In a democracy, where elections matter, negative campaigns add a tangy twist to the atmosphere. That’s what has been seen in primaries of the US presidential elections and five state assembly elections in India. However, comparing both would be like comparing apples and oranges.

In the runup to the Uttar Pradesh election, the issue of Uma Bharti being an outsider is being raised in the same breath as Republican presidential hopeful Newton Gingrich’s alleged flirting with various women. However, both Bharti and Gingrich have handled their situations with astuteness. The former Madhya Pradesh chief minister retorted, “I just want to tell Rahul (Gandhi) that his mother is from Italy and accepted in India…He should comment on his mother, not on his bua (father’s sister).” Gingrich, on the other hand, vehemently denied he ever asked his ex-wife for an open marriage in a televised debate. He went on to win the South Carolina primary.

Such negative and hyperbolic campaigns have become part and parcel across cultures, be it in Bhatinda or Baltimore, Lucknow or Los Angles, Dehradun or Delaware, Imphal or Iowa. Candidates have taken to pointing each other’s weakness and in fact have indulged into character assassination of opponents.

The issue of Salman Rushdie attending Jaipur literature festival was picked up promptly by the parties playing the minority card in the UP elections. In the USA, the tax return issue involving Republican hopeful Mitt Romney has played up controversy. Romney has been paying his federal income tax at 13.9 percent lower than average Americans. Sam Pitroda, telecom Czar and Congress loyalist who brought mobile phones to India, was described as a Badhai (the Hindi word for carpenter) by Rahul Gandhi. Who would have known all these lesser known facts if they didn’t come up during the mudslinging that political parties have got into with each other?

While most politicians sail through the mud, a few give it up. Mississippi governor Haley Barbour opted out of the race of the ‘Grand Old Party’ (GOP) as he would have faced questions on his role as a lobbyist and race relations. Another GOP candidate Herman Cain opted out, for being accused of sexual harassment. Back in India, the scam tainted minister, Babu Singh Kushwaha who resigned from the BSP and joined BJP thought his ordeal would end. But it did not happen as there was mounted pressure from the opponents that led to his membership in abeyance.

Like in the US, where race and religion are notable issues during polls, in India, stitching the caste and religion factors heavily in one’s favour during elections is a norm. There are many instances to prove this. Gingrich remarked, “African Americans should demand paychecks and not be satisfied with food stamps.” Similarly, a prominent minister in the UPA government, Salman Khurshid talked about giving nine percent reservations to Muslim. His party colleague Digvijaya Singh raised the Batla house encounter once again to coincide it with the election campaign. In the USA, the attachment of the Bible belt states with the Republicans and blacks with the Democrats are discussed in the same way as dalits’ association with the BSP and Muslims with the Samajwadi Party in India.

Gingrich calls Romney a ‘vulture capitalist’. Romney retorts by calling the former house speaker as ‘influence peddler in Washington’. Digvijaya Singh portrays Uma Bharti as ‘total bankruptcy’ of the BJP. Shoes were lobbed at Rahul Gandhi in his rallies and black paints were poured at Sonia Gandhi’s posters. It only shows that negative campaigns, character assassinations, dirty tricks, backbiting, venomous words and accusations fly high with as much intensity in both the democracies - the oldest and the largest.

The dirty tricks are not new to elections. Election campaigns hardly confirm to the standards specified in our civics book. During the second US presidential elections, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson used the rhetoric to up the election temperature. Jefferson camp accused Adams of “hideous hermaphroditical character”. Jefferson was taunted for his stories on slave mistress. The election campaign got nasty in 1860, when opponents described the Republican candidate Abraham Lincoln as “ape like”. During the last presidential election, Obama was painted as a secret Muslim. In India, Sonia Gandhi’s foreign origin rages controversy on and off.

Researchers and scholars have derided such mud-slinging during the campaigns. However, there are other views too. They say that candidates use a variety of negative campaign strategies for success. In election terminology, parties who are mostly out of power or weak opponents take such risks. Massimiliano Landi of the University of Pennsylvania pointed, “Incumbents employ negative campaigning less than challengers and favourite candidates employ negative campaigning less than the opponents.”

Another US-based political scientist William G Mayer portrays negative campaigns positively in his 1996 article in the journal Political Science Quarterly. He wrote, “Negative campaigning provides voters with a lot of information that they definitely need to have when deciding how to cast their ballots.”

As the polls near, people will witness more such mud-slinging. But it is ironical that most of the controversial issues that are tossed up during the election campaigns die down by the time the next one comes up.