Indian Politics- The Tom and Jerry show!

I know the youngsters would groan. Oh no! no politics please! But has anyone really tried. Trust me it’s fun.

I have always been a big fan of Tom and Jerry. Age has not mellowed their charm. Today I find the fight between the BJP and Congress or specifically Narendra Modi who has been very cleverly nicknamed as NaMo and the Congress almost allegoric. NaMo, the naughty Jerry is always one step ahead of the fat and lazy Congress which always seems to be huffing and puffing to catch him. But in this real life story there is not one Tom but an army of Toms. The young generation doesn’t believe in genuflections and give it as good as it comes. So these Toms, inspite of their position or reputation, receive dollops of cat food. The latest victim is Shashi Tharoor, a suave and erudite politician otherwise and someone I admire. After his latest outburst he has been declared as the English Laloo, an epithet that is bound to stick. I find the comparison Hilarious. I am sure Tharoor is not going to be amused.

If you are willing to sift the sleaze and the abuse in the twitter war, there are some funny nuggets. Space limits me to give only a few examples.

When Modi declared that he would charge Rs.5 for his speech in Hyderabad, within minutes someone suggested that he would pay double that amount if Digvijaya Singh promises to shut up. Another one said it is a small price to pay as we are paying a huge one for Manmohan’s Silence.

A lot of jokes float about Manish Tewari, The Information Minister, who has a propensity to speak as if he has swallowed a thesaurus. But the top in terms of jokes are poor Rahul Gandhi and the redoubtable Digvijay Singh. The compilation could make a book really, a best seller. Any Khushwant Singh around?

The punching bag is normally the Congress. But a Congress supporter, not to be out done came out with a gem, narendramodiplans.com. Sadly, the congress supporters lack a sense of humor and are generally abusive. I couldn’t find many rebuts which could come in the category of funny or clever.

Another one to prove my point. The CM of Rajasthan under fire for non-performance and corruption , came up with a FB page. It was alleged that he bought 40,000 likes from Istanbul. There was a joke that the opposition leader when she went touring said she worships and likes cows. The hapless CM replied he likes Bull , Istanbul.
Unfortunately, we Indians who otherwise have thick skins can be pretty thin-skinned about good-natured ribbing. Also, politics brings out the beast in us. Most of the Tweets exchanged are quite ugly. That doesn’t portend well. There are supporters hiding in the bushes to quickly attack you either as a Cong supporter or a BJP supporter. There is no space for unbiased and dispassionate discussion.

Imagine. The dates have not even been declared but there is a war out there.

It’s going to be one election campaign which we would have been better without. Only if both the parties keep their humor quotient!

Update: The narendramodiplans.com domain name now leads to a 404 GitHub page. In an email response to IBNLive, the creator of the website declined to elaborate upon the reasons behind taking down the site and emphasised that he/she “would want to stay out of this issue once and for all” and that he/she had “already removed the ‘quit’ note on the site.”