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EDITORIAL
Obsessively
Yours
Vajpayee
should not have let Pakistan colonise his official US speeches
 First
at the awesome millennium summit at the UN. It was an occasion to talk
lofty nothingness and to look statesmanish. After all, the subject was
the easiest for any globally conscious leader: peace. Then again at Capitol
Hill. The US Congress was a rarely available platform for introducing
My India and rhapsodising Our Special Relationship. Prime Minister Atal
Bihari Vajpayee had all the qualifications-rhetorical skill, poetic flourish
and the personality-to make both occasions worth the trip. Unfortunately,
that didn't happen. At the UN summit he wasted his precious five minutes
replying to his tormentor from Islamabad: "Many statesman-like words
have been delivered from this high tribune. Unfortunately, some of them
are a mockery of truth...Terrorism and dialogue do not go together."
Translation: My dear world, don't believe Pervez Musharraf's I'm-ready-to-talk-peace-but-he-is-not.
At the US Congress too, Pakistan defined the grammar of his speech: "There
are forces outside our country that believe that they can use terror to
unravel the territorial integrity of India." True, Vajpayee was talking
the domestic truth, he was talking the right thing at the wrong places.
The question
is: should India continue to borrow its international vocabulary from
Pakistan's national book? For, the political establishment in Pakistan
needs India as the bogeyman for its own survival. For dictatorships and
other democratically unevolved societies, the enemy is a source of national
mobilisation-and a vitamin for the ruler. A nationally confident and democratically
evolved India doesn't have to define itself purely in terms of the nasty
neighbour, especially from foreign platforms. That is, Vajpayee doesn't
have to match Musharraf in the art of demonology.
Marxist
Mother Tongue
Basu
takes political expression to the cattle
 This
is Jyoti Basu: "They are all cattle." Who are they? They are
"running the coalition at the Centre, they have no morality, they
have lowered the image of the country in the eyes of the international
community". What an elegant piece of political expression, this cattle
imagery from the First Citizen of West Bengal! What a singular human anguish
in this animal kingdom! Jyoti Basu being the speaker, perhaps the exclamation
marks are a bit out of place. Going by his past words-remember his Advani-as-criminal
rhetoric? - this is his mother tongue, or his Marxist tongue. Certainly
not a slip of tongue. And certainly he is not referring to some kind of
mad cow disease in Delhi. The Basu patois is only a manifestation of a
Marxist disease, and he is not the only comrade suffering from this malady,
what with the ever-irresponsible Nayanarspeak. In Basu's case, his tongue
has an immediate reason to slip so savagely. Mauled by Mamata Banerjee,
reported by George Fernandes, he seems to have lost his linguistic equilibrium.
Still, it
is not the way to talk politics, Comrade, it is not the way to talk back,
no matter how besieged you are. Of that thing about "the image of
the country", Comrade, there's an immense sense of irony. Maybe it
is accidental, and unintended. For, the communist contribution to "the
image of the country in the eyes of the international community"
is not something that's been adequately noticed yet. Their importance
- Basu may be too engrossed in his own make-believe to be aware of it-is
worthy of a place in the international museum of antique junk. Of their
national importance, it is the story of the shrinking soviets, thanks
to Mamata and Marxists in the countryside. Now, it seems, what remains
of their importance is purely verbal: bad language.
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