In the nightmare of the dark,All the dogs of Europe bark,And the living nations wait,Each sequestered in its hate.—W H Auden’s In Memory of W B Yeats (1939) Two recent statements by Hindutva proponents have become controversial in media and political circles. One is by Balasaheb Thackeray who, inter alia, urged Hindus to answer pan-Islamic terror with Hindu suicide brigades. The other is by the VHP’s Pravin Togadia, who associated Sonia Gandhi with a particular species of a four-legged animal. Remarks, like actions, are boomerangs and Togadia can’t claim originality in this evil. When advocate Ram Jethmalani made certain allegations about Rajiv Gandhi in the mid-1980s, the then prime minister responded with: ‘‘I’m not bound to respond to every dog that barks.’’ A few years ago, Thackeray was in the eye of a storm for describing Muslims as snakes. I remember the humour with which a Muslim gentleman from Mumbai responded to Thackeray in a letter to the editor of the Free Press Journal: he gently reminded Thackeray that snakes are revered by Hindus and worshipped on Nag Panchami; that snakes wind round the neck of Lord Shiva; and that Lord Balaram is an incarnation of Sesh-Naag (or the Snake Supreme) in the Mahabharata. I don’t know if Thackeray read that piece. I am sure that if he had, he would not have been able to muffle a hearty laugh. This would not only have dissolved his acrimony into bubbles but, finding the analogy self-defeating, he would have refrained from using it again. I don’t know what idiocy prompted Praveen Togadia to describe Sonia Gandhi as an ‘‘Italian kutri’’. Incidentally, Italy is famous for the breed of hunting dogs Spinone Italiano, a symbol of agility and fighting spirit. We also use the dog motif when we want to ascribe positive qualities The secularists have always practised the art of ‘‘giving the dog a bad name before hanging it’’ with the BJP, Sangh Parivar and people from Savarkar to Modi. While they take exception to others calling them names, they feel no remorse in associating bad ideas and images with good names. Two examples: the expression ‘cow belt’’ for the Hindi heartland, which denotes a stereotypical image of backwardness, and Leftist economist Raj Krishna’s derogatory coinage ‘‘Hindu rate of growth’’, which implied meagre growth rate in the Indian industry. I don’t know what idiocy prompted Togadia to describe Sonia Gandhi as an ‘‘Italian kutri’’. Incidentally, Italy is famous for the breed of hunting dogs Spinone Italiano, a symbol of agility and fighting spirit, arguably the best. When Stalin died, a newspaper wrote, ‘‘A lion meets a dog’s death’’. variety available. And once, when somebody described the British government as a ‘‘spaniel of the US’, Margaret Thatcher retorted, ‘‘No, we are a bulldog’’. I don’t know at whose cost the joke was, but surely the matter ended in good humour. I don’t understand why, when we want to humiliate someone, we compare him or her with a dog. But we also use the dog motif when we want to ascribe positive qualities, such as tenacious like a bulldog, vigilant as a dog, faithful as a dog, a watchdog. I’ve heard many a secularist condemn Togadia for his remarks since they were an affront to our tradition of tolerance and decency in public life. I agree with them—Togadia does owe an apology for reducing the level of discourse to that of the Congressmen, Communists In Christianity, a lot of stress is laid on faithfulness for gaining heaven in the afterlife. Writer Mark Twain once remarked that if faithfulness is the condition for entering heaven and if a man visits the gate of heaven with his dog, in all probability the dog shall be let in and man shall be refused. Togadia, on his part, must have read the 18th chapter of Mahabharata where Lord Dharma took up the form of a dog to accompany Yudhishtra to heaven. Instead of agitating with a Doberman (which is a highly useful dog) the Congressmen could have disarmed Togadia with these facts. Sometimes, levity succeeds where gravity fails. But the Congress workers have also voiced their concern over the declining standards of political discourse as epitomised by such scurrilous remarks. The standard of political discourse, including Parliamentary debates, has fallen. But the irony is that when such debasing remarks come from Hindutva forces, they are immediately highlighted and served with pickles-n-spices. The media goes to the extent of inventing misquotes as ‘Every action has an equal and opposite reaction’ which Modi never made, or deliberately confusing the public over the Prime Minister’s remarks on Muslims at a rally in Goa. Not so long ago, when one of my colleague in Rajya Sabha, B P Singhal, wanted to protest during a speech by Laloo Prasad Yadav (who dubbed the BJP as ‘Bharat Jalao Party’), Yadav dismissed it by saying, ‘‘Kaun hai yeh lafandar, isko Ranchi bhejo. (Who is this ruffian, send him to Ranchi’s mental asylum) Sometimes, levity succeeds where gravity fails. But Congress workers have also raised concern over the declining standards of political discourse. The irony is that when such remarks come from Hindutva forces, they are immediately served with pickles-n-spices And around the time of the Ayodhya shiladaan, Laloo Yadav reportedly ‘‘planned’’ to host a television debate inviting the Prime Minister and the Home Minister alongwith ‘‘some person in VHP by the name Tagadia-fagadia’’. And here are two examples of how Congress leaders behaved recently! In a complete breach of protocol, Congress activists from Punjab, led by no less than Chief Minister Amarinder Singh, demonstrated outside Prime Minister Vajpayee’s house before courting symbolic arrests. They were agitating for a hike in minimum support price of wheat and its early procurement by governmental agencies. Singh held a placard in Hindi which said ‘Atal and Badal are thieves’. That very evening, he addressed a joint press conference with the prime minister in cosy bonhomie as an agreement had been reached on the issue. How justified is a chief minister’s action in laying virtual siege to the Prime Minister’s house, that’s too without prior notice? How dare can a chief minister call a prime minister a ‘‘thief’’ in a total breach of etiquette? What is the nation to conclude when a Congressman who accuses a person as a thief in the morning is seen hobnobbing with him in the evening? This also reminds me of an outrageous act by Congress workers at the height of the Kargil conflict. It made for a front page photograph in The Hindustan Times on June 2, 1999: a replica of the Delhi-Lahore bus, which had been inaugurated in February 1999 by the Prime Minister, had the words ‘Atal-George Pvt Ltd’ written on it. But the honour belongs to the Communists, who were their vicious worst during the freedom struggle. In unpalatable cartoons in its mouthpiece People’s War, they described Subhas Bose as ‘Cur held up by Goebbels’ (September 13, 1942), ‘Mere mask for Japanese ogre’ (August 8, 1942) ‘An atom bomb descending to destroy to India (November 21, 1942). They described Sri Ramakrishna as a pervert, Vivekananda as a Hindu imperialist, Netaji as a running dog of Tojo, Jai Prakash Narain as a vampire, Gandhi as a British agent. Former West Bengal chief minister Jyoti Basu responded to the BJP accession to power with the words: ‘‘Unfortunately, barbaric and uncivilised people have come to power’’. No such remarks came from him when Begum Khaleda Zia won the polls with an out-and-out communal agenda in Bangladesh and Hindus started fleeing into India as one day Basu himself had. I have heard many a secularist condemn Togadia for his remarks since they were an affront to our tradition of tolerance and decency in public life. I agree with them—Togadia does owe an apology for reducing the level of public discourse to that of the Congressmen and the Communists. (The writer is convener of the BJP’s Think Tank)
