ABSTRACT
In an article on the uses of rhetoric in deliberative democracy, John Dryzek suggests rhetoric can be used in two very different ways - to “bond” or to “bridge.” Bonding rhetoric is what it sounds like, rhetoric used to bring a group of like-minded peoples together in common cause. Bridging rhetoric, on the other hand, is rhetoric used to speak to those outside one’s affiliations, to those who do not share one’s perspectives or motives. Unfortunately, in the polarized political environment in the West and elsewhere, politicians, as well as many media outlets, have lost all sense of when to, or whether to, use bridging rhetoric. Leaders and media outlets begin to serve segments of the population rather than the whole populace.
This chapter studies three political dissidents in India as examples of bridging rhetoric for two reasons. First, while in Western rhetoric the goal is almost always to win, to forward one’s own agenda, the Indian dissidents featured here rely, much as a Westerner would rely on Aristotelian methods, on an ancient methods of reasoning that focus on communal action and community benefits. Speakers use shared analogies to affirm both the point of view of the speaker and “Other,” while still directing their arguments toward solutions benefitting both. Second, because the Hindu methods explicated here have served in India and surrounding regions to bridge ethnic, religious, philosophical, and political differences for centuries.
