In our culture we are quite familiar with two types of crowds–religious and political. Religious crowds are both closed and open. So are our political crowds. A closed crowd occupies an enclosed space while the open one is in the open air and is open to all those who wish to join it. The former can be forbidding and the latter inviting. The closed crowd is usually stationary as we can witness it in some religious congregations and secular gatherings. An open crowd can be both stationary and moving. But there can also be exceptions.

Elias Canetti, in his monumental work Crowds and Power, says about the open crowd: “The natural crowd is the open crowd; there are no limits whatsoever to its growth; it does not recognize houses, doors or locks and those who shut themselves in are suspect”. About the closed crowd, he writes: “In contrast to the open crowd, which can grow indefinitely…. The closed crowd renounces growth and puts the stress on permanence. The first thing to be noticed about it is that it has a boundary. It establishes itself by accepting its limitations. It creates a space for itself which it will fill…Once the space is completely filled, no one else is allowed in.” The boundary may be visible as well as invisible.

In our context, things may not appear as clear-cut and neat as described by Canetti. Specific historical conditions make each culture unique in the sense that despite sharing broad features with other human cultures, it has its specificity, certain characteristics that define it and distinguish it from others. Traditionally, one of important expressions of dynamics of our political life has been the mass political gatherings organised by political parties in open spaces or public grounds. The practice continues. But over the last few decades, something new has come up; rallies and marches. Some political marches have pompously been declared ‘Long Marches’ which appears farcical as it evokes the images of the history’s greatest and the toughest long march led by Mao Zedong, lasting more than a year that paved the way for the Chinese Revolution in the twentieth century. Compared with it, our so-called long marches have been joyrides, at least for the politicians who led them. The march here reflects the will of a top political leader and its execution by his minions called party leaders through mobilisation. Party leaders are beholden to the head honcho for the reason that they are not elected by party workers as internal structures of political parties is non-democratic. Party elections, if and when held, are sham. Party office-holders are nominated directly or through rigged elections. No leader worth the name exposes such trickery as it suits all the panjandrums.

How this so-called long march is organised is worth looking at. Party leadership, another name for a rubber stamp, endorses the leader’s decision, which is a thinly concealed whim, and decides to embark on a long march to press the federal government to accept its demands or redress its grievances. The party leaders, office-holders, cadres are instructed to mobilise the people. Each one is given a task with the view to bring them onto the road. The party leaders, especially those who are active in electoral politics and those who have made it to the parliament on the party tickets, are ordered to dish out funds required for the success of the march. Colossal sums are needed for transportation, food, special vehicles and security arrangements etc. Thus the marchers form an open crowd. People can join in or slip away. The downside of such a crowd is, says Canetti, “The open crowd exists so long as it grows; it disintegrates as soon as it stops growing.” In political parlance it means ‘to gather momentum’. The leaders’ worst nightmare is the fear of loss of momentum which results in a dispersal.

To retain the momentum, two contradictory approaches to the problem are adopted; accelerating the pace of the march or slowing it down. Remember the 2007 march? A popular leader made a dash for the Grand Trunk Road leading to Islamabad, political workers and people thronged the route and within hours the demand for the restoration of sacked judges was accepted by the federal government. The pace did the trick in a way. The government’s courage faltered at the prospect of huge charged crowds marching on the capital.

Another long march recently hit the same road led by another popular leader. Due to the myriad reasons the pace of the march was deliberately slowed down. The incumbent government in the capital seemed in no mood to accede to the demands. It was rather baring its teeth and growling. Now the leader of the march faced a real dilemma: if he marched on, he would not be able to force the authorities to accept his demands deemed unconstitutional by his rivals and if he slowed down, the crowds would start dispersing. This was exactly what happened. When it slowed down, it stopped growing. The moment it stopped growing, it dwindled.

Tendency to disperse is inbuilt in the open crowd, says Canetti as quoted earlier. But the open crowd on the march that becomes stationary loses its steam. Once that happens, the crowd becomes much less in its inner strength than what it was before. The loss of a dream premised on the assumption of success makes the crowd inert for the time being at least. An old Punjabi adage describes in another manner the gathering and dispersal of a crowd: behold a wedding party in its splendour when it arrives, not when it departs.— soofi01@hotmail.com

Published in Dawn, November 7th, 2022