Consider the career of a cloth merchant from Bhopal named Mohan Lal, who contested elections against five different prime ministers. Wearing a wooden crown, and a garland gifted by himself, he would walk the streets of his constituency, ringing a bell. He unfailingly lost his deposit, thereby justifying his own, self-inflicted sobriquet of Dhartipakad, or he who lies, humbled, on the ground. His idea in contesting elections, said Mohan Lal, was ‘to make everyone realise that democracy was meant for one and all’.38
