Talking Point

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Talking Point
CThrough the Gutter Glass

Special Correspondent

First, it was Pramode Mahajan and now it’s George Fernandes. The Prime Minister’s two most trusted ministers seem to have made a habit of making lurid, tasteless remarks against Opposition leaders, chiefly Sonia Gandhi. Talking Point discusses the issue and invites views.
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It is one thing to be impatient with opposition; it is quite another matter to be disrespectful. The problem with Pramode Mahajan and George Fernandes is that they are both. They make remarks in leisure and repent in a hurry. First, Mr Mahajan compared Ms Sonia Gandhi with Ms Monica Lewinsky; now it is Mr Fernandes who has stooped to the level where he has to remind Indians that the only contribution of Ms Gandhi has been in her begetting two children. Without even trying to go into the morality of raising such questions and whether they have done the two leaders and their taste buds any good, the matter that needs to be addressed as a larger question is whether it is time that we take a wider look at the nation’s ethics and our moral Indian code, indeed the code for any gentleman and ladies and that of a civilised society.

Electioneering is in itself a metaphor for the political life of a country; we have seen personal attacks before and it is not as if there will be an end to it either. But here the matter is different. When there are much, much larger issues at stake, when the country is going through such turbulent times with communalism and riots and a shallow economic policy creating havoc with our times, is it wise to bring up insinuations which have no real stakes or relation to our polity and future? The task of leaders, out to wrest seat after seat from their rivals, is to corner the Opposition; there can be no serious doubt about that. But that should not degenerate into slander, much less talking about the reproductive contribution of one of the senior politicians of this country. Indeed, if Mr Fernandes and Mr Mahajan now face the ire of women’s groups and not politicians for a change, then they have only themselves to blame. There is no way that the tastelessness of the remarks made by these ministers can be minimised.

And this is not the first time that this happened. Mr Mahajan has been known to have have put his foot in the mouth many times before, not the least serious being the time when he called veteran Communist Parliamentarian Somnath Chatterjee names that the nation did not want to hear. That he apologised profusely later brings us to another side of the story. Both his Prime Minister, Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee, and Mr Mahajan are good at apologising; they have done so many times in the past. It is sad that Mr Vajpayee has to say sorry for breaking the model code of conduct for campaigning while his minister has to bend backwards to say that he did not mean any personal insult to Ms Gandhi when he compared her to Ms Lewinsky.

This is the time of apology; apologies in the time of elections, as they were, perhaps. We now wait for Mr Fernandes to say that he did not mean any offence at all to Ms Gandhi in particular and women in general when he said that the country was indeed thankful to the Congress chief for her visits to the maternity homes to gift us with Rahul and Priyanka.

But it is time senior politicians knew where to draw the line. We are not interested in their personal preferences; but when these remarks are made from election ramparts for the nation to hear, then it is time that some check ought to be exercised on the fundamental right of these leaders to exercise their option of speaking in public.

Cut Out for conning

Special Correspondent

The Prime Minister, Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee, addressed two election meetings where he spoke from podiums in the forground with huge cutouts of the three defence chiefs in the background. The Election Commission, as we all know, has made it quite clear that it will not allow any use of Kargil and the war for politcal rhetoric; obviously, the BJP does not merely believe in bypassing the model code of conduct but makes a visible presence of its indifference to the laws of the land.

What makes the debate_ if at all there is need for one in the first place_ of major significance is that the defence chiefs have been dragged into the political arena and their cutouts have been used to petition the voter for another term for the BJP in power. There is no doubt that the Kargil war has been won; what needs to be pointed out with some forthrightness is that it was not the BJP government’s policies which brought about this victory but the man on the ground who gave his life for the country. The tragic desperation of the BJP is visible but what cannot be condoned is the way it is going about shamelesslessly dragging the defence chiefs into its political gameplan and trying to fool the people. The Election Commission has already taken note of the lapse; obviously, the people will too. And the anger of the voter will be reflected at the hustings.

Indeed Mr Vajpayee himself seems to have been cornered over the issue. He has said that this was the result of over-enthusiasm and oversight; when a Prime Minister, because of a lapse even on the behalf of his campaign managers, is seen to be making such errors as flouting the code of conduct of which he should be the model practitioner, then the fate of the nation itself is in jeopardy. One of the chief planks of the BJP in this election is that it is projecting Mr Vajpayee as an able PM; if flouting the model code of conduct and politicising the defence forces are part of able administration, then the less said about BJP governance the better.

Gaisal Disastor
Special Correspondent

The death of around 300 people in the twin-train disaster at Gaisal rescue2.jpg (7513 bytes) near Siliguri in West Bengal last week can serve to raise only one valid talking point: how can such disasters continue to take place in a civilised, modern country? For those who had been present at the accident site for close to four days after the tragedy, one feature stood clear: the government machinery as represented by the world’s largest land transport network was clearly caught napping and the upshot was a colossal waste of precious human lives and concrete evidence of official indifference which makes life pitiable for those who are accustomed to better living and greater security.

The stench was unbearable.The morgue at Siliguri wass overcrowded and the bodies kept piling up by the hour. Steadily, the toll in the head-on collision between the Brahmaputra Mail and Assam_Awadh Express at Gaisal on Monday morning rose and officials only confirmed a toll which was kept to the minimum for obvious reasons even when three full bogies lying unattended with dead bodies inside.

But there was no sense of occasion at Gaisal, scene of the worst train disaster ever in the nation's history.The ambulances flew by at regular intervals, there wass a motley group of onlookers and even the visit of Bihar leader Laloo Prasad Yadav and Trinamool Congress leader Mamata Banerjee did not brighten up things. Ms Banerjee in fact breeezed in and out, stopping over at the site for a few minutes spending some time with the victims in both the Siliguri and Islampur hospitals. However, she did say that the disaster was a ``clear case of sabotage'' and that she would take up the case with the Prime Minister. Mr Yadav and his wife, Rabri Devi, were less outspoken and chose to chat with the victims without making any dramatic announcements or insinuations.

The scene did not change much over the next few days. The rescue efforts were tardy and cranes were requisitioned only when the bodies had decomposed beyond recognition. The trains still lay entwined and rescue operations were very slow though it did not rain .Bodies were lined up on the Gaisal platform and the stench could be smelt from a kilometre away. People were being allowed free run of the damaged bogies and there were toys, packets and other pieces of luggage with urchins making a killing. Limbs of victims lay scattered on the floor of many bogies without the rescue as well as medical staff caring to remove them. Such was the indifference of the railway authorities that short of the railway minister’s resignations, there seems to have been no change in the workings of the department. Never before has a train tragedy given occasion for a mass funeral; the non-identification of around 300 bodies led to nameless cremation. The point is: could all this have been avoided? It could have; provided the railways had woken up to the proportions of the tragedy earlier. Another point is a corollary: what happens next? Should another disaster like this follow_ and given the tendency of humans to make errors, it might, any day recur_ what will the railways do?

Will the same torturous procedure be adopted; the slow rescue efforts, the lack of any urgency allowing bodies to rot so much so that two men can lay claim over one body and leave the rest to some Solomon to sit on judgment? Or is it time to think and end once and for all any sofpedalling on railways safety? It is obvious that mere suspensions of a group of railway officers cannot provide any answer; it is equally obvious that it is time that the nation woke up to some introspection about its own safety on the roads and airways. Precious lives have been lost. Can any more such disasters be allowed?

Thackeray Tamed
Bal Thackeray, for those of us who have some faith in the basics thakare.jpg (14637 bytes) of science, has proved to be a test case in how a pin can successfully prick a balloon and deflate it to make a valid point. However, the Election Commission's landmark ruling and the President's subsequent endorsement that the Shiv Sena chief will not be able to exercise his right to vote for six years for an inflammatory speech should not be treated as a simple handing out of the law of the nation; this step will go a long way in reemphasising our commitment to the tenets of democracy and secularism of India. And to take the punishment of the Sena overlord as just another exercising in limiting yet another criminal would be to miss the point altogether. Thackeray could have been dismissed as just another criminal had he been only a man given to rhetoric; the unfortunate fact about the man is that he is not mere hot air, the balloon which he, with a native sense of success, flies high on some skies, is not only filled with hot air. There is poison in it. The ability to kill cannot be overemphasised.

Thackeray has reacted with his usual bravado; he has ``lauded'' Indian democracy and questioned how he can be punished for a crime which he committed 12 years back. The question which begs the answer is simple; a crime as singularly destructive as that which the Sena is carrying on in the name of politics would naturally take time to comprehend and once it is understood and the game seen through, then the judgement, even if it is just those many years late, should be welcomed and lauded for the very fact that it has come at all. The President as well as the Election Commission should be congratulated for this bold step which once again reinforces our faith in our democracy.

Thackeray has been at it for as long as he has been in active politics. He has made a joker out of the regional politics of Maharashtra, making the people gullible to his cartoon-wiles and devious communal tactics. That he is now a party to power in the state has made matters worse; what is even more dangerous is that he shares that power with one of the worst cancers of Indian polity now: the BJP. The delay in the judgment has only proved one point; it took so many years for the law-enforcers to see the nature of his crime because Thackeray is no ordinary criminal with simple tactics. He strikes and he strikes with uncanny deviousness, plotting and shaping his actions in a scheme which takes just those extra years to develop into either fullfledged riots or gang wars or mafia empowerment. Thackeray is no ordinary criminal and he cannot be judged by the yardstick of other lesser members of his tribe; if one man can sustain and pressurise a filmstar of the stature of Dilip Kumar to seek residence out of Mumbai; if one man can actually have the gumption of striking at the roots of sporting ties and generate a public debate on a proposed cricket ban on Pakistan; if one man can let loose his goons on a cultural evening which should otherwise be privy to the music of no less than Ghulam Ali, then he cannot be ignored and his potential to maim cannot be minimised by taking any hasty ruling.

The deeds of Thackeray needed to be judged from the monumental audacity and potential danger of his crime; even it would have taken some more years to debar him from voting, it would have been in the fitness of things. If a crime is as huge as that of this man's, then it is but natural that it should take that much extra time to sit and deliver a verdict on him. The judgement has come and we welcome it. At least one vote will not be cast this time and not until 2001; one nation has been saved of one ballot-paper sullying the entire nation's democratic, electoral process.

Editorial on 26th July 1999
Noise with the bongo

The bongo is a great instrument; not only does it make for feet-tapping music as an accompaniment device but this percussion piece is perhaps the only one which has to be necessarily held between the knees for maximum effect.It would be quite futile to dwell on any innuendo that the bongo might suggest, but in these days of prose and worse, anything goes in the name of hardsell. The bongo is now being used for camouflage, for plotting, for stooping...only those interested in the marketing of the bongo as a propaganda device would be able to say when some enterprising headline-maker in one of the widely-read English language newspapers, The Telegraph, to be precise, will select innuendo from the most innocuous.
But this is not a platform for cocky debate on a non-negotiable subject as the historicity behind the change of Calcutta to Kolkata which is being made out to be a political exercise in the columns of that same newspaper (July 22 and July 25); the use, or misuse, depending on which side you are on, of the bongo and its phonetic similarity with the name of our mother-state and the language should not be trivialised. For some writers of good prose and upholders of greater morality, Bangla comes through as a ``strange name'' and conjures, at its best, most probably, visions of popular country liquor bars once frequented by ``hungry generation'' writers and intellectuals. There is talk of ``street slang'' and one senior journalist, with roots in hallowed academia, has said that ``Bangla'' for him has ``always'' meant country liquor. The important word to note here is the ``always''; if a teacher-turned editor, with at least some history of societal responsibility thrust on him by his profession and ethics, can taste only the bubbles of liquor _ and country at that_ in Bangla, then there could be at least some saving grace left for those of us who think that there is more to Sunil Gangpodhyaya and his ilk than just their links with the frothy liquid. Obviously, Sunil's spearheading the Bangla movement, if at all, it can be called one, has ruffled quite a few feathers and Buddadev Bhattacharya's enthusiasm in making it government legacy has hurt a section of those for whom the English language is a very private affair, to be exercised and practised within a circuit where country liquor and dogs are most probably not allowed.
The problem is essentially one of resistance to change; change which can affect the smug pattern of a colonial, very private, society in which editors come to office in chauffeur-driven air-conditioned cars and recline in armchairs to key in copy after copy on morality and public probity. These editors have no touch with reality, they are hundred times removed from the air that Kolkata breathes. They have computers handy; Mamata Banerjee's face is blanked out to make a point that the clinical and ahistorical change of name of this metropolis shall alter nothing. There is a valid point in the use of computers; after all, what use is the human brain if it cannot make magic out of still life? And what greater use can a computer be put to than establishing in the reader's early morning blues that everything with a hint of red is necessarily bad? The game is,as Conan Doyle would have put it, afoot; the violin-playing , cocaine-addicted Sherlock Holmes would not have taken more than a few minutes to establish that. There is a propaganda in the air; slowly it shall take root, spread its branches, create a destructive debate, stoop to conquer and then withdraw its tentacles when the game is over. It all falls within the usual parameters, the same logistics, the same behaviour, the perfect strategy. Only, this time, may be_ just may be_ the slip is showing. And the bluff should be called before the people are blinded by the usual rhetoric.
But, our emotions get the better of us, we digress. Buddadev Bhattacharya's English has been faulted. Mind you, there was no slightest need to point that out in the article; it would have made its point without this little nugget of information. But no, the protecters of the Queen's English cannot _ and will not_ allow such frailities in the man who needs to administer more than he is expected to take tutorials in English; they will need to point out such errors to make sure that their thrones are left untouched; their degrees obtained with some ease in Oxford and Cambridge vindicated daily and the stautettes of Victoria and Curzon on the mantlepiece in their homes and hearths are dusted regularly.
We understand that some people are uncomfortable with the advent of Kolkata and Bangla. All of us have our own fears, our private hell holes where we dare not even peep. That is natural. But journalists, as we have been led to believe all these years, have a duty towards their readers. Journalists have every right to resist change which they feel is harmful for their immediate surroundings; this becomes, however, dangerous when some choose to alter this to suit personal concerns. When a journalist thinks only of his tribe and his personal concerns and plays the bongo in a wardance that justifies only his particular brand of self-protective jingoism, then that becomes positively disastrous.
It is in these troubled waters that politicians are famous for fishing; one word of country liquor, of Stalin and his qualified misdoings and a full thesis on history or the lack of its understanding can set the cat among the pigeons as was expected to anyway. Suddenly, Ms Mamata Banerjee, never to miss such a glorious uncertain moment, has become alive to the need for a national debate on the floor of the Lok Sabha, nothing less will do for her, and sundry parties and intellectual conglomerates, the avowedly leftist SUCI among them, have woken up to the gross injustice and historical immorality in the action of the government in doing away with Calcutta and West Bengal. The jigsaw puzzle had been scattered all over the floor; now the child is up and about, he is set to put it in place. But by now, he knows the pieces by heart. A scar here, a wrinkle there, one corner telling all...in minutes, the puzzle will turn into a solution. It is a timetested puzzle; slowly even the solution is becoming dog-eared by use.
Journalists, quite understandably, have a fulltime job to keep. They have their sarkar bosses. They have to write pulp which sells; and that is an agenda set out in the morning meetings. So much so, that wins by wide margin in municipal elections are made out to be pyrrhic victories where the victors' loss is greater than that projected by the statistics which should normally be enough reason for celebration. The English-language editors thus know that they are the slaves of a dynasty where English has to be fed and nurtured not for its richness as a language and definitely not for the benefit of Shakespeare fans but for some very personal, vested business interests. English sells, the queues in front of English-language schools are growing by the day, and these are the future readers; and so why not feed them with a rationale which will not only vindicate the existence of armchairs but also breed anathema for a government which refuses _ sadly for Ms Banerjee_ to lose elections?
But again, our emotions get the better of us and we digress. There is a need for Bangla as much as there is a need for Kolkata. Why should a city continue with a name which was given to us by a people which dealt out an unrelenting, oppressive hand for 200 years? Why should we persist with a name which has become an anachronism after the advent of Bangladesh? Calcutta was handed over to us because the Englishmen could not pronounce Kolkata; Banga was never allowed to be used because there was a state in a neighbouring country which was better known in these parts as East Bengal. But the English have left, and Bangladesh is proud that it has a name worthy of its character and language. But Calcutta and West Bengal have continued and it is time now to change a social as well as historical aberration. Yes, there can be healthy debate on that; we do not have to play the bongo to announce that Calcutta had only two streets in 1706 and that the dear paleface lords and viceroys brought us roads, trams, Chivas Regal and the rest of a single-track colonial civilisation to Bengalis. And that it still requires a degree from Cambridge or Oxford to get a glorified clerk's job in a newspaper. All that is known; but_ and there is an intended emhapsis in that `But'_ we will choose not to live with this any longer. Our children will have to know Bangla, they will have to read Bangla, they will have to live in Bangla. That is not a diktat; it is a wish, a longing which comes from deep down when you come across an editor's son saying that he would rather ride a mobike to a discotheque on Pochishey Boishakh than go to hear Suchitra Mitra at Rabindra Sadan. It becomes sadder when you see this new generation grow up unfettered in this dealt-out anarchy; while they quite rightly have no time for country liquor, they unfortunately are becoming sad victims of their fathers' colonial follies. Yes, Pochishey Boishakh _ and indeed, Poila Boishakh _ should be thrust on the new generation, Tagore should be made compulsory reading, for those who have not even heard of two men called Bankim Chandra and Sarat Chandra, there should be detentions after school. And forget the French class in the evening.
Time forgives no one. The children of today will become parents of tomorrow. If at all they grow up without a clue to their culture, then we will have no place to hide. No, not even in guilded, mounted photographs which are symbols of very personal histories in themselves. If Tagore and Bankim are to be forgotten because the market economy allows for more and more posters of Leonardo Dicaprios in study halls of teenagers, then we will have to blame ourselves for an aberration which is not as miniscule as a Bengali minister speaking wrong English. The error is to be judged in its entirety; street slang cannot be used at home, neither can gutter language be drawn into living room conversation or public debates. If you have to play the bongo, play it well; don't play around with it. Your fingers will hurt as much as the ears of others. Chivas Regal is as bad as country liquor, even if it is indicative of social status.
Consumption of liquor, like future history, is not open to negotiation. Let's be clear about that.

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