Paromita Vohra: Insult passing and failing

You know what a re-exam is, na? It's when you fail in an exam but are allowed to sit for it again, given a second chance to pass. Most people pass their re-exams. But, what if you don't? How many re-re-exams do you get? As many as Abhishek Bacchan with movies? Because, right now, from what we can tell, it seems MPs, MLAs and functionaries, mostly affiliated to the ruling party, are trying to pass insults but ending up failing.

Protesters rally against BJP official Dayashankar Singh, who was expelled from his party for comparing politician and Dalit leader Kumari Mayawati to a prostitute, in Lucknow on Thursday. Pic/AFP

Every time, especially if there's a woman involved (and it so often is. Why?) the default insult, without fail is: ‘prostitute' (which makes it with fail, actually).

The latest attempt to pass this off as an insult in the direction of Ms Maywati of the BSP came from Mr Dayashankar of the UP BJP.

Why do you think they keep trying to pass the same word off as an insult? Do they think that if they keep writing this in the insult exam they will suddenly be right one day? Sometimes they try a sly variation - ‘presstitute' - but alas, that just makes it a bad pun and a failed insult.

Of course, people also mislead these fellows by gasping on social media and then talking about this fake insult as if it is a real insult.

"They are only saying this because Mayawati is a woman." "They are only saying this because she is not married or conventionally feminine." "They are only saying this because she is Dalit." "How could he use such words, we are pained."

Well, you should be pained. Because of all the reasons that are spelt out above, but not because you imagine "prostitute" is a functional insult. ‘They' have certainly passed in the prejudice and bias as well as the narrow-minded bigotry and small-minded misogyny theory papers and should be called out on these counts. But it pains us to say, they have not cleared the Insult Practicals.

It is mystifying that anyone continues to think the word prostitute is an insult. Prostitution is not a criminal activity - it is legal. Prostitutes as a group, are not known to cheat, kill people for eating beef, discriminate on the basis of caste or class, or intentionally hurt people.

Sex workers don't even fool people about money - they tell you what a service costs and they render that service. Can we say the same about, say, the Mobile Phone Service companies? Your Internet Service Provider? Why, there's a whole advertisement about how cell phone companies show four dandis but you can't hear anyone. Real life (As per the ad. And why would the company that made that ad lie, huh?) people are angrily telling us all this. So, it might be a better insult to call someone a cell phone company, no?

Someone must give these repeater insulters some help. I've personally been helped a lot by reading Waiting for Godot and the round of insults exchanged by Estragon and Vladimir (Lawyer, Politician and Critic among them).

They could turn to Urdu or Bengali (choosing Horse's Egg) or any other Indian language for insults that don't involve sexual body parts and are really, genuinely insulting.

But no, they don't even try. Every month Prostitute, every month re-exam. Someone provide a lesson for these…Critics, I mean, Politicians.

Paromita Vohra is an award-winning Mumbai-based filmmaker, writer and curator working with fiction and non-fiction. Reach her at www.parodevipictures.com