Tuesday, August 01, 2006

Tol Mole ke Bol! (Weigh and Tell)

Jaswant Singh always had a funny way of saying things. While the pliant media always spun it to look elegant, yours truly thought that the verbal callisthenics provided by this ex-army man was nothing short of verbal jugglery in the manner of the typical circus clown (no disrespect to the clown intended).I have never been that much enamoured of this person who has served in some of the highest ranking posts for India, ranging from Deputy Chairman, Planning Commission,to the External Affairs and Foreign Minister. Harish Khare himself comes up with an article questioning whether indeed Mr. Singh deserves the kudos that has been invariably reserved to him through a potent mixture of aura-building and spinning yarn about the BJP's honchos that was the name of the game during the NDA's regime.

Getting to the point though, "Jest"want Singh's USP is being a sophisticated version of former US Vice President Dan Quayle. I have always found his verbal gymnastics rather funny and esoteric. Sidd Varadarajan had perhaps reached his end of patience after reading Singh's "A Call to Honour" where maybe Singh went about applying his verbal pyrotechnics to written language. AG Noorani had also pointed out that this "anmol" ratan had his way of explaining things that were more tongue behind molars rather than tongue in cheek. Sample this in this book review of Strobe Talbott's book:

"However, `we explained our diplomacy in public,' he [Jaswant] said, `people will demand of me, why are you even talking to the Americans about matters that are none of their business?'" Rightly. Why indeed? Vajpayee took the easy route, which he followed throughout his term - deceive the public and the press by using flowery and opaque language. In this Jaswant was a willing accomplice. The author does not find fault with his ridiculously stilted language but with the press.

"The journalists dutifully scribbled down the oracular utterances, never asking for clarification or amplification, and then reported them to their readers as though they provided insight into what was going on in the talks." Talbott sees nothing wrong in his phrases - "Calculus of human life involved," said this famous visitor to Kandahar in his defence; "the architecture of the dialogue that had been put in place earlier will be fully implemented". Pray, how do you implement "architecture"? The sayings of Jaswant Singh would make Irish Bulls seem prosaic. Sample one - all along the untrodden paths of the future lie the footprints of an unseen hand. Jaswant Singh is more than capable of uttering such profundities.

Oratory, for the BJP, always borders upon the maverick. They have a Goebbelsian hatemonger in Narendra Modi, a dialectician in dialect, Shri Vajpayee (he always provides thesis followed by antithesis in his speeches), a clown prince orator in Venkaiah Naidu and etc. The loss of foot-in-the-saffron-mouth Uma Bharati, ultrasonic Madan Lal Khurana and Machiavellian Mahajan has reduced their acoustics quite a bit though.

Shri Jaswant, when asked to name the "mole" in his book, said that he was not in the business of "indecent exposure". After being unable to expose the "mole"cular structure of the "mole" he had in mind, his agenda seems now exposed. The mole was merely to get more of his books sold in the Mall. Sanjaya Baru of the PMOle insinuated the very same when he said there were unfortunately no "moles or malls" in his recently released book, much to the disappointment to his publishers. A mellow Jaswant now suggests that what he said has been "molested" by the media. Sample this in rediff.com: "The media misinterpreted me. Perhaps I did not communicate this in the din,".The key phrase is "I did not communicate.."! Maybe, he *should not* communicate.

BJP deputy leader of Parliament, Shri Vijay Kumar "Mole"hotra in the meantime takes offense to the fact that the PM had disrespected Jaswant for not acceding to Singh's request of an one-on-one meeting. I think that the PM would disrespect his office if he wasted time trying to extract information about the mole from the black hole that currently occupies Shri Jaswant's brain right now.

Getting to the issue though, its a known fact that the US has always tried to poke its nose, molars and surveillence teeth into India's or for that matter any country's affairs. Considering the fact that its the sole superpower in the world and is worried about nuclear proliferation, it is clear that there must have been US surveillance in India during the days when India had plans of going nuclear. That India succeeded in exploding bombs despite such a close watch was a success of India's camouflage powers as much as a failure in US' HUMINT (human intelligence). Yet, the Rabindra Singh episode also showed the weakness of India's security apparatus vis-a-vis American pressure and lure. Now this was one real "mole" episode that is to be well researched.

3 comments:

ആനന്ദ്‌ പി.കെ said...

Well crafted writeup Srini. U've just tron to shreds the 'false' "moles" of Jaswant Singh. Also, is very comical!!

- Anand P.K

SundayThots said...

Cool and witty write-up, Srini!!

But ok, Jaswant Singh was a bad speaker/writer but he is light-years ahead of "Nut"war Singh. Do you remember how he shot his mouth off the day he was dismissed? That he was bad-mouthing the Indo-US nuke deal or India's anti-Iran vote, both decisions to which he was a party to, was thoroughly shameless, to say the least.

>>Yet, the Rabindra Singh episode also showed the weakness of India's security >>apparatus vis-a-vis American pressure and lure. Now this was one real "mole" >>episode that is to be well researched.

Yeah, this and the Mitrokhin archives episode. That will thoroughly expose how "non-aligned" were we during the cold war.

Unknown said...

Revisionists of the World Unite !