Flip the bird, fling a shoe

Transparency and the honest expression of views are central to any democracy, so it was with a sense of national pride that I read this mail forward: “Don’t these elections rock? The common man is throwing footwear at politicians and the politicians are responding by giving us the finger. Mutual disrespect all around. None of that fake politeness and genuflecting we see so much of in public life. Jai Ho!”

The finger-giving reference initially came from the widely published photographs of Maharashtra Chief Minister Ashok Chavan and his wife blithely showing their middle fingers to the camera. What the couple were really doing was displaying the indelible-ink mark required for voters in our country — someone with a wicked sense of humour has decreed that the mark will henceforth be placed on the middle rather than the index digit — but soon the gesture turned into a national fad. Even Boing Boing, one of the world’s most widely read blogs, brought the phenomenon to their readers’ attention in a post (http://tinyurl.com/cclbe5) titled “500 million Indians prove their vote by flipping the bird” (the phrase is of course a charming American euphemism).

Now both the voters and the voted-for are having a merry old time posing for photos that would once have been unprintable in mainstream media. You can’t open a newspaper without seeing a “conscientious” public figure — or a college student —flipping the bird; it’s cooler than the Pink Chaddi Movement. “It’s also therapeutic,” says a commenter on a blog that’s actually called Flip the Bird (http://tinyurl. com /cu9v8t). “That’s what so many Indian voters want to do in their heart of hearts.” Someone else thinks the hidden message is that “Indian Politics is telling us ‘u voted, hahaha, this is for u and u can’t blame us, coz u did it to urself!!!!!’”.

On Boing Boing, a commenter who claims to have “subconsciously started doing the head-wobble after working with three south Indians” says that the way things are going these days, a new trend merely needs to start in India and the rest of the world will have to follow out of sheer peer pressure. (Call it the Slumdog Syndrome.) “Hopefully, the new meaning of this gesture will catch on and ‘flipping the bird’ will be a sign of taking civic responsibility.” I think a few rap artistes might have a thing or two to say about that.

On the other hand, Amitabh Bachchan chooses to be ingenuous, or possibly tongue-in-cheek, on his blog (http://bigb.bigadda.com/?p=2357). “Showing the middle finger in the Western world apparently has different connotations,” he said with all the innocence of a village goat that has never been to the big city. But ignorance cuts both ways: an anonymous commenter who appears to have spent time in a parallel-universe India explains that “it’s no big deal. A good chunk of Indians use their middle finger to point at things”.

Meanwhile, on blogs such as The Furobiker (http://tinyurl.com/dm5lxq), there are intense debates about the validity of shoe-throwing as a protest technique. Most importantly: since politicians don’t deserve to have expensive shoes wasted on them, where are the best deals for cheap ones? “Forget cheap, just do it for free,” says a poster, “Visit any temple in the city and pick the dirtiest and muddiest shoes for best results!” Or you can go to JutaMaro.com (http://www. jutamaro.com/), which uses Flash software to allow you to throw shoes at any politician of your choice (Lalu Prasad Yadav gets the most “hits”). It’s more satisfying than voting, about as useful, and you can do it sitting at home.

(jaiarjun@gmail.com)