Once Acharya Kripalani was angry in the parliament over something that I do not remember now, but I remember how he expressed his anger. In a trembling voice the old veteran, who could be critical of Gandhiji when he lived, said: ‘If the minister persists in his folly I will have to walk out of this august house’. He might not have used the same words but he meant it. For Kripalani the great act of protest was walking out. Today ‘walking out’ is nothing, You have to shout and stop all the proceedings for days together, even physically push and pull the opponent but no one is impressed.  Such vehement protest is seen as an obligatory drama as you are in the opposition. Those who rule now did it once and it is your turn now.

The bitterest words that Gandhiji ultimately used against the British who ruled us were ‘Quit India’. He took many years of intense persuasion in words and deeds of Satyagraha to change the hearts of the rulers before he permitted himself these two unkind words against the rulers.

After independence we have gradually lost faith in the persuasive ability of language. In England in the 19th century all its great writers used many rhetorical devices to enhance the persuasive capacity of language. Whether Carlyle or Ruskin or Mathew Arnold, they used all the resources of language to persuade their opponents. This is mostly due to the democratic movements of that age. This means that the speaker believed that he or she could change the way that the opponent thought about a particular issue.

In India too Raja Ram Mohan Roy, Rt. Hon. Srinivasa Shastriar (famous as silver tongued speaker), Subhash Chandra Bose, Jawaharlal Nehru, Tilak, Ambedkar and Gokhale used language for persuasion and believed that they could influence others who sincerely held  a different point of view. Gandhiji with his Biblical simplicity was a unique writer and speaker among them. Rajagopalachari had great wit and intelligence in what he said. We can never forget what he said when he assumed the chief minister ship of the then Madras state. ‘I have two enemies. The PWD is enemy number one and the Communists are enemy number two’. Here in Karnataka Shantaveri Gopala Gowda was a great persuasive speaker in politics and D R Bendre spoke as if to himself but he hypnotized his listeners. I have heard Devaraja Urs, Nijalingappa, Hanumanthaiah, Ramakrishna Hegde, and JH Patel—they all believed in the persuasive capacity of language. Now not even a single politician seems to have an innate faith in language and reason.

The language of advertisement has taken over now in every field of communication. Its intention is to kill our power of discrimination. Recently two respectable Kannada papers carried on a campaign against the present writer through SMS. Never before in the history of Kannada literature was an argument met with such two or three line attacks. The cultural world tolerated this without any effective protest. It was viewed as an unhappy development of our age; otherwise newspapers would be dull and boring.

Even death has become a spectacle. Disabled people in Benares drank poison before cameras to make their point. Who is to blame? The government which did not take care of them? OR The media which makes itself interesting by showing death by hanging or pouring kerosene oil? And over this there was a debate in a respectable channel where these scenes are replayed while condemning them. A good excuse for the channel to be both moral and interesting.

As there was a Churchill in England, persuading his people to face a crisis, there was a Hitler too who used language to destroy rational thinking. As Orwell put it politicians indulge in double talk and hood wink the people. Now we have a Bush. All these are abusers of language and India is not free from this guilt.

What was India like before Independence? A few months ago  I came across two old yellowed pamphlets printed on plain paper in Tirthahalli, the picturesque Malnad town. Gandhi had come to Tirthahall in 1929 or so. The elders of the town in one of the pamphlets had requested the people to gather in the centre of the town at a particular hour to see and hear Gandhi. And there were two conditions for people to obey: not to shout ‘Mahatma Gandhiji Jai’ and not to crowd around Gandhi. In another addressed to Gandhi the elders had stated that they had propagated Khadi but they were sorry they had not been able to do much for the removal of untouchability. This is unbelievable in our days of flaunted untruthfulness.

Before independence and for many years after independence in every city we could see the sky. Now we can’t. Everywhere you find big holders declaring good wishes for the birthday of some leader or the other with photos of all his henchmen. Everyday is the birthday of some politician or the other and if you do not want to see their faces what else is there to see? Sexy advertisements selling tooth paste or soap or underwear. These are the persuaders now.

What do we feel very angry about or deeply unhappy about these days? Not hunger of the many; not suicides of farmers. A book of well-intentioned research on the origin of Basava which you are free to attack for its inaccuracies is burnt by a few respectable women in public life for all TV cameras as a spectacle and then the book is banned.

We are second rate as a civilization now for we have lost faith in the power of language to persuade through reason.