Crowds and Politics

What is a crowd?

A crowd can be termed as a temporary collection of people within a

limited space responding to a stimuli or an object of attention. A

sustainable number of people gathered in a fish market to sell or

purchase the commodities can be termed as a crowd or a group of

audience gathered at a movie or a play theater waiting for their

relevant movie or a play to begin is a crowd or even a collection of

people who gathered at a roadside to witness a roadside circus can also

be termed as a crowd. Fundamentally, crowds are not congregations of

people but are loose textured groups. The social interactions over here

are usually caused due to the physical closeness. Even though the

members of the crowd actually always try to avoid the interpersonal

contact, they are compelled to be bound by it. Crowds generally vary

greatly in character and behavior. This translates that the crowd of one

type can be very much different for the crowd of other type. For

example crowd gathered for a cricket match is totally different form the

crowd gathered for catching their respective bus. In the same way

crowds gathered in a queue to get the movie tickets is entirely different

from the crowd standing in a queue for casting their vote for an

election. Most crowds generally have some characteristics in common.

Four such characteristics may be noted as suggestibility, anonymity,

spontaneity and invulnerability. People in a crowd are highly

suggestable due to their susceptible nature to the interstimulation of

suggestions. There exists heightened emotions and intense excitements

in a crowd. An individual in a crowd always feel that he / she could

remain unrecognized. Crowds always have a very irresponsible

behavior towards its members. This irresponsibility is solely due to the

anonymity in the crowd. The individuals in the crowd feel that theiridentities would remain Anonymous. Crowds usually behave impulsive.

The members in the crowd usually tend to behave more spontaneous

than they would when they are on their own. Hence it is no wrong to

say that crowds are spontaneously formed and is highly temporary. The

one thing that is predominantly lacking in a crowd is social control

mechanism. They just don’t bother about it. This happens because they

constantly feel that they can behave freely and deprived of any

inhibitions. On the whole they completely lack self consciousness. In a

democracy there are active citizens and passive citizens. Active citizens

have an agenda and they want something to happen. They have greater

motivation to change things, greater emotion and more energy. Usually

they want to change things, but sometimes they might be motivated by

sympathy / ideological commitment. Passionate voices bring change,

but it isn't always the most logical. The moderate majority that dislikes

passion also lacking the energy to oppose the ideological lobbies. The

casual crowds usually gather around a specific event, and its members

have a little interaction with one another. The casual crowds are the

most loosely packed. They are very much temporary and vulnerable.

While on the other hand the conventional and the expressive crowds

are deliberately planned and relatively structured. These types of

crowds usually follow some established social norms and conventions.

Expressive crowds gather specifically for the purpose of letting out the

emotions. The acting crowds focuses its attention on a specific action or

goal. They are the crowds in action mobbing, rioting, or engaging in

other forms of behavior. The members of the group are usually angry at

some force or person outside of the group and want to act against it.

Comparatively it is the most common one. But, actually it is the most

significant of the basic crowd types. This is the type of the crowds that

we commonly come across in the political and public agitations. We

have all seen the pictures or videos of people carrying signs, chantingand listening to speeches. At a successful rally, we can witness the

energy and excitement even through the television screen. It is very

much true to say that the passions, feelings and emotions of the

individual in the crowd have become constituent categories of crowd

identity and also socially circulate to form and transform crowds

collectively. For example, it is hard to picture the crowds of Telangana

succeeding in the separate Telangana agitation movement, if the

collective feelings of the crowds were not present to motivate and

sustain the individual gathered there. However we can not expect the

same amount of passion, feelings and emotions from every crowd and