Aditya Sinha: Who will tame the bull that's Trump?

An ordinance overturning the Jallikattu ban was coincidentally cleared on the same day that Donald Trump was sworn in as the USA's 45th President. File pics

It is a coincidence that an ordinance overturning the Jallikattu ban was cleared on the same day that Donald Trump was sworn in as the USA's 45th President. Rural Tamil Nadu's bull-taming sport is part of the three days of Pongal, the harvest festival, and was outlawed by the Supreme Court.

This legal journey had its origins in a petition by the Animal Welfare Board that was championed by PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals). They had argued that Jallikattu was barbaric, among other things, for its treatment of bulls. Thousands of Tamil youth came out to protest against the Supreme Court ban - thronging Marina Beach and other public spaces across Tamil Nadu - and so the polity had to submit to popular will. And Jallikattu resumed on Sunday.

Supporters of the ban were dismissed as elitist; in particular, an owner of a national newspaper headquartered in Chennai had tweeted that Tamils were progressive and should thus persist with the ban. He was widely ridiculed. This reveals much about what Tamil non-Brahmins feel about his newspaper, and about the domination that three per cent of the population still works hard to maintain over Tamil society.

Again, a newspaper was dismissed as elitist and dishonest. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been saying so since his campaign began in 2013, and his supporters agree. Meanwhile, Trump spent his first day as President saying the same thing about the media, as he did throughout his campaign: that the media was "dishonest" for under-reporting the turnout for his inauguration, and for causing the cleave between him and USA's intelligence community. (The US media has shown spine by pushing back against Trump's attacks, citing their allegiance to the public interest, and rejecting his attempts to set its agenda. Hopefully they will hold out, unlike the Indian media that has surrendered to Modi and his goons who think nothing of spouting nonsense like "presstitute" and "paid media".)

At the same time, the Jallikattu issue helps clarify what many people around the planet believe: that they have been brought to economic ruin by an elite that is culturally distant and that speaks a different language. Many of Modi's NRI supporters are horrified at Trump's election (a bizarre irony, given that both men are populist strong-arm leaders) and believe American newspapers speak truth to power, while Indian newspapers don't, that US newspapers are factually stronger even if they are nowadays ideologically on the back foot. This is what supporters of the Jallikattu ban feel: that it is factually and morally correct, even if it is not ideologically popular.

It would be tempting to say that "the people" - whatever that collective actually represents - are taking back the ground ceded to elites: it is evident in the low-key annual celebration of globalisation, the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, where even the venue screams "elite" to most.

It is also evident in the fact that Indian newspapers talk of facing a crisis (even if they use the bogus argument of demonetisation, the print media indeed faces long-term uncertainty) and are either shedding staff or begging the government to reduce duties.

I don't know how long newspapers will be around - it's a question I've grappled with for 10 years, ever since I first became an editor-in-chief - especially since news websites still don't have a viable business model.

Trump's announcement during his inauguration that he would continue to use Twitter to communicate directly with supporters and bypass the "dishonest" media will have profound and yet-unseen effects on the dissemination of news (as will his attempt to physically remove the US press corps from the White House premises).

This crisis of confidence in newspapers and the inevitably workable media business template will eventually converge in a media "singularity", but only a reckless person would try and predict when that singularity will arrive.

One thing is certain. If "the people" are evicting the elite, the elite have little power to hit back, and something has to give. It is certainly a post-truth era, where words mean little and belief counts for everything. Perhaps a post-democracy era is around the corner, seeing as how the people are opting for soft authoritarianism over philosopher-kings.

Modi is the first of many Modis, and Trump is not the last Trump we will see. But if various societal models are soon going to go up in smoke then something else has to emerge, for nature abhors a vacuum. Trump might be a bull in a china shop but he's a bull that no one will be able to tame.

No one celebrating the reclamation of Jallikattu should be in doubt; it is not a victory of "the people". For if there's one thing history teaches us, it is this: one elite is always replaced by another.

Aditya Sinha's crime novel, The CEO Who Lost His Head, is available online now, and in bookstores later this month. He tweets @autumnshade. Send your feedback to mailbag@mid-day.com