Of Yahumanity & Humanity

India that is bharat

When, as an undergraduate student of English literature, Satiricus once read satirist Jonathan Swift’s story of a “Yahumanity” that was superior to Humanity, he frankly thought it was a little too much for his human ego. For Swift’s story described a society of horses called Yahu who were more intelligent and wiser than us human beings. Now, of course, the story makes horse-sense. For the hectic horse-trading of the present electioneering would not have been possible without horses.

But since then Satiricus has been seriously considering if horses are the only animals that are superior to us men, women and Congressmen. For apart from fictional horses, real elephants are known to be surprisingly sagacious. Monkeys, of course, are universally acknowledged to be as clever as, if not more so, men, otherwise no man’s clever tricks could be called monkey business. Then foxes are known to be more “foxy” than human politicians. Dogs, of course, are admittedly more intelligent than most people, and even cats have been found more adept at such human activities as burglary and smuggling.

And now comes the final ignominy—researchers at a university in London have found that “goats are smart and have excellent memories”. Their study says: “Goats learn how to solve complicated problems quickly and can recall even what they learnt ten months ago.” This is the limit. Now, in the first place, these smart goats will refuse to be made scapegoats, and secondly they would prove dangerous voters, for they will remember a politician’s promises even after ten months when they should be forgotten in ten days. Above all, that London professor who recently prepared a dictionary of the English slanguage is now in for a shock. For so far “goat” was slang for “foolish fellow”, but now the learned London lexicographer may well wish to be known as a good goat.

Diplomatic Or Disastrous Confession

People can be ridiculous. Even those people who run big newspapers. Take, for instance, one such paper that published on April 1 a report from its “news network” titled Parties considering pact to clean up poll-speake, secondarily admitting, We need to abstain from insults. Then, in an April Fool box the paper confessed: “This report is unfortunately a figment of our imagination, but we certainly wish that it was for real.”

Well, now, initially stunned Satiricus did notice that the paper prudently put a question mark at the end of the main heading. Still he must say the very idea of polite pary politics is preposterous. He knows that diplomacy lies in telling someone to go to hell so nicely that that someone is eager to get started, but what has political party propaganda at election time got to do with diplomatic duplicity? Election time is time for the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the abusive truth (as you see it). And what is the truth you see? It is that your party and you, its candidate, are good because the other party and its candidate are bad. It’s as simple as that. But then there is an important rider to telling this truth. Candidate A must take care not to say that he is better than Candidate B, because A cannot be better unless B is good. That would be a disastrous confession.

Secular Express

If, as it is said, God works in wondrous ways, why shouldn’t the ways of the secular gods be still more wondrous? Take this expulsion of Jaswant Singh from BJP, the once-Hindu party. It has proved a shot in the secular arm of India. For now the head of a Pakistani Muslim sect called Peer Pagara has asked nearly half a million followers of this sect in a Rajasthan constituency to vote for this expelled, erstwhile leader of BJP. Secular Satiricus says this is in the fitness of things, for the BJP party and the BJP party president have a cussedly communal past. There was a bad old time when the party wore its communalism on its sleeve and declared Ram Mandir was its important plank, while the BJP president had once committed the indiscretion of admitting that he was a committed Hindu.

Although all this is now a once-upon-a-time fable, the question now is, why are these Pakistani Muslims living on the Indian border rooting for Jaswant Singh? The reported answer is that they think it was due to his family’s efforts that the Thar Express was started to connect Pakistani and Indian Muslims in this region. This connection is so highly appreciated that the head of a madrasa on the Jaisalmer highway calls Jaswant Singh “Maulana”. That does it. There can be nothing more secular than Maulana Jaswant Singh leaving a party of Bharatiya boors like BJP.