Most Loathsome People In India: 2008

The most eagerly awaited annual award of the Most Loathsome People in India is back again. After carefully considering suggestions from several of you folks gave during last year’s award ceremony, I have decided to modify the rules very slightly. This year onwards, I’m not restricting the number of the Most Loathsome to 10. The number will be as many as did fit the bill to qualify as Most Loathsome. That number stands at 16 this year. I shall also pronounce a sentence on each eminence (like the original that inspired this annual affair).

2008 has been an excessively tumultuous year with terrible events occurring at calamitous regularity. Equally, the Most Loathsome don’t disappoint. If anything, they competed in outclassing each other, which decidedly made my task tougher. Several names are new entrants to the contest but deservedly so.

While you may understandably differ, here’s my list of the 16 Most Loathsome People in India for 2008.

16. Achyutanandan: This unheard-of Kerala Chief Minister had to urgently advertise his gutter character and did so with gusto. And remained defiantly unrepentant. If I were to flatter myself, I’m sure he had perchance read my virgin Most Loathsome list for 2007 and gatecrashed into the party.

Sentence: Let loose all the stray dogs in Bangalore inside his house. Most of them are not vaccinated.

15. Shabana Azmi: The bleeding heart Islamo “feminist” who for once clearly defined Indian secularism to mean hatred of Hindus in return for all the good they do.

Sentence: Forced trip to Pakistan with a mandate to publicly take on a powerful Mullah like she did Imam Bukhari.

14. Somini Sengupta: Or how to spin industrial-scale yarns about India in the span of a few months. There’s no sewage hole she has not inspected, no community or caste she has left untarnished or no falsehood she has not propagated. Her accomplishments gave such a complex to even respected bloggers that one of them devised a cheat sheet in her honour. She stands at 15 not because she her quit the New York Times but because elevating her to a higher ranking would result in instant nausea, so vast is her trail of slime.

Sentence: Put her in solitary confinement and play audios of all her articles in an infinite loop.

13. Barkha Dutt: Where do I begin? Her rotten histrionics on TV–graver the incident, more putrid is her shrill verbal diarrhea.

Sentence: Insert burning charcoals down her throat.

12. Prakash Karat: Slid way down the ranking chart because he is next to irrelevant now. And it’s all his own doing. Enough said.

Sentence: Deportation to China.

11. Deve Gowda: Ditto, Prakash Karat. Unlike Karat, this sly old backstabber is known to “rise from the ashes.” A huge believer of witchcraft and sorcery, he is still furiously at work plotting the destruction of all his rivals, which include everyone apart from himself and his family. If local news sources are to be believed, his umpteenth proposal to share the bed with the Congress has been rebuked.

Sentence: Trick his son, Kumaraswamy into joining the RSS.

10. Christian Murderers of Swami Lakshmananda Saraswathi: One of the most barbaric crimes committed yet by the Missionary mafia in India. An 84 year old Hindu saint shot and then butchered in cold blood because he was one of the biggest hurdles in their invasive conversion capers.

Sentence: Pick the cruelest torture method detailed out in the medieval Inquisition texts and apply them on the killers.

9. Raj Thackeray: For unsuccessfully trying to replicate what his uncle did three decades ago. First timer here and deservedly so. What this moron doesn’t realize is that it is a million times harder to incite regional frenzy now than it was back then. Needless to say, all those who took part in the sponsored carnage weren’t “ordinary” Marathis but hoodlums from his own party. As that popular SMS puts it, the heroes who saved his “Marathi” Bombay weren’t “Marathi Manoos” but folks who put India and Indians before any Manoos as Raj would have us believe. Good luck at the polls, Raj, hope you get flogged at the booths.

Sentence: Send him to the badlands of Bihar alone and unarmed.

8. Karunanidhi: Truly, Stalin ka baap, pun intended. A traitor and separatist and proud of it. The number and magnitude of his misdeeds are locked in an unending race of oneupmanship. His haughtiness is matched only by his open tyranny. If politics is the last resort of a scoundrel, Karunanidhi says, “hey, you didn’t mention my name!”

Sentence: Indian-style wrestling match with Jayalalithaa with Ramadoss as the umpire.

7. U R Ananthamurthy: Gets better and better. New entrant. Jumps in right at #8. Currently writing Politicians and Litterateurs: How to be the Former while Pretending to be the Latter. Deve Gowda has already acquired publishing rights. 2008 is an year of singular importance in Ananthamurthy’s long and undistinguished career. His literary misadventures (actually there were none; meaningless newspaper columns don’t count as literature) backfired. The Kannada reading public rudely asked him to shut up several times. Furious, he solemnly swore “not to take part in any public literary functions.” Which allowed him to openly pursue what he was surreptitiously doing all these years: full time politicking. From thundering courageously against the JD(S)-BJP combine to even more thundering against the current BJP government, his weary limbs finally found solace in the aged but rugged arms of Deve Gowda. Shows enormous promise to move up the ranking ladder in 2009.

Sentence: Send him to heaven.

6. Amar Singh: The old pimp’s new colours. I don’t need to remind y’all of this brigand’s conduct during the nuclear deal.

Sentence: Forced marriage to Mamta Banerjee.

5. Rajdeep Turdesai: For ushering in a new era of rogue journalism. No wonder Tarun Tejpal/Tehelka couldn’t make it to this year’s list. Pseudosecular reporting is the very least of his sins. Turdesai’s actus reus is unbounded: instead of apologizing for his brazen volte-face during the nuclear deal sting operation, he wrote a cravenly piece on the lines of “yeah, too bad, these things happen.” And that after the BJP announced a boycott of his unethical news house.

Sentence: Mandatory attendance at full-day 4th Grade Moral Science classes for the rest of his life.

4. Karan Thapar: Fierce competitor to Turdesai for the 4th position but won by a narrow but convincing margin. While Turdesai is merely unethical, Karan Thapar is a suave knave. His well-researched talk shows conceal some sinister intents of the man that conducts them. Karan Thapar’s lack of ethics is abundantly complemented by his mephistophelean hint at political murder. “A sudden removal of Modi” is how he analyses an electoral result. This statement (desire?) alone clinches #4 in his favour.

Sentence: Henceforth every episode of Devil’s Advocate will show live flogging of Karan Thapar by Turdesai.

3. Shivraj Patil: Carries with him the eternal disgrace of sodomizing the ministry that was once graced by Sardar Patel. Demonstrated his incompetence with remarkable consistency throughout his tenure. No thanks to the UPA for finally ejecting the stubborn old turd from its bowels.

Sentence: Supplying snacks, tea and water at Pakistani Jihadi terror training camps for the rest of his life.

2. Manmohan Singh: For presiding over India’s political, security, economic, social, and communal disaster in record time. For mortgaging the Indian national interest in the international community. For being the carpet for members of his own Cabinet to tread over with their dirty shoes. For being the gutless wonder whose words the media dumps in favour of the pearls from the Crown Prince. No wonder his ranking has shot up from #10 to #2 in a year. Goes down as the kind of Prime Minister every country dreads having: pusillanimous, indecisive, powerless, and puppetish. A miserable excuse for a human being let alone a Prime Minister.

Sentence: You decide.

1. Sonia Gandhi: Manmohan Singh’s bosserina and string-puller. Her form of vile politics is unparalleled even by the legendary Indira Gandhi, whose deceptions were at least public. This reprehensible tyaag maata has perfected the art of playing snake-in-the-grass politics. She has accelerated the pace of the fracturing of Indian society by a few thousand kilometers per hour. Every obscenity in public life in the last four-plus years can be traced back to her in one way or the other. She eminently and undisputedly deserves her place at the top rank in the list of India’s Most Loathsome People for 2008.

Sentence: You decide.

Thank you, until next year!