No Humour Please, We are Indians.

                                           No Humour Please, we are Indians.

The Hug and Wink episode certainly relieved the tedium of long Parliamentary speeches especially on a No trust vote. We Indians, as a race are singularly devoid of humour. The only time we hear Indians laugh is the exaggerated laughter recorded specifically for the innumerable poor comedy shows on our TV channels. The laughter reaches high decibel levels when a portly male dresses like a woman and performs unaesthetic acrobatics that mock all females and in poor taste. Our sense of humouris limited to Rabelaism(coarse humour) and never extended to Pantagruelism, i.e., dealing with serious subjects in a spirit of good and sometimes cynical good humour. On our TV channels, we see many of our political spokesmen grim faced and angry with no smile unless their lips twitch in mockery as the opposition panelist reels a list of inconvenient and unpalatable facts. When the opposition is in the receiving end- which invariably they are at all times, they have a grin and bear look.

Satirical humour is unacceptable to Indians and the only time they accept it and laugh is when satire is coarsely targetted at their opponents-in particular political opponents. Yesterday at the end of his fierce speech, Rahul Gandhi, fondly referred to by BJP as Pappu(a simpleton), gave a fright to the treasury benches that Pappu pass ho gaya.  Rahul prefaced his hug by accepting the pet name given to him and said he harboured no ‘naphrat’ (rancour) even as he is railed day after day as ‘Pappu’ by his political opponents. His dramatic act that followed, of hugging the PM was a gesture to say that he has no personal ‘naphrat’ against his Prime Minister. Though the PM with his clever oratory exaggerated the act by saying Rahul asked him to get up, the picture shows that he did not get up and he was hugged while he was sitting. What irked the treasury benches and the PM was it was a satirical humour(Horatian) that playfully criticizes some acts and speeches through gentle, mild and light hearted humour. The motherly admonition by the Speaker for violating the sanctity and decorum of the august assembly was like chiding an enfant terrible, a child who is terribly candid saying embarrassing things to his parents and others. Maybe Rahul could have sought her permission to cross over to the Treasury bench to do his little theatrical act. That was his mistake, though his intention was to make the point that mere spreading of hatred against him and his party was unbecoming of the ruling party. Rahul’s  “Munnabhai’ hugplomacy was his way of trying to win over his opponents. The real hidden satire was not lost upon the PM and his votaries. The PM’s hugplomacy has so far not yielded any positive results. He has visited 84 nations in these four years and has hugged many Presidents and Prime Ministers barring women leaders like Theresa May and Merkel. The foreign investment in billions of billion dollars has not filled our coffers as per his exaggerated claims, the release of Hafiz Saeed by Pakistan despite the PM’s hug of the now discredited Nawaz Shariff, the US’ approval of aid to Pakistan after his huge hug of Trump, , the unabated game of Chinese checkers despite swinging with the Chinese PM on the banks of Sabarmati, the backstabbing of Nepal and Maldives(who has lately refused to extradite Naik), are just a few instances of the wonderful results  of PM’s hugplomacy. Rahul also knew his hugplomacy will not result in a change of heart with love overflowing for him from the BJP leaders.

Was not the PM also at his theatrical best with his mimicry of the Italian accent, with his singsong rendition of his usual attack on dynasty vis- a-vis his humble origins, his Mark Antony like peroration that the opponents could not see all that he had achieved in the last four years and his seeking divine benediction for the opponents to get enough strength to bring another no trust motion in 2024? The speech was devoted to one single idea of Congress mukht Bharat. The treasury bench had their fill of hushed laughter as he mounted his attack on the Congress for all the failures of his own government. One dramatic act engendered another theatrical performance. His wink and his dancing fingers showed that he was a dramebazz. Soon after ina rally in UP the PM says since Rahul had no answers to any issue, he resorted to ‘unwanted hug’. Does this mean all his hugs were wanted  by international leaders. Wa she requested to hug them ? When does a hug become wanted and unwanted?

But the Parliamentarians had no stomach for  humour.   Was it lost on the viewers who watched the dramatic act of Rahul and the prime time theatrics of our PM? Who winked and who blinked? In our theatre of Parliament there is no place for humour. Yata praja thatha raja. If praja suffers from lack of humour, why blame the raja(s)? We are Indians, we need no humour.