Political Correctness for a Diverse Democracy

Having recently been introduced to the concept of political correctness, Indian politicians are having a field day with this new instrument. It fits in wonderfully with their notions of vote bank politics, like a child with a new G.I.Joe for his collection. All this of course only when they catch an opponent in a faux pas. When it applies to them, they feign naivete and ignorance as the situation demands. Never having being known for their great restraint in rhetoric, it becomes a spanner in the works for some, intending to seal their place in history with some choice utterances. Required to now carefully consider what they spew from their mouths, brash claims turn into red faced apologies, preposterous ideologies become regretful assertions that are beautiful proof for the statement that "patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels".

Close on the heels of Jawaharlal Nehru's great-grandson serving time in the cooler for hate speech, we have our very own Munnabhai turned convict turned Samajwadi Party General Secretary Sanjay Dutt in the docks for his "sexist" and "condescending" remarks against the second most powerful lady in the country, Bahujan Samaj supremo and UP Chief Minister, Maha Maya. While the affectionate sentiments one associates with a jhappi (hug, in Munnaspeak) and pappi (kiss) are only in keeping with the wonderfully chummy history of the SP and BSP, Dutt is nowadays expected to manifest his benevolence to female opponents in more mature and enlightened ways. So say our national gurus of political correctness.

Dutt's boss though, Mulayam Singh Yadav, could not care less for this new fad. In fact, he wishes to do away with the entire language in which this fad is typically present, one of India's two official languages, English. Yadav also does not care for this modern day hindrance to civilized agriculture, the computer. Even in this great age of moronic proclamations, this ranks right up there up some of the best that Bal Thackeray, Lalu Yadav and Vaiko have had to offer. While the opposition does not seem to have many qualms with these assertions, they lay their political incorrectness allegations against Yadav's derogatory stance on women. Yadav, in a brilliant move, has countered this by recruiting well known woman lover Nafisa Ali, into the fold. The opposition, defeated and dejected, has trained its sights onto other opponents now.

In the south of India this new fad is non-existent. Historically flippant on the issue of PC; Tamils especially, have other priorities. We have anyone and everyone weighing in on the situation in Sri Lanka without a care in the world as to the veracity of their claims. Having feigned concern for the last six months, people now simply speculate on the well being of LTTE chief Prabhakaran. With bold claims on what grievous damages they might inflict on civil society in case of any harm to this little known man, anyone with access to a mic has held forth on this topic. While there is agreement across the political spectrum on this issue, politics is the art of the possible, and hence differences must be identified. These differences though do not lend themselves to scrutiny under the banner of political correctness. There is no need, as political discourse here is so removed from civilization as we have come to know it that futile attempts at PC are like spitting into a tornado.

Is there another example of a country that has the brazenness to debate the status as a terrorist group of an organization that is directly responsible for killing one of its former Prime Ministers? While there is no semblance of a societal conscience in India, our degraded politicians will argue in peace, delusional and unconscionable to the last. With an intelligentsia and a Fourth Estate too meek to question this absolute atrocity, attention instead is continuously paid to trivialities and farces. In the starkest of ironies the only person left to address this issue is one of the single greatest advocates of this ridiculous position itself, Jayalalitha. It is like Hitler asking Churchill to be upset with Mussolini for supporting Hitler. Where is the need for political correctness?