Thursday, May 03, 2007
A Delightful look at the Pandit
I should have read it a long time ago, but I only just finished reading Shashi Tharoor's book, Nehru: The Invention of India. The best thing about the book is that it's short, yet informative, and it's full of delightful anecdotes. To me, the best anecdote is the exchange (quite possibly apocryphal) with John Foster Dulles about India's supposed neutrality during the Cold War.
The book also re-introduced me to an old and hilarious doggerel written by Ogden Nash to celebrate the pompous hypocrisy of Nehru's over-moral foreign policy. It's called The Pandit.
This ranks right up there with Gandhi's quip about western civilization.
John Foster Dulles: Are you for us or against us?
Jawaharlal Nehru: Yes
The book also re-introduced me to an old and hilarious doggerel written by Ogden Nash to celebrate the pompous hypocrisy of Nehru's over-moral foreign policy. It's called The Pandit.
Just how shall we define a Pandit?
It’s not a panda or a bandit.
But rather a Pandora’s box
of sophistry and paradox.
Though Oxford gave it a degree
it maintains its neutrality
by quietly hating General Clive
as hard as if he were alive.
On weighty international questions
it’s far more Christian than most Christians;
It’s ever eager, being meek
to turn someone else’s cheek.
Oft has it said all men are brothers,
and set that standard up for others,
yet as it spoke it gerrymandered
proclaiming its private Pakistandard.
The neutral Pandit walks alone,
and if abroad, it casts a stone,
It walks impartial to the last,
ready at time to stone a caste.
Abandon I for now the pandit,
I fear I do not understand it.
