Netaji, where’s your sense of humour?

The controversy over Trinamool Congress MP Kalyan Banerjee mimicking Vice-President Jagdeep Dhankhar outside the House last week is a shouting sign of the absence of humour in the country’s politics rather than of a lack of respect for Dhankhar or his office.

The government and the BJP have accused Banerjee and the Opposition MPs who watched his performance of disrespecting a high office.

President Draupadi Murmu and Prime Minister Narendra Modi have expressed dismay and pain over the “insult” to the high office and the “humiliation” of Dhankhar.

Kalyan Banerjee improvised his mimicry at an assembly of MPs who had been suspended from parliament. Suspension from parliament does not mean suspension of a sense of humour, which is elemental to human nature. Laughter heals, and helps humans gain balance when they are pushed and stressed. It is a quality gained through evolution to lift the spirits and make peace with the world.

Humour has steadily gone out of parliament, politics and even public life. In the past, India’s parliament has smiled, chuckled and roared with laughter when barbs and ridicule were used by the government and the Opposition against one another.

Piloo Mody and Laloo Yadav brightened up the dreariest moments, and wit was the second nature of Nehru and Atal Bihari Vajpayee. Everyone enjoyed the humour, which made parliament a human institution.

No one held parliament less august for its laughter. But through the decades, the laughter has subsided, and shouts and screams have risen, turning parliament into a divided and angry hall.

Even outside parliament, politics and public life see less laughter now. When rivals laugh together, they find common spaces, but when they shout at each other, they divide themselves.

Much of the laughter and humour in the public space is now seen in the art of stand-up comics and cartoonists, but even they are finding the going tough under the current dispensation and atmosphere in the country.  

Former Presidents like Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed, Zail Singh and S D Sharma have been caricatured, mocked and even ridiculed. Former Vice-President Hamid Ansari was once an object of Prime Minister Modi’s sarcastic comments inside parliament.

No-one pokes a joke or mimicks the Office of the Vice-President or of the Prime Minister, it’s aimed at individuals; and individuals, however high and mighty, would do well to take themselves a little less seriously and laugh a little – especially at themselves. Nehru, for instance, encouraged cartoonists to lampoon him.

There cannot be anything special about Dhankhar that puts him above mimicry, jokes and laughter. When Kalyan Banerjee mimicked Dhankhar, he was trying to be one with him in word, action, mien and attitude.

The audience also became part of that unity. Wasn’t that better than the divisions in the House? Let us suspend anger and give a chance to laughter, and let not politics divide where art unites.