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TWO news items appearing in The Hindu of the same date (December 2) could not have been mutually more antithetical. One talks of stranded candidates, police insensitivity and a rude jolt to Chennai's reputation. The rigours of security arrangements for the visit of the Tamil Nadu Chief Minister to the Taj Coromandel hotel to attend a symposium are said to have forced many candidates to miss an important job interview, besides causing immense inconvenience to the guests.

The other item notes that in the UK, the most traditional and conservative of all societies, MPs will henceforth drop the honorific "Honourable" when addressing each other, opting for a simple Mr or Mrs. Of course, in the UK, citizens are never subjected to harassments because of the movements of the Prime Minister or other VVIPs.

There is only minimal restraint even on formal occasions such as the Monarch's ceremonial drive to Parliament to address both Houses. When I was in Oslo some years ago, I was witness to the King and the Queen driving to the shopping centre without any kind of self-consciousness or offensive display of ceremony or authority, and mingling freely with people.

Even in today's heightened security restrictions in the US, the President does not put on a vulgar pomp and show with a long motorcade trailing him wherever he goes. Indeed, Americans from the time they threw off the British yoke have been egalitarians, contemptuous of honorifics and titles. The seemingly easy-going, informal mode of American lawyers, calling presiding officers merely as "judge" in court rooms, is in marked contrast to the powder and wigs of judges and the deferential, nay, obsequious, behaviour of the lawyers in the UK and countries like India which keep imitating it to the hilt.

Unfortunately, the VVIPs in the democratic, socialist, republic of India revel in the titles and trappings of power. Presidents and Governors are loath to let go their "Excellencies" and Ministers insist on attaching the label of "Honourable" to their names, in many instances with scant justification. The sole exception to this vain exhibitionism, to my knowledge, was C. Subramaniam. The day he became the Governor of Maharashtra, he made a public announcement strictly forbidding anyone from adding "His Excellency" to his name.

One would have expected of a true democrat like Jawaharlal Nehru, steeped in Gandhian values, that the first order of business for him when India awoke to freedom would be to abolish all the nonsensical honorifics and titles with which small minds love to strut. Actually, at his instance, All India Radio announcers were directed to refer to him without adding Pandit or even the simple Mr to his name. Such a person, puzzlingly, not only retained the colonial pomposities, but acquiesced in adding new ones such as the Padma titles which are slowly coming to be perceived as political favours rather than as recognition of genuine merit.

B.S. Raghavan

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