360° View: ‘Pappu’, ‘Panauti’, ‘Paapi’: Name-Calling is Dead Giveaway that It's End of Political Civility

‘Pappu’, ‘Panauti’, ‘Paapi’ — elections in India are seeing political parties wrestling hard to outwit their opponents with all kinds of abuses and name calling. It is a new low every day.

The trend of political name-calling has existed in the US since the presidential election in 1940. The Indian political parties have, however, imitated this western trend well and almost copied their ways of electioneering.

They have now mastered the art of running a toxic campaign through ways to launch personal attacks by demeaning the family members of political leaders, and sometimes by including their caste and community in the political word-play. Instances of name-calling and hurling abuses are not limited to social media campaigns though. Top senior leaders have lent their support to such ideas and contributed to the toxic electioneering. Name-calling, for instance, dominates the election campaigns.

Uncivil messages, use of unparliamentary expressions by politicians have become more and more common in the last decade. Personal attacks are now almost regular occurrences in an increasingly polarised political environment.

Political analysts and experts, however, say that the negative campaigns do not serve the vested interests of the political parties. The abuses may get some cheap cheers and tractions temporarily, but they never reap electoral dividends. Toxic political campaigns through high octave polarised communications could be losing their persuasive power soon, feel the political observers.

Abuse in Abundance

The acerbic political campaigns cannot be attributed to one political party as it has now spread all over cutting across the party-line.

From playing the victim when BJP leaders called Rahul Gandhi as ‘Pappu‘, the Congress is now equally guilty of similar kind of name calling for the Prime Minister. They preached for ‘Mohabbat Ki Dukan‘ but did not shy away from calling the PM ‘Panauti‘ (ill omen).

Recently, at an election rally, Rahul Gandhi said the Indian cricket team would have won the match had the ‘Panauti‘ not been there. The address was meant for PM Narendra Modi, whose photos, memes and posters trended on social media with the same name.

A few days later, West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee, while addressing a party programme, called the PM as ‘Paapi‘ (sinner) and referred to the same instance of the Indian cricket team losing the World Cup final match because of him. Banerjee’s party leaders were up in arms when Modi, during an election rally in Bengal, taunted Banerjee with — ‘Didi O Didi’. It was seen as an anti-woman approach and insult to the senior leader.

Fading Civility

The saga of name-calling continues, with the Opposition parties calling Modi ‘Ravan’,’Rakshas’, ‘Yamraaj’ and so on. The BJP leaders did not stay behind though. They used different names for different politicians. They refer to women politicians as ‘Surpanakha’, ‘Foreign Agent’, ‘Mumtaz Begum’ and so on.

This election, the campaign strategies by the political parties moved even a step further. They have now started adding photo-shopped and morphed posters of Bollywood films as part of their social media campaigns.

The official handles of BJP, Congress and Trinamool Congress have posted photo-shopped posters of Bollywood movies depicting Rahul Gandhi as ‘Tubelight’, PM Modi as ‘Lootera’, ‘Panauti-E-Azam’, ‘Panauti Tum Kab Jaoge’ and so on.

The instances of posting such memes and name-calling by parties is today a dead giveaway of an end of the traditional political civility.