When Priyanka Gandhi Vadra was sweeping the guest house in Sitapur to protest against the Lakhimpur Kheri killings recently, did she think she was Mahatma Gandhi or Dorothy Gale tasked by the Wizard of Oz to bring back the broom from the Wicked Witch of the West? Unlike the broom in popular culture in the West, associated with wizards and witches, the broom is mostly a political symbol in India, in use since 1901 when Mahatma Gandhi first wielded it in Ripon College in Kolkata at the annual session of the Indian National Congress after seeing the mess left behind by delegates.
There have been many after him who have found the broom to be a powerful symbol of sweeping away the old and ushering in the new. Arvind Kejriwal made the broom his party symbol (it was the party’s first choice to the Election Commission with the other two symbols being the candle and the tap). The broom lent itself to great messaging for the Aam Aadmi Party with lines such as “ab chalegi jhadu” and stirring speeches such as this from Kejriwal at the Valmiki Complex in Delhi, the home for all municipal council sweepers: “We are starting our journey from this holy ground and I am hopeful with this broom we will be able to cleanse society. With this, the cleansing of the nation and its politics has begun.”
That was in 2013, which meant that when Prime Minister Narendra Modi had to choose a Gandhian symbol for the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, the spectacles won. The Prime Minister, however, has not been averse to picking up the broom for occasional photo-ops. But the broom was a symbol of enslavement for BR Ambedkar who wrote about the many indignities suffered by the Untouchables as they were known then. Among them, under the Peshwa rule, in Poona, the Untouchable was required to carry, strung from his waist, a broom to sweep away from behind the dust he trod on, lest a Hindu walking on the same dust be polluted.
Call it the equal opportunity symbol, pretty much like Ambedkar has become. The broom cuts across politics in India and goes beyond it to faith. Shitala Mata, often depicted as a young woman, riding a donkey, holding a pot and wielding a broom, is an avatar of Goddess Lakshmi and is known to rid the world of disease–with her broom.
Yet dignity of labour remains an elusive idea in India. According to one estimate, even in 1998, nearly 90% of people employed by the Central government as “sweepers,” whose jobs include removing human waste from toilets, were Dalits. Despite several social media posts of stars sweeping their homes during the lockdown — by no less a glamorous celebrity than Katrina Kaif, for instance — Indians have famously practised what John Kenneth Galbraith has described as private affluence and public squalor. Translated to India? We, even Kejiwal’s Aam Aadmi, will sweep the dirt from our homes, but not the street outside on which we dump it.
Not surprisingly, only die-hard Congressmen think Priyanka Gandhi Vadra’s use of the broom is a foreshadowing of the party’s sweep of elections in Uttar Pradesh. Her opponents have responded with a mixture of rudeness and sarcasm.
Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath has said the people of his state would ensure that she would spend her time sweeping floors after the elections, while Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said he had grown up watching his mother sweeping the house. And that she would do so without the presence of TV cameras.
Sarma is a smart politician and understands new India well when he says that a woman sweeping the floor doesn’t make news in a country where they routinely do the domestic chores, again underlining the distinction between the privileged and the less-than-privileged, between Harvard and hard work, between dynasty and diligence.
It didn’t help that Priyanka Gandhi Vadra’s reaction to Yogi’s comment was to find the nearest Valmiki Samaj in Lucknow and start sweeping the floor there. She has clearly not spent time listening to the debate on cultural appropriation. Does the broom become independent of its historic association with exploitation and slavery? And if so, can it be picked up as a symbol by anyone and everyone, without context? And don’t even begin to ask what her brother is doing by claiming his Hindu Brahmin status while his sister is busy trying to be one with the Dalits.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not represent the stand of this publication.
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