The Guwahati gaffe

Words, especially those that are uttered into a television microphone, are dangerous. Sometimes they have this habit of taking on a distinct...

Words, especially those that are uttered into a television microphone, are dangerous. Sometimes they have this habit of taking on a distinct life of their own. Like vengeful raptors, they can come back to peck and to wound. Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee now ducks for cover and issues clarifications after having unleashed a string of extremely unsavoury and cynical statements from a public podium in Panaji last Friday. But the damage has been done. Not many are prepared to overlook the import of what he said at the Campal Maidan rally, deny it as he may. Similarly, the gaffe Sonia Gandhi made during the course of her press conference at Guwahati on Saturday looks set to long haunt her and her party, despite her publicly voiced regret over having made it.

Sonia Gandhi states in her defence that it was her unfamiliarity with Hindi that led her to use the words 8216;8216;unka mansik santulan bigad gaya hai8217;8217; he has lost his mental balance with reference to Vajpayee, that she did not actually mean what she said. There are two problems here 8212; one of language, the other of intent. While lack of ease with conversational Hindi is a decided problem here, it could even be overlooked if Sonia Gandhi had not also at the same time displayed a willingness, even eagerness, to descend to the crassest level of public exchange. The fact is that insults and name-calling, besides setting people8217;s backs up, cannot be a legitimate replacement for reasoned and mature arguments. The challenge the BJP has hurled at the Opposition, and indeed the country, by racheting up its communal intent 8212; as reflected in Vajpayee8217;s speech 8212; demanded from the leader of the chief opposition party a considered response, not a mouthful of empty rhetoric about the state of the prime minister8217;s mental equilibrium. The Congress has screamed from rooftops that it alone is the natural party of governance. If that is the case, are such misplaced verbal thunderbolts all that the party has got to show for its supposed potential?

Sonia Gandhi has herself been the subject of much ill-conceived verbal attacks. Union Minister for Parliamentary Affairs Pramod Mahajan, at a rally during the last Lok Sabha election, had tried to extract a few laughs from the crowd by referring to her in the same breath as he did Monica Lewinsky. More recently, Vajpayee himself had attempted to embarrass her indirectly by attacking her manner of speaking and her foreign origins. Both men were made to quickly regret their statements. Today, it is their turn to act the aggrieved party and voice their trepidations about declining political standards. Sonia Gandhi would have done well to have learnt from past experience and displayed more sensitivity and care while delivering her public statements. What she seems to need most of all is a crash course 8212; not in Hindi, but political etiquette.