State of play: If humour could win you an election, Lalu Prasad Yadav would be PM
Sarcasm and searing wit. And a sense of humour! Not the attributes of today’s political class, each one of 'em, more dour, more dull, more boring, more sanctimonious than the next.
Humour, a strict no-no. A witty politico runs the danger of being seen as a lightweight, a la Navjot Singh Sidhu. As for the people, any attempt at humour is strictly frowned on. Imagine, giving ordinary folk, the power to laugh at and poke fun at these holier than thou beings. Nobody in that grim faced, self absorbed lot, want that.
Barring that one breath of fresh air of course, the Mahatma, that wonderful exception to this rule, the David who mocked the imperial Goliath, and reduced the great and powerful British Empire to a laughing stock! Every time! Remember his classic reply to the question about what he thought of western civilization? “It would be a good idea!” In today’s social media, he would have been retweeted a gadzillion times over. Robot or no robots.
His riposte, when faced with Churchillian snobbery for going to Buckingham Palace to meet the King Emperor, pointedly clad only in his loincloth, skinny legs et al, the naked fakir, exposed for the world to see, was no less sweet - “I thought His Majesty had on enough clothes for the two of us.”
Quite the drama queen, our irrepressible Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi!
Sarojini Naidu must have been a court favourite for much the same reason. Her 'if only he knew how much it costs us to keep him in poverty’ poke at Gandhiji, continues to be downright funny, more than 60 years later!
It’s not political buffoonery, but clever, smart pin-pricks like these, that draw blood. A mode perfected in recent times by PM Modi whose skills at the podium are simply unmatched. Even by the standards set by the incredibly funny Lalu Prasad Yadav, and of course, the man with the mesmerizing verbal flourishes that held everyone, friend and enemy in thrall when he spoke - Atal Behari Vajpayee and, not forgetting the master of the one liner, Sidhu, it is still Modi who ticks all the boxes.
The patrician Nehru didn’t seem to have a funny bone. Did Indira? Well Pranabda certainly thinks so. In his recent book, the former president writes about his mentor's post Emergency visit to London in 1978 when she was accosted by the aggressive media. When they asked her what she had gained from the Emergency? Her reply, poker-faced: “In those 21 months we comprehensively managed to alienate all sections of people”, Mukherjee recounts. “After a few seconds of silence, there was laughter,” he said.
Rajiv Gandhi with his warmth and oodles of charm, must have, one is guessing, kept his humourous side under wraps. But all three gamely faced the ribbing from the only men brave enough to take them all on our cartoonists! (Salute you, Subhani, every single day). That requires courage. In very short supply, these days.
Either way, the Gandhi-Nehrus didn’t have the thigh-slapping plebian humour that rules today. One cannot see Sonia Gandhi, the de facto power behind the Manmohan throne, in guffaw mode.
So where did the stodgy, ‘won’t smile at the world unless I have to’ Rahul Gandhi get these hilarious one-liners that he lets fly now, at every opportune moment! Not that the ruling party hasn’t given him enough fodder for his whatsapp cannon. But three years and five months to find your mojo!
Overdue? Sure. Better late than never? Seriously? Either way, the Congress - and Smriti Irani - is abuzz that a phalanx of youngsters whose middle name is ‘irreverent’ and are the voice of Rahul's media cell, courtesy the head of that cell, the quirky and charming young actress-politician Divya Spandana, are the ones feeding the heir apparent with the whats’app knuckledusters he needs to pound away at the ruling party’s top brass. However small, however insignificant the jabs, in the greater scheme of things, he has drawn blood. And it has the twitter world, peopled with young millenials, all atwitter. It’s what Modi did to perfection and what put him on course to wrap up the youth vote in 2014.
But, here’s the nub, can borrowing a leaf, no, make that an entire tree, from the Modi school of stump electioneering, the man who is king of the digital mindspace, change the course of the electoral arithmetic in Gujarat and Himachal? The Congress, contrary to what Congressmen believe, and are telling the men and woman who matter, is not the automatic fallback, not the political alternative, if and when the BJP founders.
And no, one Gurdaspur does not a Gujarat make. The victory in Punjab is in keeping with the mood that unseated the Akalis earlier this year. It shows the Badals’ rapidly weakening hold over the people. Nothing to crow about. As for Kerala, Vergara in Mallapuram district could go no other way except to the Indian Union Muslim League. Both these victories are the products of local dynamics, and do not signal a shift or reflect a changing national mood. The real big challenge is how these formations will fare in a spate of assembly polls - Himachal and Gujarat this December, Karnataka, Rajasthan, and M.P, next year, with the Congress hoping for a big switcheroo in 2019.
Rahul hasn’t yet got his finger on the pulse of the rumblings within the Congress in Karnataka, where the chief minister, tasked to keep the state safe from the BJP’s clutches is alienating his closest confidantes, some say, even a man like Mahadevappa in a bid to give his own son a smooth ride. He’ll probably get to it. Right after Himachal, where given the propensity of the Himachalis to vote out the incumbent, the Congress, riddled with infighting is already, batting on the wrong foot. Their one tiny hope rests on the fact that the BJP is an equally divided house. It is Gujarat, therefore that will be the litmus test on whether the sputtering economy and the anger among the small traders over losing their stash of cash, and the alarming statistics on joblessness, will have a knock-on effect, first in state, then countrywide.
As an ailing Sonia plans to hand over the baton, the ‘Italian bahu’ must be commended. For keeping the Congress fires burning, for winning 2004 on her own merit until she, realizing that her Italian antecedents would come back to bite her, relinquished control in all but name to an Indian (albeit Pakistan-born.) Sometime this week or the next, the plans to elect Rahul Gandhi as the party prez will come to fruition. Will he be crowned in Bengaluru, coinciding with Indira Gandhi’s birth centenary on November 19, and her comeback win from Chikmagalur in 1978?
The battle for Gujarat, will be then have a Gandhi on the Congress side versus a Shah on the BJP’s side.
Whatever the numbers may say, no electoral battle is won because of retweets and Facebook posts going viral, or one having more Twitter followers than the other. It’s won on whether the people believe in you, and your message.
The wind maybe shifting, but it hasn’t changed yet. However entertaining, the digital repartee!
