India’s leaders aren’t very often funny – by Shashi Tharoor http://www.iht.com/articles/49438.html
NEW DELHI If the incidence of wit and humor in national politics is a fair indication of the health of a democracy, India’s could use a good laugh. Reviewing “Gandhi’s Passion,” Stanley Wolpert’s recent biography of the Mahatma, for The Washington Post, I found myself complaining that Gandhi’s puckish sense of humor is nowhere on display in the book. To illustrate the point, I recalled a couple of my own favorite anecdotes about the saintly statesman..
Asked once what he thought of Western civilization, the Mahatma replied, “It would be a good idea.” Upbraided for going to Buckingham Palace in London in his loincloth for an audience with the King-Emperor, Gandhi retorted, “His Majesty had on enough clothes for the both of us.” Neither remark figures in a book that averages half a dozen quotations per page..
But then the thought occurred to me that, even though Wolpert’s omission was worth pointing out, Gandhi was an exception. The Indian nationalist leaders and the politicians who followed them were in general a pretty humorless lot..
I have just begun work on a biography of Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first prime minister. He was a man of extraordinary intellect and vision. But dig deep into his writings and speeches, and you would be hard pressed to come up with a good joke..
Nehru’s daughter Indira Gandhi was no better. While researching my doctoral dissertation on her foreign policy, I read practically everything she ever said from 1966 to 1977. I came across only one line that was remotely witty. “In India,” she remarked once, “our private enterprise is usually more private than enterprising.” But from what one knows of the lady, the comment had probably been scripted for her..
In fairness, Nehru should be credited with one classic epigram. Reacting with undisguised culture shock to his discovery of America after a trip there in 1949, Nehru said: “One should never visit America for the first time.”.
The closest Indira Gandhi came to a good epigram was probably in her answer to an American journalist in 1971 about why she had refused to meet with Pakistan’s General Yahya Khan: “You cannot shake hands with a clenched fist.” It is a line with eerie echoes in the current situation in the subcontinent, but not exactly one to elicit a laugh..
Few of the other remarkable figures who have marched the Indian stage have left us much by way of one-liners to cherish. India has had its share of political buffoons, but buffoonery does not count as humor, any more than slapstick can pass for wit. The honorable exceptions one can identify are, alas, too few..
The sharp-tongued V.K. Krishna Menon, diplomat-at-large and defense minister, was known for his biting wit, but it was usually more biting than witty..
My late father, who knew him well in London, often used to recall the acerbic nationalist’s retort when complimented by a well-meaning Englishwoman on the quality of his English. “Of course my English is better than yours,” he said to the hapless lady, Brigid Brophy. “You merely picked it up. I learned it.” But where are the Indian equivalents of the great political wisecracks of other democracies? Despite the national penchant for sanctimony, one looks in vain for a parallel to Churchill’s comment about Sir Stafford Cripps, “There, but for the grace of God, goes God.” Or to the left-wing British parliamentarian’s describing a female education secretary as “the face that had sunk a thousand scholarships”..
Before India gained independence from Britain, the nationalist poet Sarojini Naidu made a classic comment about the Mahtama’s frugal lifestyle and his army of aides - “If only he knew how much it costs us to keep him in poverty.”.
Most Indians believe that their politicians have less reason than most to take themselves seriously. They have kept us in poverty too long. .
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