REACTING to Jeremy Corbyn’s election as Labour party leader, British Prime Minister David Cameron tweeted: “The Labour Party is now a threat to our national security, our economic security and your family’s security.”

I read this with a mixture of pride and sadness. Pride because the honoured subcontinental tradition of declaring political rivals national security threats had finally made its way to our former colonial overlords. The sadness was because, when compared with the long tradition of the British political insult, this was just crude and clumsy.

Where are the Lloyd Georges and Benjamin Disraelis of yesteryear? The former said of a political rival: “The right honourable gentleman has twice crossed the floor, each time leaving behind a trail of slime.” Disraeli, when asked the difference between a misfortune and a calamity, replied: “If Gladstone (his arch rival) fell into the Thames that would be a misfortune … if anyone pulled him out, that would be a calamity.” These are comments so cutting they shear through flesh and bone alike; so scorching that a truckload of Burnol won’t ease the pain. Compared to these, Cameron is as subtle as Shaikh Rasheed.

Perhaps one reason is that the old world of handwritten letters and elegantly crafted speeches has given way to sound bites and 140-character tweets. This phenomenon has taken the political insult from parliament and parlours to the public, a democratisation that has led to a decline in quality. Perhaps the bland British food of yesteryear led them to compensate by spicing their tongues? Has replacing shepherd’s pie and dry roast beef with chicken tikka masala and vindaloo led to a loss of subtlety?

Where are the Lloyd Georges and Benjamin Disraelis of yesteryear?

I leave it to experts to study this question; for me the mention of desi food is simply a way to segue to the subcontinent where, I find it painful to admit, India is winning the war of words.

Pakistan and India have a lot in common, like the habit of blaming most ills on those most pernicious elements of society: the hated liberal secularists.

In India, the preferred pejorative for these is ‘sickular’, which is actually quite creative as it combines sick with secular while mostly retaining the phonetic composition. Thus it conveys the message that secularists are sick while also making sure that one knows who is being insulted.

By contrast, there is the Pakistani derogatory term for liberals, used mostly on social media, and this is ‘libidos’. If you’re scratching your heads at this, join the club. Not only does it share only an unrevealing three letters with ‘liberal’, it also doesn’t make anywhere near as much sense as ‘sickular’. Are liberals being accused of having high libidos? Does this mean that the vast majority of centrist or centre-right Pakistanis suffer some form of amorous dysfunction? If so, then how would this explain our population growth? Have these people ever encountered a dictionary?

The other go-to option is ‘fake liberal’, which is just lazy. Perhaps one option for improvement is to seek inspiration from the Americans who, after all, have a lot more experience in this matter. There, the ‘right-wingers’ (mostly Republicans and Tea Party types) have come up with ‘libtard’, or else the more specific ‘democ-rat’. Not to be outdone, the left retaliated with ‘wingnut’, which is a truncation of ‘right wing nut’.

People often draw comparisons between the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf and the Aam Aadmi Party, and certainly detractors of both parties have crafted custom-made insults. India has ‘AAPtard’ (combining the party name with ‘retard’), though in my opinion this is outclassed by the insult used against PTI supporters. This one combines ‘youth’ (indicating the PTI’s much ballyhooed support among younger people) with an all-purpose Urdu swearword. But here’s the problem; this term cannot even be printed in this column, let alone used on air. This then limits its utility to the less savoury segments of social media, giving AAPtard the edge.

Even the much-vaunted PTI social media trolls go for low-hanging fruit when it comes to insulting their political opponents. PML-N supporters are labelled ‘patwaris’, an arcane nod to one of Imran Khan tirades. Zardari is transformed into ‘Zordari’ (no applause there) and Bilawal into ‘Billowell’ (huh?) or else ‘Billo Rani’ (homophobic and misogynistic all at once). Though an honourable mention must go to ‘nooni-tunes’, which is directed at the Noon league. Sadly, the Looney Tunes cartoon reference is lost on most, thus limiting usage.

One could end this piece with some earnest appeal for us all to stop labelling each other and learn to get along; that such labels limit our thinking and force us to see the world in an ‘us and them’ binary. But that would be out of character. Instead the only appeal I will make is for all those involved in crafting political put downs to please improve their game. You’re insulting our intelligence.

The writer is a member of staff.

Twitter: @zarrarkhuhro

Published in Dawn, September 21st, 2015

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