Our politicians get sillier by the day

The Rajya Sabha is no forum for jokes and should be debating serious bread and butter issues

The Shiv Sena and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) are frankly getting sillier by the day – and sometimes even sinister. Last week, speaking in the Rajya Sabha, party MP Sanjay Raut called upon the government to declare the chicken as vegetarian – or even ayurvedic as he had eaten such chicken in some villages that had great propensity to cure ills as did ayurveda, he said.

Shiv Sena leader Sanjay Raut asked the government to declare chicken as vegetarian. (HT Photo)

Villagers fed these chickens ayurvedic herbs which in turn benefited humans, he said.

Now I do know that the kadaknath variety of black chicken is quite a valued culinary item in the rural areas of the state– a free-range hen fed on herbs and organic grains. But, I had no clue that these chickens could pass on anything but protein to its human consumers.

Of course, considering the flak that Raut received – including from some stunned parliamentarians from his own and other parties – he soon retracted saying he was making the statement in jest.

The Rajya Sabha is no forum for jokes and should be debating serious bread and butter issues, not some silly chicken and egg debates that are neither here nor there.

This is where it gets sinister because this theory of rishis being our ancestors is the root cause of discrimination in India – only Brahmins and some upper castes are allowed this heritage. The others are all supposed to be mlechchas – low born or foreigners and it is best we do not go there again.

But the rishi theory in this day and age also is causing honour killings and caste wars– each rishi has given us a gotra and one who does not have a gotra is both a target of ridicule and exploited. As was evident from the targeting of Congress leader Rahul Gandhi for his Italian and Parsi heritage, who was held up to ridicule, when he claimed to be a janeu-dhari Brahmin. If Gandhi can be thus targeted, what might happen to the millions of less privileged families in the country who were on sufferance in India before Independence and the Constitution?

But even more sinister is Singh’s linking of the rishi theory to human rights which he described in the Lok Sabha as a foreign or western concept – he did not accept the Darwin theory because it was western. Ergo, we are descended from rishis and we should not accept human rights as sacrosanct either. The malevolent possibilities of that theory are endless.

What amazes me is that Singh is not just a former Indian Police Service (IPS) officer and should thus know the value of human rights, but also that he is a post-graduate in chemistry and should have a scientific temper instead of being rooted in myth and unestablished theories of ancient times.

However, such silliness now seems to run across the board. Just last month Maharashtra minister Tanaji Sawant attributed the burst of a dam in Ratnagiri that swept away six villages to crabs eating into its moorings and the Gujarat government tabled a report in the state assembly attributing the breaching of the canals in the Narmada to the burrowing of rats and mongooses into the river bed!

For a nation that is justifiably proud about joining an exclusive club by launching the Chandrayan just this week, I do wonder at how the government reconciles such fantastic theories with such fine scientific achievement. Though I also wonder what a godman propagating fraudulent theories about women’s physiology and the absorption of excessive energy causing the sudden death of his wife was doing in a roomful of women scientists behind the launch – thankfully the fraud who claimed he could delay sunrises was left out of this irreconcilable paradox.

Frankly speaking, the government should not legitimise such fantasies. Else, we will end up as the laughing stock of the entire world.