The Great Indian Series -1: 'Two Cheers For Chamchagiri'

INNLIVE brings you the first instalment in The Great Indian series. We start by tackling the Chamcha, that infuriating species which lurks in every office. `It' usually surfaces when the boss is around and holds a PhD in LBDN -Looking Busy Doing Nothing. If you're part of Sycophants Anonymous, stop reading now. The India of today might well be called the `India of toady'.

Many years ago when he was accused of being a `chamcha' of then prime minister Indira Gandhi, with characteristic aplomb Khushwant Singh said that he was not just her `leading chamcha' but an entire cutlery set. The savvy sardar knew only too well that in India chamchagiri had long replaced Gandhigiri as the unofficial code of state conduct.


Chamchas -literally `spoons', perhaps because the one who plays this role feeds the ego of the one being toadied up to -abound in all walks of Indian life. In the corporate world, they are also referred to as `yes men' who have morphed the Cartesian `I think, therefore i am' to `I flatter, therefore aye am'. Corporate chamchas wear business suits and an ingratiating smile.This distinguishes them from political chamchas who wear khadi and an ingratiating smile.

Like personal security guards, chamchas are a status symbol showing the world at large that the person in possession of them has not only arrived but reached the top of the ladder.

Ingratiating smile apart, the job of a chamcha requires that the person has a hide as thick as that of a rhino.When the boss, who the day before had called him a `gadha' (ass), and had that day called him a `bewaqoof' (fool), the chamcha-in-residence went about telling everyone that he had been promoted, in that from being an animal, an ass, he'd now been elevated to a human, an idiot.

Indeed mental vacuity is a requisite for the would-be chamcha. Julies Caesar might well have spoken for Indian political and commercial honchos surrounded by flatterers when he said: “Let me have men about me that are fat, The job description of a chamcha also necessitates a measure of physical fitness, as such an individual has daily to perform a series of reverential genuflexions before the individual being toadied up to. Urban legend has it that a chamcha who excused him from paying such homage on the grounds that he had a prostate problem which prevented him from bending and touching his mentor's feet was promptly sacked because his expla nation was misheard as his having a `prostrate problem'.

As it involves sucking up to one's patrons, chamchagiri can be deemed to be an exercise in true lip service.This being the case, it can also prove to be the kiss-off for the personage being fawned upon. Having surrounded herself with chamchas who only told her what they thought she wanted to hear during her Emergency, Indira Gandhi called for an election in which she got a thorough drubbing.

This is why chamchagiri merits no more than two cheers: because there is a fine line between sycophancy and sicko-phancy, which can rebound on the recipient with ill effect.