As mentioned in section 4.9, only a few interviewees had specific political aims, with others subscribing to broader political ideas like the opposition to neoliberalism. Indeed, as shown in this section, more frequently, interviewees actually objected to incorporating political, religious or commercial aspects into their practice. This does not necessarily mean that these interviewees did not hold political viewpoints or religious beliefs. Rather, it needs to be seen in the context of what was discussed in section 5.1.1 with regards to the inclusiveness of their practice and in section 5.1.4 about not wanting to cause offence to anyone. For instance, one of the organisers of a spot fix initiative explained that she had rejected the suggestion of covering a tree in painted flags for fear of others defacing particular countries’ flags. Other interviewees were clear that
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they simply did not wish to associate with particular religious or political thoughts. For instance, one organiser of a book sharing initiative argued that she would not distribute books that are “heavily” political or religious, since she did not want to be associated with these.
It is worth noting that while most interviewees treated political, religious and commercial material in the same way, a few made distinctions. For instance, one book swap organiser mentioned that he would remove religious material from the book swap, while he did not oppose political content as a whole. And while several interviewees from the book swap case study talked about their rejection of advertising and commercial material, only the organisers of the Equal Streets case study put great emphasis on this aspect. They were very clear that no money transactions or distribution of brochures and advertising materials were allowed during the event. The reason why they so clearly defined this stipulation was that the event was made possible by a great number of police officers in action (paid for by public monies). Thus, the organisers were very keen to ensure that Equal Streets was seen as a public event and not promoting any commercial interests.
A number of interviewees from the Equal Streets, spot fix and guerrilla gardening case studies also brought up the issue of political instrumentalisation.
In particular, the organisers of the Equal Streets case study emphasised that – while being very happy to collaborate with public authorities – they were not willing to associate with any particular political party, often because they feared that their objectives and core arguments would get blurred. The organisers from one spot fix project equally felt very strongly about not wanting to be instrumentalised for party political interests. They reported that they had been approached a number of times to join the ruling political party in order to gain access to funds and get permissions for their practice. However, they refused those attempts, arguing that they did not want to associate with any particular party. This is because they felt it would dilute their core argument, namely that it is greatly important for individuals to take responsibility for the cleanliness of their environment and that any such initiatives are not down to the involvement of a particular party. Indeed, they argued that many of the projects that were
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officially affiliated with the government’s Swacch Bharat Abhiyan campaign tended to be more about photo opportunities, while not doing much work. This assessment reflects a number of commentator’s analysis of the relevance of the Swacch Bharat Abhiyan campaign as an example of the Hindu-nationalist government’s use of symbolism (Sen, 2016) and mythology (Kaul, 2017: 532) that seeks to portray Prime Minister Modi as “a savior of the country who promises ideological cleansing of India to its purer origins unsullied by minority appeasement” and as a non-elitist leader associated with cleaning politics from corruption and family-dynasties. As Sen (2016) argues, the campaign had great appeal for a key constituency of Modi’s voters in 2014, namely India’s growing urban middle class, a group who largely subscribes to notions of ‘bourgeois environmentalism’(Baviskar, 2011; 2012).
This might also be the case for a couple of the other spot fix projects, which openly associated with the Swacch Bharat Abhiyan campaign, or were not opposed to political affiliation. For instance, one spot fix organiser group, who had previously adopted two stations locally to where most participants were living, took on a third station at the request of the Railway Minister. This third station was the “home station” for this Minister and – having heard about the success of their previous projects – he approached them to also take on ‘his’
station. The group felt that it was a good thing to oblige to his request, as they saw it as a way of spreading support for this kind of idea across the whole MRVC.
There were also a couple of book swap organisers who specifically emphasised that they would keep political and religious material in the swap – even if they disagreed with it. One interviewee argued that – unlike the common perception of politics as being “dirty” – he felt that all people who engage in politics do so because they believe it is for the betterment of society, and that alone should be valued. Interestingly, there was also no mention by any of the busking interviewees of steering away from political or religious contents. Given the preponderance of political and religious themes in music more generally, it would be an interesting point for further exploration to what extent this is the case in busking.
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