The New Age Political Weapon: the Art of Mudslinging

 The New Age Political Weapon: the Art of Mudslinging

 

Mudslinging is the game that comes with ease to contemporary politicians. It started with Aam Admi party that was founded on its avowed manifesto to highlight corruption and financial misdemeanours against elected representatives and their kith and kin. First it was Kejrewall who gave his nation a dishonourable sobriquet as a nation of crooks and criminals by his daily press briefings to unleash some alleged criminality of X,Y, Z  and vilifying all political parties on issues of corruption and misgovernance. Though he never lodged a FIR to set the process of criminal justice in motion against those whom he alleged as cognizable offenders, he succeeded in damaging the reputation of many political leaders and painted them with shades of grayish black tinge. With state elections currently reaching a feverish crescendo, all politicians at all levels have followed suit and sharpened their knives to let out a wordy blood bath of innuendoes and insinuations against their opponents. And they do not stop at attacking their present opponents, but stoop so low to drag in all their fathers and forefathers, who they allege of having committed great criminal acts such as conceding to re-draw fresh geographical boundaries that have shrunk the nation and to bring forth worthless progeny to perpetuate dynasty.

What a pity that the present day politicians have no understanding of the legacy of GNP(Gandhi-Nehru- Patel) who had given us the idea of India from Kashmir to Kanyakumari and from Kolkatta to Kutch. Thanks to this noble triumvirate the different regions of India with different cultures, languages and religions coalesced into a single nation Bharat and adopted the democratic form of governance that continues till today. On hindsight, some of the economic policies of the first thirty odd years have come for scathing criticism today for having given rise to permit-license-quota raj that has made India in a seemingly precipitous decline, relative to the world. Such a hindsight analysis suffers from a failure to see that they do not merit censure since the intentions of the erstwhile leaders were beyond reproach. No single ideology or model has a staying power beyond a certain period. Unfortunately after six and a half decades to win brownie points during the election campaign, the current politicians have indulged in vilification of leaders of those times, when for a huge and fledgling democracy like India with a huge population in abject poverty, the socialist pattern of governance was better suited. Today allegations and counter allegations fly thick and fast, bringing down the political discourses to all time low. The current theatre of political absurdity runs true to the Panchatantra tale about the wolf and the lamb, where the wolf accuses the lamb of having dirtied the water and if he has not done it, it must have been his grandfather! It is indeed a sad reflection on the maturity and understanding of our current politicians that there is no appreciation of what Nehru and Patel had contributed; on the contrary there is a deliberate attempt to pit one against the other and to show who the better of the two was. What a far cry from the cultured, civilized and noble way of the two stalwarts -Nehru and Patel-  working together  despite differences in their ideologies, views and ideas. It is their legacy of democracy that has given these contemporary politicians the right to speak even to the extent of instigating an illusory rivalry between Nehru and Patel where there was none. People who take no pride in the noble achievements of remote ancestors will never achieve anything worthy to be remembered with pride by their remote descendants. It is to be borne in mind that ‘every generation enjoys the use of a vast hoard [of knowledge] bequeathed to it by antiquity, and transmits that hoard, augmented by fresh acquisitions, to future ages.’

The language used by the present day politicians against their political opponents, their searing personal attacks, and mimicking of their opponents’ personal traits are signs of the new low they have reached. Almost all of them have resorted to demagoguery that leaves a bitter taste in their audience. They seem to appeal to the base emotions and prejudices of people without a thought of how such vituperative attacks will bring an irreconcilable division in the country. It is a pity that none of them know what it is to be a gentleman -politician as delineated by Macaulay when he wrote about Addison, the satirist turned politician. Macaulay had paid a glowing tribute to Addison saying that he was   ‘an unsullied master, accomplished scholar, master of eloquence, consummate painter of life and manners… who alone knew how to use ridicule without abusing it, who without inflicting a wound, effected a great social reform; who reconciled wit and virtue after a long and disastrous separation during which wit had been laid astray by profligacy and virtue by fanaticism.’ Unfortunately our politicians today hold on to the disastrous separation between wit and virtue and resort to rabble rousing with half lies and quarter truths.