Who said, ‘It is just as I feared –
Two Owls and a Hen
Four Larks and a Wren,
Have all built their nests in my beard.
-The Book of Nonsense (1846),
Edward Lear Students of semiotics may well ponder as to why Rahul Gandhi, long-standing heir apparent of the Congress, has transformed himself into what might be called the hair apparent by growing a beard that would not be out of place in a Hollywood biopic of Moses. Is Rahul’s facial foliage, acquired over the course of his Bharat Jodo Yatra, a metaphoric reprise of the Old Testament prophet’s morcha of liberation?
In the 1960s musical, Hair, hirsuteness of various kinds was projected as an emblem of youthful rebellion against the diktats of an authoritarian establishment, particularly as represented by the military-industrial complex that had got the US embroiled in the Vietnam vortex. The musical may well have derived inspiration from a remark that urban legend attributes to the young Fidel Castro – that the true revolutionary has no time to waste on the petty bourgeois male ritual of daily facial depilation, a sentiment which Marx, Karl if not Groucho, would have endorsed. Lovers of beards unite! You have nothing to lose but your shaves.
But while rebellious youth may lay proprietary claim to such physiognomic adornment, a whiskery visage has also traditionally been viewed as a manifestation of gravitas from Socrates to Sigmund Freud, Tolstoy to Tagore. To attest that the hairs on the chinny-chin-chin are not to be taken lightly is the mission of Britain’s Beard Liberation Front (BLF), which was founded in 1995 by left-wing historian Keith Flett, and which campaigns against what it claims is ‘pogonophobic discrimination’, a prejudicial aversion to beards of all kinds – from Van Dykes to the Full Monty Santa Claus – and asserts the rights of pogonophiles who sport such growths for reasons of faith or fashion.
Among its other activities, BLF hosts the Beard of the Year Award, an event keenly watched, and contested, by those who stand for might and mane, and bristle at any attempt to impose upon them what they perceive to be bare-faced tyranny. Such divertissements aside, BLF has successfully opposed the dismissal of a fireman who’d been suspended because he refused to shave his goatee, which his superiors believed would be an impediment to the donning of the mandatory face mask when literally facing the heat. BLF also championed the cause of workers of an international oil company who’d been laid off on similar grounds.
BLF has participated in May Day rallies with a ‘mass beard waggle’ as a protest against the waste of natural resources involved in the production of shaving accessories like brushes and blades. It took up the cause of Sean Connery, claiming that he’d been denied a knighthood because he wore a beard, though the licensed-to-thrill Bondsman himself surmised that the honour had not been accorded to him probably for his professed support of Scottish separatism – which, however, did not prove an obstacle when he was given the title in 2000.
While it’s not known if Rahul is cognisant of BLF, closer to home the Congress leader has many to show him solidarity, not the least of which is the Bharat Beard Club which, in 2021, celebrated No Shave November, and organised the Beard and Moustache Championship in Gurgaon, which featured over 150 competitors from all over the country vying for prizes for the longest beard and the funkiest. One contestant who began cultivating his follicular appendage during the lockdown was resolute about retaining it. ‘My family and girlfriend aren’t big fans of it, but I refuse to let go of this,’ he asserted.
Should the 52-year-old Congress yuvraj show a similar determination not to split hairs, come what may in 2024? Victory may well be decided by a whisker.
