Election Results: Dynamic Change, or Dull Continuity? || Acharya Prashant (2026)

Acharya Prashant

Video Information: 04.05.2026, VBC session  Election Results: Dynamic Change or Dull Continuity? || Acharya Prashant (2026)  📋Chapters: 00:00 - Intro   01:18 - Is This Real Change?   07:02 - Are We Just Bored of Leaders?   18:32 - Is It Always Government’s Fault?   24:37 - We Vote for Leaders or Faces?   Context: In this eye-opening session, Acharya Prashant addresses questions on elections, voter behavior, and political ideologies, raising a deeper doubt about the very nature of change we celebrate. As governments fall and new faces rise, is this really transformation, or just movement that keeps repeating in different forms? Through themes like crowd psychology, leader worship, and the curious absence of serious issues like climate change in public discourse, the discussion begins to question whether what we call “change” is actually avoiding something more fundamental, something much closer to the individual than we usually admit.  ➖➖➖➖➖➖ 🎧 Listen to #AcharyaPrashant on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3f0KFweIdHB0vfcoizFcET?si=c8f9a6ba31964a06   Music Credits: Milind Date  ~~~

Transcript

00:00Mohamata Banerjee has lost her home seat at Bawani Pur by a huge margin.

00:04Her government has been toppled by a party who has never calmed a government in West Bengal before.

00:10Who is the voter here? Is the voter the same who has voted in the last elections before?

00:16Does this change of government mandate a real change?

00:21A more pleasing image, screens, pictures, sounds, that's what attracts the masses.

00:27The one who does it better, captures the mass imagination and the national mood.

00:32We say we are electing serious leaders.

00:35No, your serious leaders are all just serious actors, are they not?

00:41People are not disappointed, they are just bold.

00:44The last few years, if you ask the question, what is wrong with Bengal?

00:49Everybody would say that it is the government.

00:52As if the government drops from the skies.

00:55As if it's a dictatorship and people have no role in the constitution of the government.

01:02Much higher things are possible.

01:04We call Calcutta the city of joy, don't we?

01:07Joy is possible.

01:08Joy is possible, but not if you are addicted to...

01:18I am Aritio from Kolkata.

01:22My question is regarding the Super Sunday, Countrywide Super Sunday, where India changed almost every

01:31basis it had to change.

01:33And May the 4th has been with the voters who really wanted a change.

01:39In my home state, Mohameda Banerjee has lost her home seat at Bawani Poole by a huge margin.

01:48And her government has been toppled by a party who has never formed a government in West Bengal before.

01:54In Tamil Nadu, we have seen a renowned leader, M.K. Stalin, also losing his home seat.

02:02And a movie star who has just recently entered the political scene in the South is likely to be the

02:10next scene.

02:11And also the last bastion of the left in India, in Kerala, has been defeated by UDF, INC-led UDF.

02:20So, my question is regarding, like, who is the voter here?

02:26Is the voter the same who has voted in the last elections before?

02:30And if it is that, then does this change of government mandate a real change?

02:39You're asking about a very ordinary thing in a very intellectual way.

02:48Coming from Kolkata and probably shaken by the turn of events this super Sunday.

02:59You know, the ego remains the ego.

03:02Nothing has really changed.

03:09Tamil Nadu, yes, has shown the most unexpected result.

03:13But please understand, almost 50 years, the DMK, IDMK, binary, and both were coming from a shared ideology,

03:32Dravidian politics.

03:36Had the ideology been really dear to the voter,

03:44he couldn't have thrown it away, put it aside suddenly.

03:53Right?

03:53If ideologies are real, and ideological commitment is deep,

04:02things don't change so abruptly.

04:07What it probably means is that

04:09it was more a commitment towards

04:16an image rather than an idea.

04:21Therefore, when somebody with a more lucrative image

04:27came up,

04:28the audience drifted that way.

04:34Right?

04:35That you do not

04:37call as

04:40a mass uprising

04:41or a mass demand for change.

04:43That's just collective ego in motion.

04:46Across the country.

04:48I've started with one state and

04:51we could talk endlessly and

04:54go to all other states as well,

04:56but it's just the same thing there.

04:58Or has there been a sudden enlightenment of the masses?

05:03Such sudden enlightenment that they have decided to uproot all that was old

05:08and bring in something fresh.

05:09No, nothing of the kind.

05:12If the CMs have been defeated,

05:17that's not through arguments,

05:20but through iconography.

05:23A more pleasing image,

05:26screens,

05:29pictures,

05:31sounds,

05:31that's what attracts the masses.

05:34The one who does it better,

05:37captures the mass imagination and the national mood.

05:41That's what you're seeing.

05:42It would be

05:45grave error to think of this

05:50even as

05:52anti-incumbency,

05:55let alone a popular upheaval or something.

06:00People are not disappointed.

06:02They are just bored.

06:05That's how the standard ego operation is.

06:09It keeps looking for newer objects.

06:12People were bored of

06:15what they were having since many decades in Tamil Nadu.

06:19And they found a new shining face

06:25with great elocution

06:29and charming looks.

06:32And they said,

06:33why not?

06:35Why not?

06:36Obviously, you need the required paraphernalia

06:39and the cadder base

06:41and the operational machinery.

06:42All that is to be there.

06:44But all that is just hygiene factor.

06:48At the center of it

06:51lies

06:52the restless ego

06:54looking for options here and there,

06:57but never looking at itself.

07:02Getting it?

07:03So, do not read too much into it.

07:05Nothing has really changed.

07:07The media is abuzz and people

07:10are saying maybe, you know,

07:13it's a new phase of popular consciousness.

07:16Well, you are attributing very heavy words

07:21to something

07:22that carries very little weight.

07:26Similarly, in West Bengal,

07:29there was the communist thing for so many decades.

07:34Right?

07:35And then,

07:38the Trinamool

07:39government came in.

07:42And you know very well coming from the center of the place,

07:51a lot of the CPI cadders were absorbed in Trinamool.

07:55So, what changed?

07:57Exactly.

07:58What changed?

07:59Huh?

08:00That's how the ego is.

08:02It substitutes one object for the other

08:08and finds that the other object is not dissimilar,

08:12not all that dissimilar to the first one.

08:16But some change has to be made to avoid making the real change.

08:20Where is real change needed?

08:21The real change is needed in the heart of the electorate,

08:25in the heart of the individual, the voter.

08:27But that change is not to come.

08:30Therefore, the voter keeps changing governments.

08:3515 years of Trinamool rule and something else is not there.

08:41Now, again, please,

08:43when you will look at the TV screens and the big analysts

08:47and they'll all be saying it is because of misgovernance

08:50and this and that and so many things will be quoted

08:53and demographics and the religious arithmetic

08:58and we will have all that.

09:02No, no, don't take the ego so seriously.

09:07There is no need for that kind of in-depth analysis.

09:12The game simply is, you know,

09:15the voter plays with one toy and then gets bored

09:18and then switches to the next one only to get bored

09:21and something else will come in.

09:22That which you are calling as anti-incumbency

09:27is just misplaced restlessness.

09:32Nothing more than that.

09:35Getting it.

09:36Assam, you know, so many decades of continuous congress rule,

09:43almost continuous.

09:45And now you can have, you know, three terms for BJP, for some other face and that's fine.

09:56Again, the usual ego operation.

10:00And then one day the ego will again get bored.

10:03Is the ego getting bored of brands, of parties, of CMs, of faces?

10:11No, the ego is actually bored of itself.

10:14But it dare not replace itself.

10:18Therefore, it keeps replacing other things including CMs and PMs.

10:23They are all replaceable.

10:25But for the ego, what is not replaceable is the ego.

10:28I'll in fact correct myself here.

10:31Now, replacement

10:34is one of the safest ego operations.

10:39So, the ego can replace itself as well, with itself.

10:47Just as externally, the ego replaces one face with another face, right?

10:52The CMs chair was occupied by one face, now it's occupied by another face.

10:56So, internally also, the ego can replace

11:00itself with another face of its own.

11:03So, I was, you know, the insincere ego, now I am the sincere ego.

11:10I was the apolitical ego, now I am the political ego.

11:15I was the ignorant ego, now I am the knowledgeable ego.

11:20All that will keep happening.

11:22You know, you cannot analyze macro events

11:27without getting into the micro actor.

11:31But we don't want to do that.

11:32We want to look at things

11:35at a cumulative level, on an aggregate,

11:40as if things move themselves.

11:44No, the mover is the individual ego.

11:48And that's something that nobody wants to hear.

11:52We will say, oh no, this party adopted this tactic and it misfired.

11:57That one was saying such a thing and that got the electorate angry.

12:01You know, that party made that particular promise.

12:06And that wooed the voters.

12:08You will think of things at that particular level.

12:12They are not at all happening at that level.

12:15Now, temptation

12:16is an ancient egoic thing, is it not?

12:20So, what's so new about it?

12:22Fear of the other, creating divisions.

12:26These are all very ancient things.

12:30But we talk of these as novelties.

12:34You know, somebody was shrewd enough and smart enough to play that card.

12:40What shrewdness? What smartness?

12:43To an extent, even animals in the jungle are doing all that.

12:50What's so novel, what's so clever about all that?

12:56So, all these changes will keep happening and nothing will truly change.

13:03Nothing will truly change because the intent to bring about true change is not at all there.

13:10We can keep saying that much that could be changed has been changed today.

13:17But from where I am looking at it, nothing has changed.

13:22A new face will emerge.

13:28A smoother voice.

13:32Charming persona.

13:37And people will gravitate towards that.

13:39That's a new hope, a new promise.

13:43Only to be disappointed once again.

13:46Because what can truly fulfill them is not a political leader, is not even a spiritual leader.

13:57No outsider can fulfill the one who is seeking to be fulfilled.

14:06So, every time after the results, we see a lot of post-pol violence.

14:14And right now, it's not the exception.

14:17There has been some news of post-pol violence.

14:19And the party who was warned, they are likely to create the violence more and obliterated the enemy altogether.

14:30So, in 2011, I was very young, obviously.

14:34So, I saw people who migrated from one party to another.

14:39And it is the same people who also is now migrating to the other party.

14:44And the post-pol violence will always be there because it is the same people.

14:50No, no, no.

14:51The mistake, please, please, may I intervene?

14:54Yes.

14:54Or you may continue.

14:56Your wish.

14:57No, sir, please, please.

14:58The mistake lies in calling it post-pol violence.

15:03Right.

15:04It's not post-pol.

15:08It appears post-pol.

15:11Right.

15:13The very name of ego is violence.

15:16The ego exists as a separation between me and you.

15:20Right.

15:22Between the individual and the universe.

15:24The ego is separation itself.

15:28And where there is separation, there is bound to be violence.

15:30If you are not me, why should I take care of you?

15:34If you are not me, why should I take care of you?

15:37I have to take care of myself.

15:38I am the ego.

15:39And to take care of myself, I have to put you down, exploit you, even kill you, rob you.

15:46Why should I not?

15:49That's violence.

15:51That's violence.

15:52Violence remains as an undercurrent, as a background, invisible, subliminal.

16:04And when the ego finds itself no further use, hiding the violence, then it allows the violence to appear,

16:18to actionate.

16:20And when violence is actionated, then you call it violence.

16:26Violence is not post-pol.

16:29Violence is eternal.

16:31As long as the ego is, there is violence.

16:34And because you will think of it as temporal, as local, because you will think of it as incidental,

16:43causal.

16:44Therefore, you will want to limit it at one place, or at a particular time.

16:51And that's why you will keep failing in containing violence.

16:56Because you do not understand violence.

16:58The very process of polling might be violent, whereas you may not find even a word uttered,

17:05let alone a shot fired.

17:09Not somebody's skin has received a scratch.

17:13And yet there could be a lot of internal bloodletting.

17:17Thanks.

17:19So, violence is always there.

17:20When a leader is making those promises, is it not violence?

17:25When the audience is ready to sell its votes for freebies, is that not violence?

17:33When votes are cast on the basis of all kinds of divisions, caste, creed, religion, color, gender,

17:48is that not violence?

17:54When the very manifesto is about generating otherness, is that not violence?

18:05Is that not violence?

18:07The violence is always there.

18:10The ego hides violence in pursuit of its objectives.

18:18And when those objectives are better met by displaying violence, it will display violence.

18:30Yes.

18:32Sir, another thing is that the ego always points outwards.

18:38Like, for the last few years, if you ask the question, what is wrong with Bengal?

18:43What is everybody would say that it is the government?

18:47But the very, very rarely people will say, okay, something is wrong inside us, and we need to change

18:55at some point.

18:56Sir, this is also, yeah.

18:59As if the government drops from the skies.

19:02Exactly, exactly.

19:04As if it's a dictatorship, and people have no role in the constitution of the government.

19:12It's a democracy, and people have been casting votes and picking their governments.

19:22But you know, that's again the usual ego tactic.

19:25I am the victim ego.

19:28I am the hurt ego.

19:31It is situations that decide my position.

19:39Or that Marxist thing.

19:42Consciousness is determined by class.

19:47What can I do?

19:49I belong to a particular class.

19:51Therefore, I have to believe, act, and think in a particular way.

19:57Oh, the others are all vile, and evil, and exploiters, because they come from a certain class.

20:07So, who is the culprit?

20:09History is the culprit.

20:10Class is the culprit.

20:12Now, consciousness is a mere victim of class.

20:15Therefore, consciousness, which is the individual, need not be blamed.

20:22Need not be blamed.

20:24So, fine.

20:26If that's the costume the ego wants to wear,

20:30I am the victim.

20:32I am just being tossed around by situations, circumstances, historical forces,

20:39then fine.

20:41The ego is seeking and getting pleasure in playing that role.

20:47Let the ego continue having pleasure.

20:49Just that, it's a very limited pleasure.

20:53One can call it perverse kind of pleasure.

20:57Much higher things are possible.

21:00We call Calcutta the city of joy, don't we?

21:03Joy is possible.

21:04Joy is possible.

21:06But not if you are addicted to cheap pleasures.

21:14One last question.

21:16So, you mentioned Marxism.

21:19And it is true for this election also.

21:22The candidate list with respect to their education and other qualifications has been a little better in the left.

21:30And that has, that is the case, like all of us.

21:33But when I see their manifesto, when I see their speeches and all,

21:39they, like address the issues, like which are obviously issues, unemployment and all.

21:44But the grave issues, like for example, climate change.

21:49And Kolkata is likely to be one of the few cities which will be hit badly by climate change.

21:54Submerged, submerged, submerged.

21:56They never mentioned this.

21:58Nobody will mention that, yeah.

22:01Because, you know, when you talk of the climate, you will have to accept that ego itself is the cause

22:14of the climate catastrophe.

22:18Not, not the bourgeois ego, but the ego itself.

22:26You want to blame the ego, but just the bourgeois ego.

22:31And if the proletariat is to be blamed, he is to be blamed for his false consciousness maybe.

22:39You know, otherwise all the blame lies on the other, on the other.

22:44Whereas it's not a particular kind of ego, not a particular label of the ego that is behind the climate

22:51crisis.

22:52It is the ego itself that's causing the climate crisis.

22:56And therefore the climate crisis will never appear in any serious way on any manifesto.

23:04Exactly.

23:05Because all manifestos are ego operations.

23:09Why will the ego write its own obituary on its own manifesto?

23:16Right.

23:18So, the left might be somewhat better on the intellectual axis.

23:24But even the left is not seen raising the most important issues.

23:30The left cannot do that.

23:32The right cannot do that.

23:34Left, right, the ego can take any side.

23:38The ego remains the ego.

23:40The ego remains the ego.

23:42And it's not a political revolution that the country needs.

23:48Not a political revolution the world needs.

23:52What we need is insight.

23:55What we need is honesty.

23:57What we need is the courage to love.

24:01I'm not talking about loving the other.

24:04I'm talking about love as honesty.

24:07I'm talking about love as the courage to let go of all that is false within you.

24:15Unless we have that, all these political games and Super Sundays,

24:23they'll come and go and nothing will really change.

24:27Don't get too excited.

24:31Thank you, sir.

24:33Welcome.

24:38Good evening, Acharya Ji.

24:39I'm from the southern part of the country.

24:43And what I observe here is a lot of actor worship.

24:47Movies become super hit.

24:49They gain a lot of fans.

24:51And actors see that they enter politics and they become leaders who rule the states as well.

24:56We saw NTR, MGR, and now what we're seeing in the Tamil Nadu state as well.

25:01So my question is, what does this reflect on the electorate as such?

25:05That the actors see this as a way to enter politics and then gaining the fanism and

25:12becoming the leader.

25:13That reflects a relatively more honest electorate.

25:18At least you know that the actor has now become the politician.

25:26In the north, the politician continues to remain the actor and still be known as the politician.

25:39You see, what do the masses know?

25:42Do they ever even want to look into the person behind the persona, behind the facade?

25:58So just as we have no self-knowledge, just as we don't know who we are, just as we know

26:05ourselves

26:06only as this face, only as this skin and the superficiality, the personality.

26:13Similarly, all we care for

26:17in the political arena is the face, the voice, the image.

26:24The one who will excel at image making will succeed.

26:30That's the mark of the ignorant democracy.

26:36You will be a democracy that sells and buys faces, pictures, images.

26:43Who looks the best on screen?

26:47Not that who performs the best in office, who performs the best in front of the camera.

26:58That will keep happening and that again is not something new.

27:03That again is an ancient thing with the ego.

27:08We want things that look nice and sound comforting.

27:20Is it smooth to touch and feel?

27:23Well, that's what we want.

27:27It's not particular to the South.

27:29It happens everywhere.

27:32Just that the South, I would say seriously, is a little more open about it.

27:40So, in fact, the South is probably saying, well, everybody is an actor.

27:45So, what's the problem if I elect a professional actor?

27:50We are anyway acting all the time.

27:53Even in the normal household, what is happening is just acting.

27:57People are performing.

27:58They are playing roles.

28:00There is nothing genuine there.

28:03There is very little heart and very little love.

28:06There is just performance, performance, performance, performance.

28:12So, everybody is anyway an actor.

28:15So, what's the harm if we elect a declared actor, a professional actor?

28:23The North, we would say then, can be in comparison accused of hypocrisy.

28:32We say we are electing serious leaders.

28:35No, your serious leaders are all just serious actors, are they not?

28:41And on their bio, they don't even disclose that.

28:47You won't find their filmography there, whereas they are shooting all the time.

29:00So, we don't know what sits within us.

29:04How will we ever know or even want to know what sits within the person in front of us,

29:10the one who has come to seek our vote?

29:18People get married without knowing each other at all.

29:22And I am not talking of only arranged marriages.

29:28Even in the so-called love affairs, people date each other and the courtship lasts five years.

29:35And still how much do they know each other?

29:37They won't know each other because knowing is not particular to the other.

29:42When you can't look with any seriousness, any intent in the mirror at yourself, how will you know the other?

29:54It's not about politics.

29:56It's about who we are.

29:58It's about how the common man is.

30:00We are superficial.

30:04We are beings of shallow surfaces.

30:09Everything with us is skin deep.

30:12We don't dare to dig deep.

30:18Depth scares us.

30:21And the actors, the politicians, they know that.

30:26They are not manipulators.

30:28They are just marketers.

30:30They are giving us what we want.

30:32The demand exists, pre-exists the supply.

30:42When I was a child, before I got my right to vote, in my state, I saw a leader who

30:48was learned.

30:49Like who could know what is economics, what is, you know, what the people go through education, all that.

30:54So seeing him, I told my parents, no, why don't you vote this person?

30:58But they were like, yeah, you're right that this person is learned.

31:02But if I vote to this person, my vote goes for a waste because he'll anyway not end up winning.

31:07So it was very shocking to know that you know that he can be a right person.

31:11You see, this is just with all, you know, due regards to your parents and family.

31:21Love demands the courage of aloneness.

31:26I don't need to follow the crowd.

31:28That's love, right?

31:31I know this to be right and I'll go with it.

31:37I won't care too much for what the crowd is saying or doing.

31:43Not that I won't know.

31:44Maybe I'll have a look at the crowd.

31:46Maybe I'll sense their mood.

31:49But that would not make me follow them.

31:53Right?

31:54So, you see, where there is no insight, when we do not know what's within, we are loveless.

32:02These two go hand in hand.

32:04Ignorance of the self and lovelessness, lovelessness in every aspect of life.

32:11And where there is lovelessness, there is a lot of crowd, lot of crowd, lot of crowd.

32:17So, you look at others, you look at the predictions, you look at trends and you do what you are

32:25supposed to do.

32:28And when that kind of a thing is there, obviously, no real change can happen.

32:36Because real change demands individual courage.

32:39Real change is not something of the crowd.

32:44When you are shown a picture of revolutions, let's say the French Revolution,

32:48what you are typically shown is a massive crowd

32:54and a siege.

32:57Somebody being hanged, the palace being burnt or something of the kind, right?

33:02That's a misleading picture.

33:05We are being made to think that revolutions belong to crowds.

33:10No, revolutions belong to the individual.

33:14Revolutions belong to the burning heart.

33:16Revolutions belong to sincere intent.

33:23We don't have that in our personal life.

33:25How will we have that in our social or political life?

33:31Therefore, to think of a great change through politics is just wishful thinking.

33:37It won't materialize.

33:46Then how should the, what is the responsibility of the common water now, Acharya Ji?

33:50Is there any fruitful manner that we can indulge in the process?

33:55Bring them, bring them to us.

34:00Let them come here.

34:03I don't know, how do I say that more seriously?

34:09Had there been some other way, you would have found me there, not here.

34:13This is the way.

34:15What we are doing here right now is the way, the way.

34:24Had there been some other way, why would I waste my time here?

34:31But people in our community don't seem to realize that or acknowledge that.

34:37Maybe they do realize, but they don't want to acknowledge.

34:42This is the way.

34:45Bring the entire country here, bring the whole world here.

34:49If you really want things to change from the center.

35:00Otherwise, you can, you know, keep toppling ornaments.

35:08And unseating chief ministers and think that you have done something massive.

35:20Self-knowledge gives the right priority in that case.

35:26That sounds so simple, so mundane, so hackneyed, even boring, no?

35:32With self-knowledge, you do all the right things.

35:34That's revolutionary, that's fire.

35:39But it's been repeated so many times.

35:43That is, started sounding familiar, therefore boring.

35:49What you just uttered, that small sentence, is love itself.

35:58It's a blaze.

36:04But it sounds so lukewarm.

36:08Just because we have grown familiar to the sound.

36:16Therefore, when I repeat that endlessly, it ceases to have effect.

36:23What else can I do?

36:25Repeat that, maybe in different forms, different words, different ways.

36:32Put on robes.

36:34Throw some jokes at you.

36:37Maybe another performance is coming your way.

36:41Something.

36:42Just to bring home that very simple thing.

36:46Unless you change from here,

36:48all change that you are trying for on the outside, is just self-deception.

36:53Changing ornaments, is a consolation.

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37:41You'll get full access to Gita mission.

37:43On the app, you will get regular live sessions,

37:47daily exclusive conversations with Acharya Prashant,

37:50access to the vibrant Gita community, wisdom exams, curated news,

37:56audiobooks, quotes, and much more.

37:59Search Acharya Prashant on Google Play Store or Apple App Store and download now.

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