Beyond the Ballot: Consent, Control, and the Crisis of Political Recognition

Image Credits: Box Office of India

Introduction

Amit Masurkar in Newton (2017) posits Newton Kumar, an idealistic government officer, as he tries to conduct an election in a remote tribal village. But the people he’s trying to help seem confused, indifferent, and even unaware of what voting means. This compels us to ask what happens when democratic procedures (such as elections) are carried out among people who haven’t asked for them or may not understand them in the same way the state does. To explore this, the paper engages: Karuna Mantena, who draws on Gandhi’s critique of modern states; A. John Simmons, who questions whether participation equates to real consent; and Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, who warns that shared terms can conceal deep differences in meaning.

The central question this paper seeks to answer is: Are practices like voting signs of political freedom, or are they forms of imposed participation under the guise of inclusion? This paper argues that liberal democracy often conceals its dominance behind the rhetoric of participation, forcing people to conform to its framework while disregarding their distinct political realities. This is unpacked in three parts: first, by exploring how ideas like consent and political recognition break down in unequal settings; second, by revealing how the state misinterprets people’s actions through its narrow ideological lens; and finally, it returns to Newton to ask what this means for political obligation in postcolonial democracies.

The Problem of Consent and Recognition

To assign rights and duties and justify its authority, the state needs to see people in a certain way- as voters, citizens, or legal subjects. At first glance, this seems like a good thing. However, thinkers like Mantena argue that this kind of inclusion comes with a price, forcing people to understand only the state’s language and terms. In her reading of Gandhi, Mantena shows how this demand for obedience to the state is not neutral and can erase how people see themselves and how they live politically in their worlds.

In many postcolonial societies, people’s political practices differ from what the modern state expects such as authority based on kinship, community leadership, or land-based traditions. While the Indian Constitution does attempt to accommodate such diversity through provisions like the Fifth and Sixth Schedules, which recognise tribal self-governance, and the 73rd Amendment, which institutionalises panchayats, these frameworks often remain under-implemented or selectively interpreted. As a result, when the state expects people to express their politics primarily through voting or legal recognition, it risks marginalising these alternative forms.

So, what looks like inclusion is that you can only be political if you agree to play by the state’s rules. In Newton, villagers are told to vote, but the reasons given to them are abstract, legalistic, or irrelevant to their lives. This illustrates how people are expected to take part in procedures that may not carry the same meaning for them. The ballot box in the jungle becomes a symbol of this mismatch. It stands for the state’s effort to show that you have been included, even if the people don’t feel included in that way.

This is where Simmons becomes important. In his work, he emphasises that for consent to be morally meaningful, it must be voluntary and based on mutual understanding, pointing out that real consent is not just about showing up to vote or being part of a system. Rather, he argues there’s no true political obligation. This means that the state doesn’t have a moral right to rule if people don't understand the system fully or feel pressured to participate. Just because they voted, it doesn’t mean their consent is genuine.

This is evident when villagers participate not because they understand or support the system, but because they are told to. And the state misinterprets this as a sign of a working democracy. But Simmons shows that, without real understanding and choice, the process becomes an empty performance. Through this, we see that the state demands participation on its terms, erasing other political expressions. It then misinterprets this forced participation as consent, turning inclusion into a quiet denial of difference.

Miscommunication and Imposition

Building on these differences, we see that people and the state seem to be using the same words like ‘representation’, but they may not mean the same thing. This is what Viveiros de Castro refers to how words may appear shared, but the ideas behind them are not. People from different worlds may use the same term but speak from entirely different realities.

When the state asks villagers to participate, it assumes they understand the purpose and meaning of elections. However, Newton reveals that many don’t know who the candidates are or what the election truly represents. The officials take this as a lack of education or awareness. But is it so? What if the villagers do not reject democracy but simply relate to politics in a way that the state cannot fully comprehend? 

Here, Viveiros de Castro warns that shared words do not necessarily reflect shared understanding. Acknowledging different ways of being political is important because they shape how communities imagine authority, justice, and belonging beyond the state's framework. Yet, by assuming the issue is a lack of civic knowledge, the state imposes its own model of politics as the only valid one, disregarding how villagers relate to authority and decision-making within their cultural and communal lifeworlds. This persists despite the constitutional acknowledgement of pluralism, such as in the Sixth Schedule, which protects tribal governance structures. The contradiction lies in the gap between the legal recognition of diversity and the often homogenising logic of bureaucratic practice on the ground. 

Viveiros de Castro's argument here shows that the state believes it understands the people, but it doesn’t. This is not just a misunderstanding but a structural problem. Mantena expands on this by arguing that such misrecognition is a form of power. When the state demands obedience from people in a certain centralised way, it is not recognising them but reshaping them. It is saying: “You can be political, but only in the way we recognise  as political.”

This means there is no shared meaning, leading to no valid consent, rendering real agreement impossible and reinforcing Simmons’s argument about consent. If people don’t understand and are pressured to take part in a process, then their consent is not meaningful. Rather, it becomes a symbolic affirmation that conceals the asymmetry of power. So, while the state believes it is manifesting inclusion through participation, it may be deepening differences.

This creates an illusion where it looks like a functioning democracy, but what’s happening is a form of quiet domination. People are often drawn into processes they neither fully grasp nor voluntarily embrace, resulting in participation that lacks real engagement. This reflects the state’s inability to recognise different political imaginaries. Crucially, this failure is not merely communicative; it is structural. It reveals how power operates by redefining participation on exclusive terms, exposing the limits of liberal democracy’s capacity to accommodate political difference.

Image Credits: Economics Times

What About Political Obligation?

Everyone around Newton- villagers, security forces, even other officials- seems unsure or indifferent. This is because the system he believes in doesn’t speak to them in the same way. The soldiers are more concerned with safety and appearances than justice or fairness. In these situations, we see what political obligation looks like when it’s hollow. People don’t reject the process, but they also don’t engage actively, as they don't see it as meaningful. The state’s idea of democracy is mere meaningless participation.

This shows the limit of liberal democracy's reliance on procedures to prove that everyone is included. Analysing thinkers, we see that participation does not always mean agreement. It can mean confusion, survival, or simply following orders. What Newton reveals is a crisis of political obligation. The state expects people to act like full political subjects: to vote, obey, and trust institutions. But it doesn’t ask whether people understand or believe in these institutions. It doesn’t ask whether people have different ways of understanding authority, community, or justice. And because it don’t ask, it cannot truly hear them. 

This is a deeper kind of harm that occurs when people are forced to appear on someone else’s terms, losing their own in the process. Instead of starting with one fixed idea of what political life should be, we need to imagine a politics that can make space for many ways of being political. This means not just translating people into the state’s language, but listening to their own. It means recognising that real political obligation only happens when people freely choose and understand the systems they are part of.

Conclusion

Ultimately, this paper argues that political obligation in post-colonial democracies cannot be reduced to mere procedural participation. While acknowledging constitutional pluralism, it reveals how democratic rituals like voting may mask a deeper crisis where inclusion operates  not as recognition but as regulation. This shows how liberal democracy often demands conformity to its procedural frameworks, erasing alternative forms of political expression and legitimacy. Instead of assuming that the ballot represents universal political engagement, this paper urges us to question the very terms on which people are invited or compelled to participate. True inclusion demands openness to plural ontologies, to the way of being political that may not mirror the liberal democratic ideals. Without this, the state mistakes consent for participation, reinforcing its authority. To imagine a more just political future, we must not only ask who is included, but also on whose terms and at what cost.

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By Kavish Rajpurohit

Kavish Rajpurohit is a 2nd Year B.A. LL.B (Hons.) student at the National Law School of India University, Bangalore.