| NAME-CALLING |
| • Yashwant Sinha called Manmohan Singh a shikhandi (transvestite). Later, he apparently translated the word to mean 'puppet' and dilute the original meaning • Kalyan Singh called the PM a paltu (lapdog). Earlier, he had called Atal Bihari Vajpayee a piyakkad (drunkard) |
New Delhi, Sept. 11: They haven?t reached American levels yet, but Indian politicians are fast catching up.
And are more creative, too ? or so it seems from the range of epithets they have unleashed on their rivals.
Their lexicon of abuse does not include the hardly original f-word that US vice-president Dick Cheney uttered to a senator in a moment of pique a couple of months ago, but words like shikhandi (transvestite) and paltu (lapdog).
Are they more offensive than dalal (broker) and antarrashtriya bhagodi (international absconder)? Ask those who bandy about these terms and they will say the context justifies the usage.
BJP leader Yashwant Sinha, who called Prime Minister Manmohan Singh a shikhandi while addressing a rally in Bangalore, was unrepentant despite the flak he got. Nobody expected the suave Sinha, who held the important positions of finance and foreign ministers in the earlier regime, to utter such a word. But the only concession Sinha apparently made was to translate the word as puppet and dilute the original meaning.
His party also defended him, saying: ?If the language of politics has to be redefined, it should be a two-way exercise.?
When former Uttar Pradesh chief minister Kalyan Singh called the Prime Minister a paltu, nobody was surprised. After all, he had referred to a former chief minister ? the late Ram Prakash Gupta ? as a bhulakkad (a forgetful person), Atal Bihari Vajpayee as piyakkad (a drunkard) and the BJP as fakkad (bankrupt) when his expulsion looked inevitable?
Vajpayee and the BJP swallowed the abuses. The former Prime Minister even went out of his way to woo Kalyan back to the party to win the support of the backward castes before the Lok Sabha elections.
Some of the recent colourful contributions to India?s political lexicon include chirkut ? which literally means chaff but colloquially a pipsqueak ? python and bhagwa (renegade) socialists?.
Satyavrat Chaturvedi, the Congress general secretary in charge of Uttar Pradesh, had called Samajwadi Party leader Amar Singh a chirkut. Amar Singh?s magnanimous response was: ?So what if I am a chirkut??
His party?s interpretation was that the comment was ?ironic? as the Samajwadi general secretary was far more powerful in his party despite being a chirkut while Chaturvedi was just another cog in the Congress wheel.
Amar Singh, too, has done his bit to spice up the ambience. So has railway minister Laloo Prasad Yadav, easily the pin-up boy of sound bites.
Their weekend banter ? if it can be called that ? not only provided great Sunday entertainment but also gave political discourse a new character. Laloo Prasad said Amar Singh was a dalal for industrialists and ?was seen dancing with girls?.
Amar Singh?s riposte was at least he only danced with women, but the Rashtriya Janata Dal chief had boys dancing to his tune. No one was willing to wager if the exchange reflected sexual preferences, but the cause was the Samajwadi Party?s efforts to gain a foothold among Bihar?s Yadavs and Muslims before the polls which Laloo Prasad found more distasteful than Singh?s dalali.
Laloo Prasad did not stop with Amar Singh. He described .K. Advani as an ?international absconder, wanted in connection with a conspiracy to murder (Mohammad Ali) Jinnah?. The BJP, according to him, was a ?python? that had devoured ?renegade socialists? Nitish Kumar, George Fernandes and Sharad Yadav.
Amar Singh has, however, said: ?I am ending the kaha suni (exchanges) with my senior, Laloo Prasad, who I respect. But if this thumak baaji (dancing business) continues from his side, then I will also play a thumri in reply.?
