An insensitive comment, particularly by a person holding a public position, can inflame a riot and even cause a revolution. ‘Let them eat cake’: This cliched quote attributed to the French Queen Marie Antoinette is one such. She was supposed to have uttered these immortal words when confronted with poverty-stricken people who could not afford bread during the shortage in the winter of 1788-89. This is often, a bit too simplistically at that, cited as the key trigger for the French Revolution. Of course many historians deny the queen said it while some claim she was quoted out of context.
No such doubts exist over the latest Bushism. And to be sure, it has ignited, if not a revolution or a terror strike on the White House, a raging debate in the Indian media on the eating habits of the USAs, ie, Uncle Sams of America. From editorials to letters to editors to columns to talk shows to what and where not, U.Sam’s intestines have been laid bare, his calorie intake meticulously tracked and his weight calculated to the last gram. And all the data on his diet conclusively prove that an average American consumes more than the national of any other country, let alone India, and if indeed food has become dear, the blame lies with the insatiable collective hunger of America. Gluttonous America, a country that everyone loves to hate for a slew of reasons, looks truly cornered thanks to its President who probably had very little for lunch on that fateful day.
This is what Bush said: ‘The current global food price spiral is on account of the growing prosperity of India’s sizeable middle class’. Earlier, Condoleezza Rice had said: ‘The difficult food situation in America is partly due to improved diets of people in countries like India and China, thereby resulting in pressures to keep foodgrains within the country through export caps’. Indeed, Ms Rice seems to have had even less for lunch. That middle-class Indians at large are getting enlarged in the middle through more food is indeed happy news for India, but America’s envy does leave a bitter after-taste. After all, in this land dhrishti or ‘the evil eye’ is a potent and overriding belief.
Here, doting parents of even toddlers make a circular spiral and a short snap with their right hand in a bid to ward off that unseen eye after pushing the last morsel down the recalcitrant tiny monster’s mouth. We routinely blame our indigestion, not on what we have ingested, but on the incapacity of an observer to digest what we are eating! Ogling at someone else during his prime ‘eating’ time is also bad manners. Given such sensitivities of the land, Bush and Rice have no doubt touched a raw nerve by revealing their inability to stomach Indians’ improved intake. Really, they have incurred the collective wrath of the mothers and wives of India that can put Bin Laden’s hatred for America in the shade!
But more than envious Americans and their evil eye, what palls me is the presumptuousness inherent in the Americans’ outbursts. At a very basic level, it reflects their assumption that America has the first right over the planet’s resources. As a consumer non-pareil it thinks that the rest of the world has to wait till it has had its fill and washed its fingers. And this eternal consumer also believes that it is the duty of the non-American world to feed it, first and fast.Little wonder it now rankles that the great America should be waiting in the queue, the dining tables having been turned. The food producers of the world are feeding themselves first and this is a crime in U Sam’s eye! Expect bombs from Bush for those extra pounds!
The perspective is entirely from the American point of view wherein the developing world is the contemptible ‘other’.
And since the white west is deemed superior by race, religion and riches, the ‘other’ world’s resources too are for their asking, rather, taking. It also suits the west’s theological position that God created the world for man’s consumption and enjoyment. And their economic and military credo of ‘might is right’ ensured God’s ‘divine mandate’ prevailed till date. Such unabashed selfishness can put even parasites to shame. So, while every single American is deemed a VIP, read, Very Important Parasite, to be fed, come what may, the entire middle class of India is dismissed as a single collective entity out to deny that American his morning cereal. The legitimate aspiration of an Indian for a square meal is irrelevant in the American eye. And we want this America which can’t stand the sight of a well-fed Indian to recognise us as a Nuclear power!
Food and fuel are conjoined twins. Despite the furore over Bush’s remarks, an unrepentant America has, a couple of days back, stepped up its self-serving rhetoric by blaming India and China for the rising oil prices! So it is not just that Indians are on a gastro binge but Indian vehicles too are on a guzzling spree at such a pace that Americans are made to pay dearly for their gallons. A recent agency report says that Americans are turning to God …again … for some relief on gas. ‘Lord, the prices at this pump have gone up …so come down in a mighty way to strengthen us so that we can bring down the prices…’. So praying they have sung:’we will have low gas prices, we will have low gas prices’. And in their scheme, the Satan is clearly India again. After all, is it not America’s first right to guzzle and pollute? But pray, whose military adventurism made the oil barrel more explosive than that of their gun? So why crib when that gun is backfiring?
But between Queen Marie and Prez Bush, there is someone else staking claim for the trophy for such similar insensitive speech: Periyar. And let me assure you, in invoking him I am not driven by any rational malice but only an eagerness to be fair to the aforesaid hotheads. When a major textile crisis befell the nation in the early forties the self-respecting Thanthai had attributed the rising cloth prices to the tendency of underprivlieged women to wear more attire! Periyar even identified the women by caste and specified the offending attire too, but I will not mention them for the sake of decency. Now, can Bush beat that? Ambushed, in every way!
e-mail the writer at [email protected]