Ecce Homo

 Behold powerlessness, here is humanity: trafficked, used and made to overwork for profit, left unemployed for greed, dominated and muzzled by authoritarian and patriarchal regimes, and desecrated in the name of religion.

May is hot; not just because of the rising mercury levels across India and elsewhere, but also because of the elections in Karnataka, which is arguably, an important state for the existence and rise of BJP in the South, because of the ongoing ED raids and political arrests, and of course, because of May Day –the day we appreciate the constitution of the eight-hour working day. The workers today, as in every age, are in a permanent revolution, lest the bosses take advantage of their powerlessness, and make them machines. 

There has been no other movement as the workers movement, which made the world take notice of people and their struggles. May is a month to notice humans, look at powerless humans more genuinely, more seriously. I borrow a conversation from Bobby Jose Kattikad which happened during the Kerala Literature Festival. He began his conversation with a rather old expression, ‘Ecce Homo’, meaning, this is human, this is human condition, or behold human. The first occurrence of uttering these words was by a Roman governor in the very beginning of the first century. He brought out a young man who was falsely accused, arrested, and stricken, out to the full view of a large frenzied and frantic crowd, and stated, ‘ecce homo’ –behold man. It was a call to look seriously at that man again. Do not pretend not to see him, bleeding, made naked, put to shame, and crucified.

Much later, in 1888, just a while before Friedrich Nietzsche collapsed into madness, almost like his autobiography, he writes the book, ‘Ecce Homo’.  Nietzsche was someone who noticed man, one of his engaging hobbies was to go to the street, sit there, and watch people. Genuinely noticing people also takes you down to many other layers of seeing. One day as Nietzsche was sitting by the street, he sees a man intolerably beating up his horse, Nietzsche runs and stands between the man and the horse, and began pleading for the horse. The pleading for the dumb animal may not have gone on without a few beatings falling on him too. And his life story says that soon he was taken to an asylum. Nietzsche was even apprehensive of people pretending to see god but ignoring to see humans. Perhaps his claim, ‘god is dead’ was a tactic to make people to stop looking heavenward and start seeing humans on the plains of the earth. Ecce homo is a call to look at powerless humanity, trafficked, used and made to overwork for profit, left unemployed for greed, dominated and muzzled by authoritarian and patriarchal regimes, and desecrated in the name of religion. 

Antonello da Messina, an Italian renaissance artist painted, Ecce Homo (1475), the image of a man condemned to death in the early first century. 

Power and powerlessness 

The world is a power structure; a social, political, economic, religious, and gender power structure. There are entitled people in and on top of the pyramid. Those at the bottom seldom get counted. The structure is narcissistically controlled by those wielding power. The powerless only get to hear of it from the textbooks: authoritarianism (the rule of one), which if goes unchecked can become totalitarianism, and eventually fascism. It is the absolute rule and control by one man, one force, and one regime, though the degrees of power may vary. They want a country to be in one colour, speak one language, profess the same creed, and have only one choice while electing its leader and in running its affairs; any opposition is anti-national. Today oligarchic (rule of the few) too is getting momentum. Authoritarians and fascist have come to know that they need huge wealthy corporations and propagandist media on their side for a presumptuous rule. Some, thankfully, still believe in the rule by all (liberal democracy). Being liberal is also a power structure with a hierarchy, but here the people have rights: right to speak, right to ask questions, and the right to respond. The masses have faces, names, and voice. 

One is powerless when one is inescapably in a system, but can see its flaws and tyrannies, yet has no right to question or correct it. I live in a house, I know it is filthy and toxic, but I can’t clean it, I can’t even talk about it. This problem seems just hypothetical but not so. No country or systems must be blindly considered great because you are born in it. For example, If I am born in a fascist country, is it right to glorify fascism? Is it criminal to question fascism? Do I become an anti-national by doing it? Because I am part of a country, or system, can I not question it? Is it my problem that I was born in it, and I can see its flaws? The argument goes true also with religion, gender, and the rest.  It is a myth to consider that asking questions and holding a conversation would weaken a system or a country. Shouldn’t the right to ask questions and respond be fundamental rights for the health of a system. 

Power structures are complex. We often live in an illusion of having power, but the reality may be far from it. Michel Foucault talks about power making its social presence in two kinds of garbs, repressive power and normalised power. Normalised power is ingrained and relatively allusive. It’s what makes us exist within a society, and within the underlying norms of a society, as accepted in a specific social context, and do the things that we need to do. Contrasted to this, a more obvious form of power is repressive power, which is power that is actively asserted. Consider a situation where a teacher threatens a student with detention if they don’t stop speaking in class. This would be an example of repressive power, meaning that it was actively asserted.

Normalised power, on the other hand is so normal to us that we don’t even realise that we don’t talk in the class (we don’t talk anywhere). Here too, our aim of not talking in the class is the same, namely, not to be detained in the same class. These power structures are so internalised and normalised that our beliefs, desires, and decisions are shaped by it, and they appear normal. 

May Day is a reminder of sacrifice, struggle, and revolution. Here is the greatest lesson of May Day, when the masses are not given ordinary powers to question, respond and correct their course, they will forcefully take it through extraordinary means.