“Never meaning what they say now, never saying what they mean.”
Joe South’s Games People Play was released in 1968. It was a protest song about hypocrisy, pretence and the games people play with one another. Nearly six decades later, the lyrics seem to have found a rather unlikely stage in Nagaland.
The latest political development is hardly remarkable by itself. Politicians changing parties is not new, nor is Nagaland unfamiliar with large-scale political realignments. What is remarkable is how quickly such movements have become ordinary. A political arrangement changes, an explanation follows, and everyone moves on like nothing happened.
Perhaps that is because the real currency of Nagaland’s electoral politics is not always ideology, integrity or party organisation, but the individual politician. Political loyalty can follow the person rather than the party. When the person moves, the political ecosystem around him can move too. A party can therefore lose not simply a legislator, but its political presence in a constituency.
And then there is the remarkable way political principles can bend when political interests change.
The BJP and Congress can be bitter adversaries in the rest of the country, yet in Nagaland their political interests can occasionally point in the same direction. Here, they can become useful partners, if not useful idiots. Yesterday’s opponent can become today’s ally, and today’s ally may become tomorrow’s opponent.
What, then, is ideology?
And what happens to the Naga political question in all this? Is it a deeply held political objective, or has it become another piece of political vocabulary that can be brought out when useful? The question is uncomfortable precisely because the answer may depend on who is speaking, when they are speaking and what political arrangement is being discussed.
With the 2028 Assembly election just over a year away, the political game has begun early. More alignments will probably follow. There will be explanations, counter-explanations and perhaps entirely new names for familiar manoeuvres.
But there is another player in this game: the echo chamber.
Politicians speak. Supporters repeat. Social media amplifies. Everyone hears his own side saying what he already wants to hear. Before long, political theatre becomes political reality.
The politicians play the game. The echo chamber gives them applause. And the poor public is expected to accept the performance as politics.
Perhaps the most dangerous part is not that politicians change sides. It is that we have become so accustomed to it that we no longer ask what was being promised before the side was changed.
The players may change jerseys. The audience should not forget the score.
Because when everything is politics, nothing has meaning.
And when nothing has meaning, anyone can say anything.
Never meaning what they say now. Never saying what they mean.
That is the game. And we keep playing it.
