<p>In Kalidasa’s Abhijnana Sakunatalam, regarded by many as his greatest play, the heroine travels from her father’s ashram deep inside the forest to the capital of Dushyanta’s empire. Pregnant, anxious, and weary, she appears before King Dushyanta, whose child she bears, to remind him of his duties as her husband and the child’s father. Dushyanta has forgotten how he pursued and married Sakuntala, and heaps insult after insult on her.</p>.<p>“You are like a painted flame – it looks like fire but gives no heat. You appear chaste, but you are not,” he says. His diatribe is misogynistic and nasty: “It is the nature of women to be fickle and to seek what is to their advantage.” Kalidasa attributes Dushyanta’s cruel words to a loss of memory caused by sage Durvasa’s curse. The original, in the Mahabharata, is not as charitable to the king.</p>.<p>When it becomes evident that Dushyanta and his royal court are in no mood to believe her, Sakuntala decides further persuasion is futile. She dismisses him in a single word: ‘Anarya’. It means ‘non-Aryan’ literally; commentators explain that in the Sakuntalam context, it means ‘uncivilised’ and ‘uncultured’. That single word is devastating, enough to blow away all the dirt that took Dushyanta long passages to build. Eventually, the sight of a ring brings back Dushyanta’s memories, and the couple are happily united.</p>.<p>When the Chief Justice of India, Surya Kant, used the word ‘cockroaches’ to describe unemployed youth, journalists, and activists, he was scolding a petitioner in his courtroom. He went on to describe them as parasites gnawing away at the system from within, although he later said he was only talking about youth with ‘fake and bogus’ certificates. Who would have imagined that his admonishments would consolidate youth disgruntlement into a mass online movement?</p>.<p>Sometimes, a single word can accomplish what huge campaigns, manifestos, speeches, and policy documents cannot. It pierces through public fatigue, condenses complex emotions, and holds the power to alter individual and collective destinies. The Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), which sprang up in response to the ‘cockroach’ remark, is an example of how a single word can sway millions. Within five days, the satirical collective beat both the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Congress, the country’s biggest political parties, in social media engagement. Whether online popularity will translate into any real political resistance, we will know soon, but Abhijeet Dipke, the 30-year-old student who launched the party, is already someone the media is pursuing for stories and quotes.</p>.<p>The CJP projects itself as a meme, and its instant appeal is a testament to the power of satirical humour. It is unlikely that its wildfire virality was planned or expected, even with Dipke’s credentials as a former Aam Aadmi Party communications strategist. With just an online presence and no physical office, the CJP says anyone lazy, unemployed, chronically online, and ranting qualifies for membership. A far cry from the lofty ideals of liberty, equality, and fraternity that fuelled the French Revolution, but irony and sarcasm are effective, too.</p>.<p>Political leaders get called names, and some of those names stick. The BJP has used ‘Pappu’ to paint Rahul Gandhi as childish and immature. When the Congress withdrew support to the H D Deve Gowda government in the 1990s, it called him a ‘nikamma’, a worthless or incompetent person. These are loaded accusations packed into single, catchy words.</p>.<p>A word that has worked well for the BJP and adversely for its rival parties is ‘Hindutva’. And that is a conundrum the English-educated elites in the Congress have failed to crack. What the Congress says it is critiquing when it critiques Hindutva is the political philosophy espoused by V D Savarkar, with its deep suspicion of non-Hindus, and not so much the Hinduism as practised by the majority. But then, Hinduism translated into the Indian languages would be ‘Hindutva’, and any criticism of ‘Hindutva’ is received as a criticism of all of Hinduism. The way to counter that would be to qualify Hindutva with a prefix – vipareet Hindutva? Hindu vipareetavaada? ‘Vipareeta’ means ‘contrary’, ‘adverse’. By going all out against ‘Hindutva’ without a clue about its signification is a self-goal the Congress is adept at scoring. And as you can see, the BJP simply loves this game!</p>.<p>‘Signification’ is a term that comes from semiotics, the study of signs, symbols, and how humans interpret the world around them. A totally unexpected word is now thriving due to a divergence in meaning. Cockroaches are a pest to some, a symbol of resistance to others.</p>.<p><em>The writer often sees high art in kitsch and vice versa.</em></p>
<p>In Kalidasa’s Abhijnana Sakunatalam, regarded by many as his greatest play, the heroine travels from her father’s ashram deep inside the forest to the capital of Dushyanta’s empire. Pregnant, anxious, and weary, she appears before King Dushyanta, whose child she bears, to remind him of his duties as her husband and the child’s father. Dushyanta has forgotten how he pursued and married Sakuntala, and heaps insult after insult on her.</p>.<p>“You are like a painted flame – it looks like fire but gives no heat. You appear chaste, but you are not,” he says. His diatribe is misogynistic and nasty: “It is the nature of women to be fickle and to seek what is to their advantage.” Kalidasa attributes Dushyanta’s cruel words to a loss of memory caused by sage Durvasa’s curse. The original, in the Mahabharata, is not as charitable to the king.</p>.<p>When it becomes evident that Dushyanta and his royal court are in no mood to believe her, Sakuntala decides further persuasion is futile. She dismisses him in a single word: ‘Anarya’. It means ‘non-Aryan’ literally; commentators explain that in the Sakuntalam context, it means ‘uncivilised’ and ‘uncultured’. That single word is devastating, enough to blow away all the dirt that took Dushyanta long passages to build. Eventually, the sight of a ring brings back Dushyanta’s memories, and the couple are happily united.</p>.<p>When the Chief Justice of India, Surya Kant, used the word ‘cockroaches’ to describe unemployed youth, journalists, and activists, he was scolding a petitioner in his courtroom. He went on to describe them as parasites gnawing away at the system from within, although he later said he was only talking about youth with ‘fake and bogus’ certificates. Who would have imagined that his admonishments would consolidate youth disgruntlement into a mass online movement?</p>.<p>Sometimes, a single word can accomplish what huge campaigns, manifestos, speeches, and policy documents cannot. It pierces through public fatigue, condenses complex emotions, and holds the power to alter individual and collective destinies. The Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), which sprang up in response to the ‘cockroach’ remark, is an example of how a single word can sway millions. Within five days, the satirical collective beat both the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Congress, the country’s biggest political parties, in social media engagement. Whether online popularity will translate into any real political resistance, we will know soon, but Abhijeet Dipke, the 30-year-old student who launched the party, is already someone the media is pursuing for stories and quotes.</p>.<p>The CJP projects itself as a meme, and its instant appeal is a testament to the power of satirical humour. It is unlikely that its wildfire virality was planned or expected, even with Dipke’s credentials as a former Aam Aadmi Party communications strategist. With just an online presence and no physical office, the CJP says anyone lazy, unemployed, chronically online, and ranting qualifies for membership. A far cry from the lofty ideals of liberty, equality, and fraternity that fuelled the French Revolution, but irony and sarcasm are effective, too.</p>.<p>Political leaders get called names, and some of those names stick. The BJP has used ‘Pappu’ to paint Rahul Gandhi as childish and immature. When the Congress withdrew support to the H D Deve Gowda government in the 1990s, it called him a ‘nikamma’, a worthless or incompetent person. These are loaded accusations packed into single, catchy words.</p>.<p>A word that has worked well for the BJP and adversely for its rival parties is ‘Hindutva’. And that is a conundrum the English-educated elites in the Congress have failed to crack. What the Congress says it is critiquing when it critiques Hindutva is the political philosophy espoused by V D Savarkar, with its deep suspicion of non-Hindus, and not so much the Hinduism as practised by the majority. But then, Hinduism translated into the Indian languages would be ‘Hindutva’, and any criticism of ‘Hindutva’ is received as a criticism of all of Hinduism. The way to counter that would be to qualify Hindutva with a prefix – vipareet Hindutva? Hindu vipareetavaada? ‘Vipareeta’ means ‘contrary’, ‘adverse’. By going all out against ‘Hindutva’ without a clue about its signification is a self-goal the Congress is adept at scoring. And as you can see, the BJP simply loves this game!</p>.<p>‘Signification’ is a term that comes from semiotics, the study of signs, symbols, and how humans interpret the world around them. A totally unexpected word is now thriving due to a divergence in meaning. Cockroaches are a pest to some, a symbol of resistance to others.</p>.<p><em>The writer often sees high art in kitsch and vice versa.</em></p>
