leader, and of politics itself: “To listen to sentiment, to understand sentiment deeply, [and] to give it to other people.” He used the word “transmit” to convey that he was transmitting the voices of the crowd he interacted with in the course of his yatra and he shared those voices with the people of the country. Rahul remarkably saw himself as a transmitting body who was acting as a bridge between two audiences, the one that he physically encountered during the yatra in real time and space, and the other that inhabited the heterogeneous, empty time of the nation (to use political scientist and historian Benedict Anderson’s phrase).

This transmittance is, however, made possible by listening deeply. It is by allowing the heteronomous force of the people to reach you that you are able to create a larger political force. With fine humility, Rahul told the audience that he was not the centre of this grand process at work. He was more of an instrument, a transferring machine, who helped that grand voice to emerge in the public sphere. Rahul reverses the idea of the populist leader who creates the representative fiction that he is the voice of the people. Rahul‘s claim is the opposite: he sees himself as a quasi-ventriloquist who reproduces the voices of other people.

Rahul Gandhi at the University of Texas, in Dallas on September 9, 2024 | Photo Credit: ANI/AICC

Rahul next brought in his idea of “self-annihilation”. He made the point that Mahatma Gandhi had destroyed his sense of self (“there is almost a destruction of the person taking place”, in Rahul’s words). His explanation of the phenomenon of self-annihilation takes us to the root of heteronomy: “[The] person is actually dying, and the voice of other people is taking over.” The argument is, you must lose your sense of autonomy in order to recover the voice of the other, and make that other voice speak through you. In theoretical terms, the withering away of the autonomous self (or, subject) is necessary for the arrival of the self that practices the politics of listening. It gives way to a movement that takes you away from self-centric fears and ambitions and makes you aware of the feelings of others. It suggests a politics of altruism, or politics as altruism.

Rahul traced the genealogy of the idea of self-annihilation from the figure of Ram, to the Buddha, to Mahatma Gandhi. All of them preached by example, what Rahul called, “the destruction of identity”, or “the destruction of the self”. It is this act of destroying the idea of self-identity that allows us to connect to others. The “I” in identity is tendentious rather than definitive, and introduces a paradoxical element into the constraints of identity. Rahul finds the curbing of identity opening up the route towards the ethical gesture of listening to others.

In a radical move, Rahul explains that Mahatma Gandhi’s politics was an “attack on himself”, just as the Bharat Jodo Yatra was an act of damaging the self. Rahul seems to suggest, a politics of self-annihilation (a politics that in his words “goes inwards”) alone allows ethical thought and action in politics. This act of replacing autonomy with heteronomy is not reckless or unthoughtful. It comes from “understanding” as Rahul emphasised, the sentiments you are paying attention to and making your own. There also exists a strong element of empathy. The active art of listening to others is Rahul‘s definition of a new politics.

The writer is the author of Nehru and the Spirit of India.