Making
the Multitude for Binding the Empire Mark:
3: 27
(Sermon preached at the Dharma Jyoti Chapel on 24th January, 2017)
When
democracy becomes aristocracy and the trumpet for the reign of the Empire, what
do the common people sing? When the judiciary and the legislature become the proponents
of the Imperial nationalism that distinguishes patriots and terrorists, where
do the citizens go for their rights and self-respect? When the media sings the music
of neo-capitalism and its liturgy of market, whom do the Aam Admi trust to safe
guard their commonwealth like natural resources, art, sport, and culture? According
to Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, in the emerging situation of the global Empire,
the common man has only one way out, that is, to make themselves multitude.
Multitude
is a not just a crowd. It is the political subject with radical social
consciousness that has the power to shape its destiny and change the world. Multitude
is not a cadre political organization. It is not based on a specific political
ideology. Multitude is a multiplicity which happens spontaneously in the
fields, streets, campuses, and sea shores. It appears and disappears. It is a
process of resistance and celebration. It dismantles the distinction between
public and private; ideology and art; politics and aesthetics. The postcolonial
theologians like Jeorg Rieger and Kwok Pui-lan affirm that “the multitude in
many parts of the world has risen up again and again to call attention to
exploitation by transnational corporations, unequal trade agreements, unfair
labor conditions, destruction of the livelihood of small farmers and poor
people, governments that work for the highest bidder, a lack of democratic
decision-making, and suppression of political dissent.”[i] Multitude
appeared as the Muthanga Land struggle of Adivasis and Dalits in Kerala few
years before, the Wall-Street Occupy movement in US, Pembila Orumai (unity of
women) women struggle in the Munnar tea plantations in Kerala, Una struggle of
Dalits and subalterns in Gujarat last year, University students’ protests in
various university campuses against the state sponsored terrorism in India and
at last in the form of the Jelikattu stir in Tamil Nadu. The people’s
organization against the ban on Jelikattu became the common platform for the
students, women, farmers, the fisher people and the others who raise various
concerns of economy, culture, and politics; but the rallying point is the
demand to respect the Tamil sub-nationality which has denied in the emerging
context of uniform civil code and cultural code by Sangha Parivar forces. Multitude
as we see in the Marina Jelikattu stir is a radical political resistance of the
‘governed’—the citizens of this country as it encounters the Empire in all its
walks of life.
Biblically
speaking, the multitude is the movement from demos to laos or ochlos. Demos refers the assembly of the privileged citizens in Greco-Roman
world, out of which the word democracy comes. In the imperial period, democracy
was aristocracy—the assembly of the privileged. The laos or ochlos means the
common people, the scattered, the under privileged within the boundaries of the
Roman Empire. Becoming multitude is to become a radical political subject that
denies the biopolitics of the logic of Roman imperialism. The gospel according
to Mark particularly shows a rhetorical solidarity to the multitude who try to
redefine themselves in the Roman imperial context. Markan Jesus is an ardent ideologue
of the multitude. In Mk 6: 34 we read: And
Jesus came forth and saw a great multitude, and he had compassion on them,
because they were as sheep not having a shepherd; and began to teach them many
things. Jesus sat with the multitude, for the most
part outside the established institutions, in fields, on mountains and by the sea
shores. Multitude is not just a crowd; rather a political process of
resistances. As the Wall Street protesters said: “it is not a protest. This is
a process.” Multitude is the process of exorcising the Empire from human bodies,
political bodies and social imaginations and envisages a new democratic
habitation—the messianic kingdom.
1. Discipleship as Making
the Multitude
In
Mark 3:1-35, Jesus is portrayed as the messiah of the multitude. The messianic
consciousness of Jesus is emerged in the collective imagination of the
multitude. It is expressed as the healing of the diseased, the exorcism of the affected
and resurrection of the dead. It is re-imagined as the coming of the kingdom
over against the imperial establishment of death. The appointment of the
disciples legitimizes Jesus’ goal of being with him in the process of exorcising
the Empire from the all the fields of human life. The success of the Empire is set
in the process of enslaving human bodies and social imaginations. In the
contemporary context, this is done by the judiciary, legislature, the executive
and the media—the four pillars of our democracy and the global market—the fifth
pillar in the present neo-liberal context. The social life of the common man becomes
abandoned and rejected and their anxieties are rallying against the Empire in
various layers of civil life.
For
Jesus, invitation to discipleship is nothing but the invitation to enter into
the process of resisting the Empire and celebrating life of freedom and
justice. It is to live in a counter imagination of civility. Discipleship is a
process of becoming multitude by fostering the anti-imperialist imaginations in
minds and bodies. Discipleship, for Jesus, is to become a wider political
subjectivity. This has been clearly explained by Jesus when he responded to the
question ‘who is my mother and brothers.’ For Jesus, it is those who ‘do the
will of God’ will be called his mother and brothers (31-35). Church as the
crucified body of Jesus Christ who in-operated the biopolitics of the Roman
imperialism on the cross and thereby envisaged a ‘radical assembly of multitude
to come’—the coming community demands an introspection from the part of the
church today to be/become an anti-imperial community of the messiah.
2. Discipleship as Binding
the Empire
In
Vs 22-35, Jesus is alleged by the High priests and Pharisees that he is
possessed with Beelzebub—the ruler of the demons. Jesus told them that an
Empire cannot be destabilized by another Empire. Because, Empire itself is a
de-stabilized system. It is a system of lawlessness within. It is a violent
system of torture and torment. It is an unethical system that violates the
rights of the weak. When democracy becomes the liturgy of the Empire, how can
it be an establishment of hope. Here Jesus tells us that we need to bind the
strongman. Only through binding the Empire, there will be new ways of
reformulating the polity (Oikos-God’s house). De-imperializing social body is
the task of the multitude that envisages a radical democracy of multiplicity
and alterity. The discipleship that makes itself multitude envisages a paradigm
shift from democracy to multitude which cannot be enslaved by the biopolitics
of the Empire. Discipleship is envisaged here as the process of binding the
strong man—the Empire.
The
allegiance to the neo-capitalist economy, the war mongering military agendas,
the anti-Dalit/ women/minority/student fascist propaganda and the
Hindu-colonial reiteration of nationalist sentiments over against the people of
this country adorn Narendra Damodar Dass Modi as the contemporary face of
Empire in India today. The common people, the multitude are forced to rush to
the streets to safe guard their rights and civil liberties. Universities,
streets, the sea shores, and the temples become the platforms of blossoming multitude.
Jelikattu, as a festival of farmers reverberates an agrarian social imagination
(which of course need to be modified and re-constituted as a participatory
cultural act in the contemporary context) where people find their meaning in social
existence. For Modi and his Sangha Parvars, all cultures are to be unified and
nationalized which excludes all the diversified sub-nationalities like
Tamil-Dravida nationality—a revolutionary nationality in the history of the
Indian subcontinent.
In
the era of Modi, the ministry of the Christian communities is to invite people
to make themselves multitude to de-imperialize themselves and their
life-worlds. As Arundhati Roy tells us “our strategy should be not only to
confront empire but to lay siege to it. To deprive it of oxygen. To shame it.
To mock it. With our art, our music, our literature, our stubbornness, our joy,
our brilliance, our sheer relentlessness—and our ability to tell our own
stories.” [ii] As
Eduardo Galeano once said;”the Empire cannot take away my music.” Let us enter into the process of discipleship
the poiesis of making ourselves multitude in our local living spaces whether it
is class rooms or sea shores; public spaces or private spaces; temples or
factories and thereby become true disciples of our messiah—the crucified
Christ.
Y.T. Vinayaraj
