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LACK OF HUMOUR OF INDIAN POLITICIANS
KN RAO
Indian politicians are notorious for their lack of sense of humor, sloppy thinking, and some of them indulge in pseudo academic ramblings and want to be over praised. We cannot collect all such political humor in India as most of them must be in regional languages and are not known or circulated all over India.
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Yet, it will be true to say that Indian politicians generally lack a sense of humor but have a stronger sense of rumor like an average Delhite---a city which produced almost no humor.
The most widely circulated joke was, as far as I know, during the notorious emergency of 1975 when Indira Gandhi and her son Sanjay Gandhi were the most hated figures and Rajiv, the pilot and first son of Indira was liked for no good reason at all.
The joke then was that Rajiv was piloting the plane carrying both his mother Indira and brother Sanjay. Sanjay said that he would thrown down a one hundred rupees not and make someone happy. Indira said that she would throw ten one hundred such notes and make ten people happy. And Rajiv said that if he threw down both of them, Indira his mother and Sanjay, the brother, and the entire nation would be happy.
Now you find this joke plagiarized all over the world and no one knows where it originated, may be in some other country and plagiarized by some Indian.
Indians oscillate between a sense of respect which they reserve for very few, mostly pretentiously, and disrespect which results in and finds expression in shouting and abuse which can be seen in the website noise and in the exchanges in some discussion groups, including jyotish groups. They all betray their low breeding though they quote Sanskrit shlokas like wise men.
During the same National Emergency there was the brilliant obituary in the Times of India announcing “ Dem O Cracy” on 26 June 1975 had died and the funeral would be held soon etc. It was actually published and the advertiser had given a fictitious address after paying the full amount of advertisement.
But these are not in any way showing a politician’s sense of humor though these would fall under the category of political humor. As far as I know, it was Pattabhi Sitaramayya of Andhra whose sense of humor was matchless but they were mostly in Telugu. I had the advantage of knowing and witnessing it firsthand because he stayed as a guest in ours in our hose being an old friend of my late father.
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Humor would have relieved the terrible tension in which they find themselves now with Manmohan battling with the Leftists. Instead they take to abuses as is being reported from Gujarat now. That is a well known Indian habit, the noisy Indians who do that on website and various discussion groups. But some politicians make up for it by quoting from great Hindu scriptures.
I had a rich collection of some rare humor of Indian politicians which is untraceable. Yet, what I recollect, some instances are given here.
Atal Behari Vajpai
Atal Behari Vajpai has a terrific sense of humor which made him such an attractive speaker. His successor, Manmohan Singh is the most unattractive speaker ever among Indian prime ministers, reading out statements, never lifting his head when addressing a meeting showing a total lack of interaction with audience and always humorless. When Manmohan speaks it is difficult to know whether he is reading out a policy speech or delivering a funeral oration.
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Nehru, Indira, Rajiv were not known for any sense of humor while Mahatma Gandhi had a very subtle sense of humor.
Mahatma Gandhi
Gandhiji’s humor did not hurt as humor or wit often hurts someone yet it was a telling commentary on some problem, a piece of his own thinking or his lifetime experience.
Someone known to Mahatma Gandhi met him after a long time and Gandhiji asked
him where had he been. “Writing a book on Western Civilization” was the answer he got.
“Let it reach there first” was the answer of the Mahatma.
Late Algu Rai Shastri a very handsome Congress leader of UP had a terrific sense of humor in Hindi. He hated the UP chief minister, C.B Gupta. I can recollect two instances.
Once a Congress committee meeting was held somewhere in south India and both Algu Rai Shastri and the chief minister of UP C.B.Gupta were attending it. Some south Indians brought some garlands to greet C.B.Gupta whom they could not recognize and seeing Algu Rai Shastri, whom they mistook for up’s chief minister, gave it to him and he accepted it !
Later, he presented it to C.B.Gupta and told him about the incident.
“Why did you accept it instead of asking them to come to me?” asked C.B.Gupta.
“Very simple”, said Algu Rai Shastri. I did not want them to think that UP cannot have a handsome chief minister.”
Jawaharlal Nehru had come out with his notorious Kamraj Plan to remove top Indian leaders from high posts of chief ministers in different states to pave the way for his own daughter, Indira Gandhi. One of the men to lose the post was C.B.Gupta. Algu Rai Shastri remarked after this disaster in the career of C.B.Gupta
“Mujh ko to Kam Deva ne mara and isko Kamraj ne” ( I have been destroyed by Cupid (Kamdev) and he (C.B.Gupta) by Kamraj (also meaning Cupid), the politician who came out with that notorious plan which Nehru used to oust the possible rivals to him and later, his daughter, Indira Gandhi.