Big Book of Malice

by Khushwant Singh

  In a society which overlooks small misdemeanours, people begin to think they can get away with anything. So thousands of crores were made in kick-backs, thousands of crores given by businessmen to ministers and senior politicians—no accountability whatsoever.

  When wheeler-dealers in black money go scot-free, there is little to deter men with violence in their blood doing what they will. So we had Naina Sahni hacked up and dumped in a tandoor, and Chief Minister Beant Singh blown up with a dozen others by a human bomb. In a climate of violence, crimes like murders, rapes, robberies and thefts went up steadily.

  Will these trends continue into 1996? Unless we get an avatar who will descend from wherever he lives to redeem us from evildoers and restore the rule of righteousness, I am afraid they will.

  30 December 1995

  Laloo and the Tigress

  By strange coincidence, on the very day the chief minister of Bihar, Laloo Prasad Yadav took a bunch of flatterers to task, Sheba, the Royal Bengal Tigress in Alipur Zoo in Calcutta, killed a young man who tried to put a garland around her neck, and severely mauled his companion. Laloo’s flatterers had set up Laloo Fan Clubs, Laloo Vichar Manches, the Laloo Sena, Laloo Brigade, Laloo Free Health and Education Centre, etc. Animals are not prone to flattery, and as Sheba showed, have more effective ways of dealing with sycophants than we humans. All Laloo could do was to impose fines on his unwanted, unwelcome chamchas while Sheba slew one and maimed the other: left to herself, she would have gobbled up both. Laloo has yet to learn that flatterers resemble friends just as much as wolves resemble dogs. We would like to know what Laloo did to the snivelling bard who composed the Laloo Chalisa eulogizing his qualities of head and heart. I don’t know if he has read any Shakespeare. He should heed the warning in Julius Ceasar, where a courtier speaks about his boss thus:

  ‘but when I tell him he hates flatterers

  He says he does; being then most

  flattered.’

  Laloo’s denouncing flatterers will prove counter-productive because it will generate another breed of bootlickers who will laud his condemning flattery. It is wiser to be like a duck: treat flattery like water—swim above it, dive in it, but don’t let it wet your wings. Adlai Stevenson, in my estimation the ablest politician-statesman of recent times, put it neatly: ‘Oh, flattery—it’s like a cigarette; it is all right if you do not inhale the smoke. If you do, you can get lung cancer.’

  Flattery comes in many forms: the more devious, the more difficult to resist. Most often, the fellow who claims to speaking his mind (‘Main to seedhee seedhee baat karney wala hoon’) and mixes in a few harsh words to establish his bona fides, is the more difficult to resist and the most poisonous. People in positions of power, as Laloo Prasad is, should presume that no one will ever tell them the truth about themselves except their enemies. That is what makes the kursee such a lonely seat to occupy: you can’t trust people who say nice things to you on your face; and you don’t want to hear unpleasant things from anyone. You have to cultivate indifference towards both flattery and criticism: both (khushamad and ninda) should leave you unscathed. You have to be your own prosecutor, defence counsel and judge. It is an awesome responsibility. Jonathan Swift took a balanced view of the phenomenon:

  ‘Tis an old maxim in the schools

  That flattery’s the food of fools

  Yet now and then your man of wit

  Will condescend to take a bit.

  Salt on the Tiger’s tail

  The Nawab of Pataudi was going through a bad patch. In a succession of matches, he went out without scoring a run. Once while playing at Wankhede Stadium in Bombay, his wife Sharmila Tagore rang him up. The secretary of the club replied, ‘Madam, the Nawab Sahib has just gone in to bat. I will ask him to ring you back as soon as he returns to the pavilion.’

  ‘No,’ replied the Begum Sahiba, ‘I’ll wait on the line. He never stays at the wicket for very long.’

  13 January 1996

  Republic Day 1996

  January 26 is more than a day for parades, march pasts and flag hoistings. It is the day we adopted our Constitution. So it is proper that on this anniversary, besides watching the grand parade in New Delhi on our TV sets, we ponder on the state of our Constitution, and if we conclude that it is not in good shape, devise ways and means to restore it to good health. We need not look very far back in time to see that it has become very sick. In the last session of Parliament, neither the Lok Sabha nor the Rajya Sabha was able to conduct any business: Crores of rupees spent in getting MPs from remote parts of the country to deliberate on problems facing the nation and suggest solutions were wasted in wrangling, shouting at each other and staging walkouts. The message is clear: The system is not working and we must make a change. The sooner the better.

  What should we do? The only alternative is to switch over to a Presidential form of government. Let the entire country elect one man and his deputy as President and Vice-President for a set period—let us say five years—then empower the President to choose his cabinet of advisers from among the ablest talent available in the country, whether or not they are members of Parliament. This would obviate balancing acts performed today to make the cabinet representative of regions and religions. It would put an end to defections and corruption at ministerial levels. It would also be a much cheaper form of government. The Presidential system would be closer to the one which obtains in the United States, and now with the chances of being saddled with a dynastic succession having receded, it will also be truly democratic.

  I have no idea of how we can make the change from the Parliamentary form to the Presidential form without political turmoil. Others more familiar with our Constitution assure me that if there is popular mass support for the change it can be done smoothly. Let us spend this Republic Day pondering over what is best for the governance of our country.

  Lodhi Gardens

  On the afternoon Lee Kwan Yew, prime minister of Singapore, was due to speak at the India International Centre, I had difficulty in finding a place to park my car. When I entered the park, I was dismayed to see crowds of picnickers all over the place. ‘This park does not belong to my father,’ I said to myself, ‘everyone has the right to enjoy themselves as they like.’ So I proceeded on my evening stroll passing groups of between a dozen to one hundred enjoying themselves on the warm winter afternoon. Their main preoccupation was eating and making noise. Well-dressed men, women and children gobbling samosas, pakoras, mithaee and washing them down with tea or coffee. Transistor radios blared Hindi film music. They danced and clapped their hands as they accompanied the songs. Children ran around with coloured balloons and tossed shuttlecocks. Boys played cricket using ancient walls of historical monuments as their wickets. Around every group were strewn paper, plastic cups and saucers. One large party had a man issuing orders over a loudspeaker to children engaged in relay races. There were bhelpuri sellers and vendors of tea and cakes. The alcoves on the walls enclosing Sikander Lodhi’s tomb had been converted into urinals. The large meandering pond with fountains was covered with green slime. It had not been cleaned for over a year. Every few yards, the stink of sludge used to water lawns and flower beds assailed my nostrils.

  This is a park I have known for over sixty years as one of the most beautiful in the world with ancient mosques and mausolea scattered among lush green lawns and flowers. At one time, peacocks and partridges scampered about the verdure. Brown owlets sunned themselves in niches in stone walls. There was a baffling variety of birds: four kinds of mynahs, two types of shrikes, koels, shamas, babblers, kingfishers, woodpeckers, hornbills. Most of them have disappeared because humans with their filthy habits have made it impossible for birds and beasts to live with them.

  Singapore used to be as dirty as Delhi. Under Lee Kwan Yew’s iron rule, it has become one of the cleanest, greenest, pollution-free garden cities of the world. He realized that some people have to be taught civic responsibilities by the use of the danda. In Singapore, anyone caught litte
ring the road, spitting or urinating, will find himself in jail. All it needs to restore Lodhi Gardens to its past glory is to have a magistrate on duty for four hours each on Saturdays and Sundays. He should be empowered to impose heavy fines on the spot on those who throw paper cups and saucers, urinate against walls, use transistors and loudspeakers in the park. Hawkers of bhelpuri and vendors of chai-biscuit have to be ordered to ply their trade with ice-cream sellers at the gates, not inside the garden. It will need only a dozen sweepers to clean the pond of scum and filth. It has to be done with the danda, because we do not understand the language of reason and civic responsibility.

  20 January 1996

  Bhookump

  An earthquake of a magnitude hitherto unrecorded on the political Richter scale struck India in the third week of January 1996. So far, only about a hundred politicians and civil servants are known to have been injured. But as the search for bodies lying buried under the debris continues, many more are expected to be dragged out in the days to come. The epicentre of the earthquake has been pinpointed to a very elegant farmhouse in New Delhi’s Chattarpur suburb not very far from the historic Qutub Minar. The farmhouse belongs to one S.K. Jain, about whom little is known besides his being a fixer and a middleman with vast sums of money at his disposal. It is alleged that he was able to get cabinet ministers, senior bureaucrats, and politicians belonging to parties antagonistic to each other, to have contracts with foreign firms sanctioned. He can also arrange payments to be made in foreign currencies, thus dodging the Foreign Exchange Regulation Act (FERA) and income tax. These, known as hawala transactions, are carried out by word of mouth, and nothing is put down on paper. There was, and is, honour among thieves and law-breakers.

  Unfortunately for him and hundreds of others, this Shri Jain was in the habit of noting down illegal payments he made in his personal diary. And more unfortunately for him was the fact that among the recipients of his bounty were terrorists engaged in overthrowing the government. When these gangsters were nabbed, the trail led to the luxurious farmhouse in Chattarpur and the tell-tale diary seized.

  What is new about this hawala racket is the impressive list of beneficiaries ranging from the prime minister, ministers of cabinet, opposition party MPs and dozens of others. Most people including myself are highly sceptical about the charges made by the Central Bureau of Investigation. Although I have said many harsh things about L.K. Advani’s narrow-minded communal outlook, there are two things I will never believe about him—that he can be bribed, or be unfaithful to his wife. I can’t say that about any of the others named by the CBI. The other thing that bothers me is why after all these months since the diary was found did the CBI decide to move in on this matter, and why it has been so selective in naming suspects. It is evident that the green signal was given by the prime minister only now. Nobody can believe that he has suddenly come round to the view that the corrupt should be brought to book and the law should take its course. Most people believe he has a game plan and is putting it in operation on the eve of the general elections. What exactly his game is, is known only to himself.

  Our politicians have never enjoyed much of a reputation for integrity among the masses. Shri S.K. Jain of Chattarpur has reinforced the commonly held view: Sab chor hain.

  27 January 1996

  Memories of November 1984

  The arrest of H.K.L. Bhagat brought back bitter memories of events of the first week of November 1984. They were triggered off by the wicked murder of a gracious lady who bore no ill-will towards any community (bless her soul!). But there were thousands of others who, with murderous cries of ‘khoon ka badla khoon sey leyngey’ (we will avenge blood with blood), mercilessly butchered and burnt alive over 5,000 innocent men, women and children who had nothing whatsoever to do with the lady’s death, but by circumstance of fate belonged to the community of her killers. Such things are known to happen all over the world. For some reason I hoped they would not happen in the land of Gandhi. And if they did, the heavy hand of dharma (the law) would fall swiftly on their necks and they would get the punishment they deserved. For months nothing happened. On the contrary, the succeeding prime minister, Rajiv Gandhi, condoned the massacre of innocents: ‘When a big tree falls, the earth around it shakes.’ Three non-official commissions of inquiry comprising a retired chief justice, retired judges of High Courts, retired ambassadors and civil servants (not one of them from the aggrieved community), published names of those they held responsible for the holocaust, amongst them, those of H.K.L. Bhagat (cabinet minister), Sajjan Kumar (MP) and Jagdish Tytler (minister). Not one of them had the guts to take members of inquiry commissions to court for implicating them in murder, arson, rape and looting. They had the protective umbrella of the Congress party and a Congress Government to shield them. The Government went further in appointing its own commission of inquiry under a very amenable Justice Ranganath Mishra who exonerated the Congress party of all guilt. It was left to the Bharatiya Janata Party to bring perpetrators of the November 1984 violence to book. Quite honestly, I do not believe that after the long lapse of time there will be enough conclusive evidence available to convict the criminals.

  Their only punishment will be to live the rest of their lives with their consciences—if they have any.

  There are many questions about the 1984 killings which need to be answered. First, who gave the signal to the hooligans to ‘teach the Sikhs a lesson?’ With my own eyes I saw them burn and loot Sikh property while the police on duty in large numbers looked on as spectators. Second, why were orders to impose curfew and shoot at sight never carried out? The looting, killing and arson continued unabated for two days and nights. We now know that army units from Meerut were summoned immediately after news of Mrs Gandhi’s death and sporadic violence had erupted. An army unit arrived that very night. It was first halted on the Delhi border. And then ordered to report at Delhi Cantonment. It happened to be the Sikh Light Infantry. Who was responsible for confining this unit to the barracks?

  Only one person knows the answers to all these questions. He is P.V. Narasimha Rao who was home minister during those turbulent days. I may add one more question for him to answer: ‘Don’t you think it is time that those named as perpetrators of the 1984 crimes were expelled from the Congress party?’

  3 February 1996

  Living longer: Making love to the last

  There are no clearly-defined borders between youth, middle and old age. Some young men and women become middle-aged in their thirties, others remain young in their fifties and sixties; some become impotent in their youth; others continue to enjoy sex into their eighties. Indeed, most people will agree that as long as you are capable of enjoying sex, you are young; when the sexual urge disappears, you have become old. Men are more obsessed with proving their potency than women and, when natural impulses begin to wane, will try all kinds of aphrodisiacs to keep going. Unfortunately for them, so far, medical science has not produced any reliable sex rejuvenants. Good health and worldly success are more potent than any kushta. Henry Kissinger was hundred per cent right when he said that power is the ultimate aphrodisiac. So we find so many successful politicians compulsive womanizers. Equally potent is the company of the young and the vivacious.

  Sexual urges are generated by hormones secreted by the pituitary gland located beneath the brain, the testes, and in the case of women, in the ovaries. These age with the ageing of their owners. Also, in monogamous marriages, the absence of variety (which is indeed the spice of life when it comes to sex) and monotony deprives both partners of the urge to engage in lovemaking. Statistics show that in marriages which have lasted more than twenty years, the sex urge has all but disappeared. Attempts to revive it with the same partner are not successful, but failure to do so does not impair matrimonial closeness. Men in their fifties and sixties are still capable of sex once a week. The urge tapers off in the seventies and is usually extinct in the eighties.

  But both men and women hanker after sex even after the na
tural urge has abated. The natural way to prolong the sex urge are liaisons with younger people. Ageing men are drawn towards girls younger than their daughters and young girls respond to overtures of men who become their father figures. Likewise, older women take on young lovers who see in them their mother-mistresses. The relationships are utterly Freudian, utterly unnatural but utterly fulfilling for both partners even if the sex in the relationships is not satisfactory.

  One sure way to impotence is to ignore the presence of attractive members of the opposite sex. Men and women who take to religion in their later lives and spend most of their time in the company of their own age group age prematurely and lose the zest for living.

  For those anxious to revive their sex lives, there are hormone injections which revive potency for fifteen days. Most pathetic are cases of men who have the desire but are unable to perform. Even for them medical science has found stuff to inject into their genitals to revive them. Experiments are afoot to produce a pill which will have the same effect.

  Heavy drinking over many years can have disastrous effects on male or female potency. Alcohol may temporarily whip up desire, but it will rob the drinker of the power to perform. Fortunately, most drinking men in their late seventies and eighties if given the choice between a willing female and a slug of premium Scotch, will opt for the latter.