No Poetry In His Language | Jyotirmaya Sharma

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MAGAZINE | AUG 26, 2013

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Sunday 18 August 2013 09:37 AM

No Poetry In His Language | Jyotirmaya Sharma

http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?287390

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OPINION

No Poetry In His Language

Modi doesnt dress up his version of truth, its baldspeak
JYOTIRMAYA SHARMA Like Tweet TEXT SIZE 12 7 Send COMMENTS PRINT
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To understand Narendra Modis rhetoric, it is important to understand his mental universe. It is a composite of several trends. Like the reformers of the 19th century, he believes in the regeneration of Hinduism as he understands it. This is a colonial legacy which believes that the entity called Hinduism is a victim of undesirable influences as well as atrophy and degeneration. His response to this is to cloak the violence, power and ruthlessness of the West in what he understands to be the indigenous equivalent of the otherwise debilitating trend. Hence, his regular exhortation of strength, masculinity and efficiency has to be understood as foils to the Western models of power and glory. To legitimise this imitation of the West, he resorts to comfortable cliches about the Indian masses, celebrates the villages and the romantic notion of them. The celebration of a mythical Indian spirituality is part of the same legitimising function. All these elements are bound together by an inflamed nationalism that is forever looking for enemies and seeks to assimilate them or respond to them in kind. There is a simple-mindedness to the mind caught amidst such glaring contradictions: it inhabits a universe devoid of paradox, irony, complexity and, above all, humour. The last bit about humour hides a paradox. Modis language, delivered usually as a harangue or sound bite, approximates most to that of the vidushak in Indian literature, distinct from the court jester or clown in the Western tradition. In Indian bhashas, as also in Sanskrit drama, the vidushaks words offer an immediate, tangible connection with what is perceived as the truth, especially in a world filled with banal abstractions. His language is one that clears the web of complexity and brings us face-to-face with a crude, horrific and non-dramatic reality. In his role as a garrulous and convincingly eloquent individual, the vidushak supposedly conveys uncomfortable truths in a direct, sometimes crude, and blunt manner. Despite his linguistic dexterity, his words are ultimately cloying, ineffectual and debased. Why is this so? His words and his eloquence are never his own. They are derived and lack originality. He is a mere translator. Even as a translator, he is an imperfect conveyor of the words and thoughts of the original. His volubility and comic flourishes, entertaining at one level, also betray a fragile, limited and tenuous hold over truth. He is a prisoner of his own wit and trapped in the web of words he creates around himself. He thinks his mission is to bust and spoil others illusions but he is a victim of his own words. The reason is twofold: he misuses his power of language to change perceptions without having the purpose or the power to transform reality. This is because he is the supreme advocate of an illusion and the most deft salesman of ordinary reality: that fear and realpolitik are the final and only foundations upon which reality can be based, to the exclusion of everything else. In sharp contrast to the vidushak, the sage, the faqir, the poet and the statesman understand the limitation of language. They choose either to keep quiet or use language judiciously and imaginatively. They transcend the ordinariness of language or break its rules. The vidushak, by contrast, is the embodiment of literal-mindedness. As pointed out above, his linguistic flourishes excite, intimidate, and even transform perception, but ultimately lead to an abyss. He is the master of the literal, the vakya, but his language has no place for the metaphorical usage, the lakshana. And as all bhashas in India tell us, language is no language without lak-

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27 JUL 2013, 1:19:20 AM | BUZZ

Meanwhile, Jagdish Bhagwati is combative as ever in an interview to Sheela Bhatt of rediff: When I criticised Muhammad Yunus, some Bangladeshis said I was jealous of his Nobel Prize. I do think that it should have been awarded instead to Elaben Bhatt who started SEWA two years before Grameen Bank, is a true Gandhian and not into cultivating influential people who work for your Nobel Prize. This is journalism which people resort to when they have no arguments. It does not bother me... My exchanges with Sen are truly polite, and if Sharma thinks they are personal and petty, he is really missing the point about how debates are conducted. I have long debated some of the most important
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Sunday 18 August 2013 09:37 AM

No Poetry In His Language | Jyotirmaya Sharma

http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?287390

shana. In his traditional role, the vidushak is the companion and friend of the hero. Modi has no heroes in the real sense. He is a supreme narcissist, who loves his own voice, is enthralled by his own wit and amazed at his own capacity to sway people. Like the vidushak, every curse for him is a blessing, every moment of fear and terror for him is life-enhancing. And not because he confronts the curse like a hero or faces terror and fear upfront. He just uses language in order to survive by his wit and by making a mockery of reality, or rather his illusory version of it. The mental universe he inhabits makes no extraordinary demands of him or his intellect. He flourishes by establishing an alleged link between his words and the world. His favourite word is yathartha, a view of the world where things are taken to be as they are, and he transforms this world into one totally arbitrary and meaningless. (Jyotirmaya Sharma is the author of Cosmic Love & Human Apathy: Swami Vivekanandas Restatement of Religion.)

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37/D-60
AUG 18, 2013 09:24 AM

VNK Murti, Everybody loves a clown. Very true, which clearly illustrates why Con-gress drones fawn over the Yuvraj (aka Clown Prince) and vilify Modi.
BONITA CHENNAI, INDIA PERMALINK | LIKE (0) | DISLIKE (0) | REPORT ABUSE

36/D-56
AUG 18, 2013 09:16 AM

bullshit article by a bullshit journal in a bullshit magazine on a bullshit topic ...vidushaks were atleast better than bullshit
VAIBHAV KOLKATA, INDIA PERMALINK | LIKE (0) | DISLIKE (0) | REPORT ABUSE

35/D-53
AUG 18, 2013 09:05 AM

"Then why do we look for Narendra Modi's guilt in writing? It cannot be found in pen and ink. It will not be found in government archives. It doesn't lie in carefully preserved records. It has to be inferred, construed, reconstructed." Saroja

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Sunday 18 August 2013 09:37 AM

No Poetry In His Language | Jyotirmaya Sharma

http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?287390

Translation: Comrades, we sickulars have moved heaven and earth for 11 years to find something on Modi but we have failed miserably. Now even Gujju Muslims have moved on, and Western countries have stopped pretending they give a shit. The only thing that can save our sickular asses now is to fabricate something against Modi.
FEDUPINDIAN HYDERABAD, INDIA PERMALINK | LIKE (0) | DISLIKE (0) | REPORT ABUSE

34/D-50
AUG 18, 2013 08:09 AM

D.L.Narayan ----------------There is enough in the article by Dipankar Gupta to expose the doublespeak of the hardcore hindutva breed and too subtle for people like you to appreciate.It would suffice for the moment to point out the desperate urgency of the Modi camp to rehablitate him in the eyes of the West ,through foreign media interviews and lobbying to get visa to countries in the West.
DEEPAK DELHI, INDIA PERMALINK | LIKE (1) | DISLIKE (1) | REPORT ABUSE

33/D-47
AUG 18, 2013 07:47 AM

Saroja ---------------Thank you for your detailed account on the S.I.T spl. Shiv Vishvanath's piece.Very enlightening ! ! One can understand Modi's need to go to foreign media and try to get visae from the West to rehablitate himself ?
DEEPAK DELHI, INDIA PERMALINK | LIKE (2) | DISLIKE (0) | REPORT ABUSE

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