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        How much lies in laughter; the cipher key, wherewith we decipher the whole man!

                                                                                                                - Thomas Carlyle

        For health and the constant enjoyment of life, it is necessary for all of us to have a clean and ever present sense of humour. It is the next best thing to an abiding faith in providence. Only when we have a proper sense of humour, will we be in a position to sing with the poet who wrote these great lines with gusto:

        Trust no future however pleasant

        Led the dead past bury its dead

        Act act in the living present

        Heart within and God overhead!

        Aldous Huxley had this to say about politicians: 'When the issues involved are of no great weight the adults in control of a nation's policy are permitted to behave like adults. But as soon as important economic interests or national prestige is involved, this grown-up Jekyll retires and his place is taken by an adolescent Hyde whose ethical standards are those of a boy gangster'.

        What is politics? Politics is how a minority, reaching majority, seizing authority, hates a minority. A politician is like quick - silver: if you try to put your finger on him, you'll find nothing under it. There is no more independence in politics than there is in jail. Every quarrel between political parties gets converted into a new policy by the party which gets elected. Party honesty is party expediency. Politics is the science of exigencies. To be a chemist, you must study chemistry; to be a lawyer or a physician, you must study law or medicine; but to be a politician, you need only to study your own selfish interests.

        The political world in all the countries is a perennial caricature of itself. At every moment, it is a mockery and the contradiction of what it is pretending to be. Nevertheless it intends all the time to be something different and highly dignified. At the next moment it corrects and checks and tries to cover up the absurd thing it was; in this process, a conventional world, a world of masks, superimposed on the reality, and passes in every sphere of public interest for the reality itself. Political humour or political wit is the emotional and intellectual perception of this illusion, even while the conventional world of masks continues to be maintained, as if we had not observed its absurdity. Political wit is brushwood; political judgement, timbre; the first one gives the greatest flame and the other yields the most durable heat and both meeting on a political arena can make the best fire. Rochefoucauld rightly observed: 'As it is the characteristic of great wits to say much in a few words, so small wits seem to have the gift of speaking much and saying nothing'. No politician is exempt from this law. No wonder Churchill was clear about what it takes to be a politician: 'it is the ability to foretell what will happen tomorrow, next month and next year—and to explain afterward why it did not happen'

        What is wrong with Indian politics? Why is it that most of them, in the midst of so called active life, are in a state of death — emotional, intellectual, cultural and spiritual? My answer to this question is that they are all not only devoid of any honour but also devoid of any sense of humour. Most of our Cabinet Ministers in New Delhi and the States are beastly, banal, boorish, and brutal. Most of them can be hauled up by any Third-Class Magistrate. The less said about them the better.

        Recently, I was reading a hilarious book titled 'Great Political Wit' with a subtitle 'Laughing (Almost) All the Way To The White House'. Bob Dole is one of the most prominent political figures in American politics. Child of the Congress, he became its father. He was Chairman of the Republican National Committee, the 1976 Republican nominee for Vice President and the 1996 Republican nominee for the President. Larry King, one of the greatest American Barons in the world of political humour and satire, paid his tribute to Bob Dole in these words : 'Bob Dole has one of the most humorous minds, not only of any politician I have ever known, but of any person I have ever known. Some people say funny things, some people see things that are funny, Bob Dole does both.'

        Bob Dole introduces his book with a doughnut story. To quote his exact words from his funny book: 'Early in the Clinton administration, I attended yet another in a seemingly endless string of early morning White House meetings. As I left the Oval Office following a meeting, one member of the press corps shouted out how I thought the meeting went. 'OK' was my response, and then I added, 'but it would have been better had they served some doughnuts'. The press corps laughed, and reported my comments. A few days later, I received a letter from a woman in New Jersey who was taken aback at my remark, and thought it showed a lack of seriousness toward the problems facing our country. I wrote back to the woman, explaining that it would be tough to survive in Washington DC without a sense of humour and that the Government would be far worse if public servants were denied the opportunity to laugh at themselves and each other. I hope this book also makes this point. By the way, the next early morning White House meeting I attended following my remark was highlighted by a big plate of doughnuts displayed prominently in the cabinet table. No joke.'

        I am presenting a sample of the flashes of political humour from Bob Dole's book. Winston Churchill was known for his astringent wit. No one in the 20th century wielded or marshalled the English language better than Winston Churchill. Once when he was presented with an official document of stupefying verbosity, he protested - This paper, by its very length, defends itself against the risk of being read.

        Woodrow Wilson was noted for his scholarly and intellectual sense of humour. Once he remarked: 'The wisest thing to do with a fool is to encourage him to hire a hall and discourse to his fellow citizens. Nothing chills nonsense like exposure to the air'.

        Adlai Stevenson once said, 'The sound of tireless voices is the price we pay for the right to hear the music of our own opinions'.

        On political and electoral campaigning, Adlai Stevenson remarked: 'The hardest thing about any political campaign is how to win without proving that you are unworthy of winning'.

        Once Adlai Stevenson was told by a lobby of eminent academics that he enjoyed 'the support of all thinking Americans' Stevenson joked, 'That is not enough. I am going to need a majority'.

        In February 1961, Kennedy told the National Industrial Conference Board in Washington, 'It would be premature to ask for your support in the next election, and it would be inaccurate to thank you for it in the past'.

        Explaining his 1964 Presidential candidacy, Barry Goldwater said, 'I am too young to retire and too old to go back to work'.

        There are biting comments on politicians as a class in Bob Dole's book. He quotes Woodrow Wilson who said, 'A friend of mine says that every man who takes office in Washington either grows or swells, and when I give a man an office, I watch him carefully to see whether he is swelling or growing'.

        American President Truman gave the following definition: 'A statesman is a politician who's been dead for ten or fifteen years'. Truman on American President Nixon: 'He is one of the few men in the history of this country to run for high office talking out of both sides of his mouth at the same time and lying out of both sides.'

        President Reagan on his 1980 opponent: 'I had a dream the other night. I dreamed that Jimmy Carter came to me and asked why I wanted his job. I told him I did not want his job. I want to be President.'

        Here is a famous Reagan economic assessment: 'Depression is when you are out of work. A recession is when your neighbour is out of work. Recovery is when Jimmy Carter is out of work'.

        Defining Communists, Reagan said, 'Well, it's someone who reads Marx and Lenin' And how do you tell an anti-Communist?

        It's someone who understands Marx and Lenin'.

        Adlai Stevenson observed, 'They pick a President and then for four years they pick on him'.

        John F Kennedy (JFK) failed in his attempt for the Vice-Presidential nomination in 1956. from that time onwards, JFK avoided any future bids for the second-highest post. In 1958, when a friend assured him he was a shoo-in for the Vice-Presidency in 1960, Kennedy amicably replied, 'Let's not talk so much about vice. I am against vice in any form'.

        One evening, when Churchill was addressing a meeting in America, a gushing woman asked him, Doesn't it thrill you, Mr. Churchill, to know that every time you make a speech the hall is packed to overflowing?

        Churchill replied, 'It is quite flattering but whenever I feel this way I always remember that if instead of making a political speech I was being hanged, the crowd would be twice as big'.

        What Churchill said in a light-hearted way about himself, is wholly applicable with gravity, heaviness and authority to all our politicians in India.