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April      Last updated: April  15,  5:00 p.m.

Business—as ‘usual’

Satiricus is sad to report bad news. The other day our secular media has editorially warned friends, Romans, countrymen that an "activist" RSS is "bad news" for Vajpayee. Actually, in the normal course of things Satiricus would have wondered why that should be so. If, as the dictionary informs him, activism is vigorous action for a cause, what is bad about vigour? But on deeper reflection he has realised that activism is good or bad depending upon who the activist is. For example, between Shabana and Sangh Shabana can be admiringly described as an activist, but can Sangh be similarly praised? Of course not. Why? Because Shabana is not only a Muslim but a secular Muslim (if you can believe such a curious creature exists on God's good earth), while the Sangh is a pack of Hindus, and an activist Hindu would mean a vigorous Hindu, a vigorous Hindu would mean an assertive Hindu, and an assertive Hindu would be an abominably un-Hindu Hindu. For have not the secular gods ordained that the Hindu must be righteously at the receiving end, that the Hindu must be a pious pushover, that the Hindu must be as meek as a mouse? Then can there be anything more impossible than an activist mouse? So even stupid Satiricus sees that if this Hindu organisation has become activist something is surely and radically wrong either with Hindus or with Hinduism or with both. And that in turn makes an activist RSS bad news and an activist Hindu worse news. Now that Satiricus looks back on this newsworthy badness of anything Hindu, he agrees that it is inherent in RSS from its inception. For in violation of the holy tenets of secularism the RSS began to preach, continued to preach for 75 years, and does not desist from preaching the heresy that the Hindu must stand up and demand to be counted. Satiricus cannot imagine a bigger blasphemy. However, even this big black cloud had a silver lining. It was that when the RSS talked of Hindutva as its ideal it talked of culture, character, morality, values and what have you. Such nebulous nonsense could be brusquely brushed aside, even safely ridiculed. It could be brilliantly argued by the Indian intelligentsia—the chosen of the secular gods—that in this blessed land that is a marvellous menagerie of multiple cultures a Hindu culture that is a national culture is a figment of the crazy, communal imagination. It was easy, and it was easily done down the decades. And while doing so most learnedly, a welcome opportunity could also be utilised to abuse, traduce and trash the RSS by repeating again and again and again that the RSS killed the Mahatma. But since an alarmingly activist Sarsanghchalak has taken over, what is the terrible thing he has done for starters? He has served notice on all those with whom charging RSS with Gandhiji's murder is a favourite intellectual pastime. He said enough is enough, and from now on such people may be haunted to court—as Kesri has been. This is murder of democracy. It is a fell attack on the freedom of abusive expression. Once you abjure this abuse, what else is left? Why, nothing! The other serious saying of the Sangh chief is to claim that Hindutva does not mean just godliness, it also means a good life. In other words, Hindutva has an economic side, a side of Hindu economics, a side of swadeshi Hindu economics. And he has not stopped at speaking of having swadeshi "at heart", he has even gone into the details of it and has raised questions that should better be left to our friends, philosophers and guides at the IMF and World Bank. Why was it necessary to do what even WTO did not require us to do and open up the insurance sector to foreigners? Why was foreign milk powder imported at Rs. 51,000 per tonne when Indian milk sells at Rs. 70,000? Why subsidize chemical fertilizers that cause soil erosion? Good God, Sarsanghchalakji, stick to culture, leave out agriculture!

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Talking about culture, it seems the RSS needs to revise and refine its ideas on the subject, and Satiricus would happily inform it that a great new work on Indian culture is now available for the benefit of us uncultured Indians. A lady teaching at the University of London has written a book titled All you want is money, All you want is love and subtitled "Sex and Romance in Modern India" based on research of valuable source material. And what is that valuable source material? It is Yash Chopra's films, Shobha De's novels, and the Stardust magazine. This, says the learned lady, is the world defined by the "new middle class" which sets the cultural and consumption standards the rest of the country aspires to follow. Satiricus is overwhelmed. As a permanent but by no means new member of the Indian middle class he had sought to imbibe culture as he understood it, but apparently his understanding was so poor that he had missed all these three fountainheads of the perennial springs of eternal Indian culture. Are Yash Chopra's films more cultured than B.R. Chopra's, and are B.R. Chopra's films less cultured than B.R. Ishara's? Satiricus has no idea. Are Shobha De's novels tastier pulp than mango pulp? Satiricus does not know. And is Stardust on a higher or lower level as compared to Star & Style? Alas, Satiricus is not in a position to say. In fact he was under the impression that film glossies based on Bollywood had nothing to do with culture. Anyway he is happy to now know that anyone wanting to know what Indian culture means does not have to bother about what Vivekananda said about it. What Shobha De says about it is more than enough. And if that is not enough, he can go to the magazine stall round the corner and buy it in a glossy package. Truly, instant culture is competing with instant coffee.

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Satiricus is alarmed to learn that the reputation of India that is blessed Bharat as one of the most corrupt countries in the world is in grave jeopardy. For news comes that customer agents in Mumbai, Delhi, Ahmedabad and elsewhere have passed a formal resolution not to bribe government officials. This is serious. Bribing government officials to secure even routine clearances is a time-honoured custom, so how dare custom agents so blantantly resolve to break it? So long customs house agents have been claiming lawful deductions in income tax by showing bribe amounts paid as "business expenses". Was that not an admirable arrangement? For business without bribe is a ridiculous impossibility. Satiricus was once told by a friend in Mumbai that if you wanted to buy a flat in that city you were duty-bound to go through a systematic list of government officials whom you had to bribe—complete with the prescribed amounts—for completing the necessary documentation. In the considered opinion of Satiricus that was a very thoughtful and methodical arrangement. For it ensured that no one was unfairly left out and no one was paid less than was his rightful due. Could this be called corruption? Satiricus thinks not. For he recalls the wise words of an eminent British poet who once said, "I've never corrupted a government official, because I've never met a government official who was not already corrupt." How can we former British Indians afford to forget this British wisdom? And even as independent Indians do we not have the proud record of corruption right up to the prime ministerial level? Can we imagine Bharat without Bofors? And can we imagine Bofors without bribes?