Tharoorosaurus

by Shashi Tharoor

  Hyperbole is a favourite tool of political speech-making, and some speakers seem given to using hyperbole much more often than necessary or even wise, as is in the case of Mr Modi’s promise of Rs 15 lakhs that Amit Shah had to later explain away as a jumla. It is also used a great deal in children’s writing—fairy tales and legends need the overemphasis that hyperbole provides. Shakespeare used hyperbole quite brilliantly. Take Romeo’s description of Juliet: ‘The brightness of her cheek would shame those stars/As daylight doth a lamp.’

  Perhaps the best use of hyperbole in contemporary writing occurs in humorous prose, because it evokes a point so well and can be funny in its own right. In Old Times on the Mississippi, Mark Twain wrote: ‘I was helpless. I did not know what in the world to do. I was quaking from head to foot, and could have hung my hat on my eyes, they stuck out so far.’ In the American folktale Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox, Paul Bunyan remarks: ‘Well now, one winter it was so cold that all the geese flew backward and all the fish moved south and even the snow turned blue. Late at night, it got so frigid that all spoken words froze solid afore they could be heard. People

  had to wait until sunup to find out what folks were talking

  about the night before.’

  Popular American humorist and columnist Dave Barry takes hyperbole to an extreme in describing men’s ability to fool themselves in Revenge of the Pork Person: ‘A man can have a belly you could house commercial aircraft in and a grand total of eight greasy strands of hair, which he grows real long and

  combs across the top of his head so that he looks, when

  viewed from above, like an egg in the grasp of a giant

  spider, plus this man can have B.O. to the point where

  he interferes with radio transmissions, and he will still be convinced that, in terms of attractiveness, he is

  borderline Don Johnson.’

  Obviously no part of Barry’s statement and none of his analogies and metaphors can be taken literally—but the combined effect of his hyperbole means he couldn’t have made his point more clearly, or humorously.

  We are all accustomed to hyperbole in daily life: ‘I’ve already told you a million times’ is a typical example. Or ‘I’m buried under a mountain of paperwork’. How many men, smitten by a lady whose ‘mile-wide smile could melt anyone’s heart’, have assured women ‘I’d go to the ends of the earth for you’? (Three hyperboles there—and it would surely be wrong to actually expect a lover to fulfil that commitment.) Another favourite is a host assuring unexpected guests that his wife has ‘cooked enough food for an army’. And when someone tells you ‘I’m so tired I could sleep for a million years’, assume he or she is speaking hyperbolically, unless they are about to commit suicide.

  Love, in particular, lends itself to hyperbole. But sometimes hyperbole is indeed meant to be taken seriously: ‘I can’t live without you’ is said with great seriousness by people who genuinely mean it when they say it. Of course, they don’t necessarily continue to mean it—when the time for divorce comes, they always want to go on living.

  Hyperbole, as an exasperated member of the audience at one of Prime Minister Modi’s speeches once said, is going to kill us all. Except that statement, too, is hyperbole . . .

  19.

  Impeach

  verb

  TO RAISE DOUBTS ABOUT, CALL INTO QUESTION, DISCREDIT, ESPECIALLY SOMEONE’S CREDIBILITY; TO BRING FORMAL CHARGES AGAINST AN OFFICEHOLDER

  USAGE

  It’s easy enough to impeach Trump’s credibility, given the number of lies and exaggerations he is prone to, but quite another challenge to impeach him formally as unfit to hold the office of President.

  The word ‘impeach’ was very much in the news in 2020, thanks to the decision of the US House of Representatives to formally impeach the President of the United States and bring him to trial before the Senate. This has only happened twice before in US history, with the unsuccessful impeachments of Presidents Andrew Johnson in 1868 and Bill Clinton in 1998 (not counting the abortive attempt against President Richard Nixon, which he pre-empted by resigning), and the impeachment of Donald Trump has met the same fate, given his party’s resounding majority in the Senate. But where does the word, with its rather fruity sound, come from?

  French, it turns out. In that lovely language, empecher means ‘to hinder, stop, impede; capture, trap, ensnare’, and that’s precisely what the English ‘impeachment’ seeks to do. In law, from the late fourteenth century, it meant broadly ‘to accuse, bring charges against’, but soon enough it was used to refer specifically to the king or the House of Commons, to bring a formal accusation of treason, misconduct or other high crime against a holder of a high public office.

  Still, the word can also be used to refer to any person; if you are accused of misrepresenting facts, for instance, you may draw yourself to your fullest height, pierce your accuser with a furious stare, and ask, ‘How dare you impeach my credibility?’

  Nonetheless, it’s true the word ‘impeach’ is most often understood as referring to holding a public official to account. And formal impeachment is usually the first step to dismissing the official from his office. But there’s some confusion in most people’s minds about which part of that process the word ‘impeach’ relates to. To make it clear, when a public official is impeached, this only means he has been charged, not convicted and removed from office. The President of the United States may be impeached by the House of Representatives, but then must be convicted by the Senate. This means the House has found reason to accuse him formally of wrongdoing; but it is the Senate that has to find him guilty.

  The House of Representatives draws up articles of impeachment that itemize the charges and their factual basis. The articles of impeachment, if approved by a simple majority of the members of the House, are then submitted to the Senate, thereby impeaching the President. The Senate then holds a trial, at the conclusion of which each member votes for or against conviction on each article of impeachment.

  Two-thirds of the Senate members present must vote in favour of conviction. Once convicted, the President is automatically removed from office. This has never happened in the US, though it has succeeded in a few Latin American countries, when maverick presidents ran afoul of legislatures which were in the hands of established political parties.

  Most people wrongly assume that to ‘impeach’ a President or other high official is to assume his guilt and even dismiss him. Though in some countries the individual is provisionally removed, this is rare, and impeachment is normally not the punishment; it merely precedes the trial.

  Impeaching someone sets in motion a legal process that may or may not conclude wrongdoing has taken place and result in a conviction. Since that decision is made, in the US as in India, by elected legislators rather than qualified judges, it is always a political rather than a judicial verdict. That is why it may not make much sense to resort to it unless you are sure beforehand that you have the numbers to prevail.

  President Andrew Johnson was acquitted in 1868, by one vote, of violating the previous year’s Tenure of Office Act. President Bill Clinton was acquitted in 1998, by a much larger margin, of charges of perjury and obstructing justice in relation to the Monica Lewinsky sex scandal.

  President Richard Nixon, however, resigned to avoid inevitable impeachment for the Watergate scandal, and was granted an unconditional pardon by his successor, Gerald Ford. The chances of President Trump finding a two-thirds majority against him in a Republican-dominated Senate were widely seen as close to zero, and indeed he survived in a largely party-line vote.

  Students of Indian history may have noticed that the British have not been impeaching anybody since the famous impeachment of Warren Hastings for his misconduct in India as the East India Company’s Governor-General. At the time, impeachment was the trial of an individual by the House of Lords at the request of the House of Commons and was commonly used as a way to fight out battles between Crown and Parliament.

  The
British Parliament gave up the practice officially in 1806, partly because several high-profile trials, including that of Hastings (which dragged on for seven years but ended in acquittal), were considered to have brought it into disrepute. The Indian Parliament can also impeach high officials, including the President and judges; it has never done so, its attempts to impeach a judge having prompted that individual’s premature resignation.

  Because impeachment and conviction of officials involve the overturning of the normal constitutional procedures by which individuals achieve high office (election, ratification, or appointment) and because it generally requires a two-thirds or similar majority, impeachment is usually reserved for those considered to have committed serious abuses of their public position.

  Impeachment exists under constitutional law in many countries around the world, including, aside from the United States and India, Brazil, France, Ireland, the Philippines, Russia and South Korea (which recently successfully impeached and jailed a President for corruption).

  20.

  Jaywalking

  noun

  TO CROSS THE STREET AGAINST THE TRAFFIC REGULATIONS, ILLEGALLY, AGAINST A RED LIGHT OR IN THE MIDDLE OF THE STREET

  USAGE

  The Indian tourist was surprised to be arrested

  for jaywalking, when that was how he had been

  brought up to cross the road.

  Whatever may be our political differences, all Indians have one thing in common: jaywalking. We are all inveterate jaywalkers. Traffic lights for pedestrians exist, but are universally ignored. Oddly enough, though, we don’t use the word for this practice—perhaps precisely because it is so common we didn’t feel we needed a special word for it.

  The word jaywalker can be traced back to 1912, when it emerged in American English, derived, probably, from the bird of that name, the common blue jay. (The theory that the term jaywalking is derived from the shape of the letter ‘J’ to describe the erratic path a jaywalker might travel when crossing a road, has been discredited, since jaywalkers can also walk straight, but do so when or where they are not supposed to.)

  ‘Jay’ was an insulting term in colloquial English for a foolish chattering person back in the 1500s, and in the US was used to refer to a stupid, gullible, ignorant, or provincial person, a rustic, or simpleton. It seems city-dwellers assumed that those who crossed the roads when they weren’t supposed to had to be country bumpkins who didn’t know any better, hence ‘jaywalkers’. The connotation of ‘jay’ was that it applied to a naïve individual, a ‘hick’, who didn’t know the ropes of modern, civilized, urban living.

  In the early years of automobiles there was also the expression ‘jay drivers’ for those who wandered about all over the road, causing confusion among other drivers and creating accidents. Strict rules, strictly enforced, about which side of the road one could drive on, put an end to jay driving. However, jaywalking has continued.

  In the second decade of the twentieth century the new term ‘jaywalkers’ emerged, as city councils in the US began to pass ordinances to stop pedestrians crossing the street anywhere they wanted to. Apparently, the rapid increase in motorized vehicular traffic made the adoption of such regulations necessary. The public was strongly in favour. One newspaper report from 1911 defines a jaywalker as ‘an alleged human being who crosses the street at other points than the regular crossings’. Another writes: ‘Jay Walker is aptly named—he remains unconvinced that traffic lights apply to pedestrians.’ A 1937 New York Times article sneers, ‘In many streets like Oxford Street, for instance, the jaywalker wanders complacently in the very middle of the roadway as if it was a country lane.’

  Automobile companies popularly used this term in various anti-pedestrian advertising campaigns. For instance, John Hertz, president of Yellow Cab and the future founder of the country’s leading car rental firm, declared, ‘We fear the “jay walker” worse than the anarchist, and Chicago is his native home.’ The campaigns worked: in the US, the automobile companies won the right to use of roads and to restrict pedestrian access to them. Jaywalking is a crime pretty much everywhere in the US, attracting severe fines.

  There are laws against jaywalking in the US, Singapore, Poland, Serbia, Iran, Australia and New Zealand. However, in many countries in the world besides India, it’s perfectly legal to cross any road anywhere you like, whenever you judge it to be safe to do so. Ironically, many advocates argue that jaywalkers tend to be more careful when crossing the road than those who are crossing in officially designated crosswalks.

  Still, even in the US, jaywalking is seen as referring to a relatively insignificant crime. As in, ‘compared to the man in the Oval Office, his principal rival has done little wrong, nothing more serious than jaywalking’.

  However minor it may be, don’t try jaywalking in the US or Singapore. Ignorance of the law, the police in those countries insist, is no excuse. I know: I’ve been caught there.

  21.

  Juggernaut

  noun

  AN UNSTOPPABLE, RELENTLESS MOVING FORCE THAT DESTROYS ANYTHING IN ITS PATH

  USAGE

  When the German stormtroopers marched into Poland, the hapless Poles proved unable to resist the Nazi juggernaut.

  Though the word looks vaguely Germanic, ‘juggernaut’ is actually a mangling of ‘Jagannath’, the name of the deity carried in devotional procession in Odisha four times a year in elaborate yatras on land and water, of which the most famous is the rath yatra, or chariot procession in the Hindu month of Ashadha.

  This is when the idol is wheeled to the Puri temple in an enormous chariot as devotees line the streets in a frenzy, hailing the Lord with chants and prayers and craning their necks for a glimpse of the deity seated in the chariot, followed by lesser chariots bearing statues of his brother Balarama and sister Subhadra. ‘Juggernaut’, therefore, derives from Sanskrit, not German: its roots are the Sanskrit jagat, or ‘world’, and natha, meaning ‘lord, master’. The Lord of the World is, of course, Lord Krishna.

  Orientalism began early, alas: four centuries before the British conquest of India began, falsely distorted tales about India were propagated in the fourteenth-century travelogue of Sir John Mandeville, who described the festival in his Travels of Sir John Mandeville and depicted Hindus throwing themselves under the wheels of the enormous Jagannath chariots as a religious sacrifice and being crushed to death.

  Sir John may have been echoing the first European description of the rath yatra festival from a thirteenth-century account by the Franciscan monk and missionary Odoric of Pordenone. But Hinduism in fact has no concept of such human sacrifice; if either Odoric or the eponymous Sir John really saw a Hindu killed under the wheels of a chariot, it can only be because a poor devotee stumbled or was pushed by the throng and fell accidentally upon the path in the tumult, and the enormous chariot could not easily stop or turn on the narrow road.

  Still, the tale, the false image of the faith it portrayed, and the unfortunate associations of the word persisted. By the eighteenth century, ‘juggernaut’ was in common use as a synonym for an irresistible and destructive force that demands total devotion or unforgiving sacrifice—the sense in which it pops up in the novels of Charlotte Bronte and Charles Dickens, and even Robert Louis Stevenson, who applied it to Dr Jekyll’s foil, Mr Hyde.

  Today, its usage is largely metaphorical: a juggernaut is something remorseless and implacable, a merciless, destructive and unstoppable force that demands blind devotion or absolute sacrifice. Its synonyms are words like ‘steamroller’ and ‘battering ram’. It is still extensively used, in references to ‘the Chinese economic juggernaut’ or ‘the Obama electoral juggernaut’. ‘Who can stop the Federer juggernaut at Wimbledon?’ mused a sportswriter. It is said that ‘Hollywood film producers are helpless in the face of the box office juggernaut’. So juggernaut, in contemporary usage, is always associated with an overwhelming force, neutral or more often negative, that cannot be stopped and you can do nothing about. Marvel Comics even
has a supervillain named Juggernaut in its X-Men comics. To non-Indian users of the English language, juggernaut always represents power, violence, death and relentlessness.

  These negative associations were explicitly reinforced in the colonial era by a nineteenth-century Anglican missionary, Rev. Claudius Buchanan, who popularized the term in a series of letters and articles in the British and American press. His gory descriptions of human sacrifice and comparisons of juggernaut to the Biblical Moloch were intended to justify the need for spreading Christianity in India: Juggernaut, to him, was a symbol of Hinduism’s violence, bloodshed, death and ‘idolatry’.

  In its present form, therefore, the word is devoid of any real association with Lord Jagannath: ‘Juggernaut’ in today’s usage is quite simply a product of the British and American imagination, and no reflection of Indian reality. It was only Mark Twain, in his Autobiography, who described Juggernaut as the kindest of gods; and indeed the millions of worshippers in Puri will tell you that Lord Jagannath is a figure of reverence, not of fear. But alas, by then the damage had been done, and ‘juggernaut’ had passed (yes, unstoppably!) into the English language.

  22.

  Kakistocracy

  noun

  A FORM OF GOVERNMENT IN WHICH THE LEAST QUALIFIED OR MOST UNPRINCIPLED INDIVIDUALS ARE IN POWER