“‘At the moment he has a V.I.P. with him’… Miss Glidden seemed to divine his perplexity, for... she turned round and whispered through a pursed up mouth, ‘Very Important Personage’.” — C. Mackenzie, 1933, Water on the Brain viii. 111
The excellent Online Etymology Dictionary gives the above as the first written example of the use of the term, V.I.P. I have not read the comic thriller but now that I have seen this excerpt, I intend to do so asap.
Asap? That unseemly word, now in great use, standing for ‘as soon as possible’, is slang. Let us use it, if we must, but let us know that it comes from the US army slang dating back to 1954 and the Korean War. Captain Annis G. Thompson’s book on that hideous war titled The Greatest Airlift says: “Most drops were made on an ASAP or ‘as soon as possible’ basis.” Without knowing anything about the context for that line, let me say ‘most drops’ sounds like it is about the US air force’s bombing campaigns and it sounds pretty frightful. Today, when ‘asap’ is employed to convey a request or make a promise in breathless urgency, let us not forget where it comes from — a war that left nearly three million dead.
The terms, VIP, standing for Very Important Person, and VVIP, with the Very repeated to raise the VIP to a yet higher plane of importance, are not slang in the same sense as ‘asap’ but are not ‘true’ words as words come or go. These two initialisms arose as a convenient and, I think, tongue-in-cheek expression in the 1930s and were later put into common use among the cloudy heights of RAF pilots during World War II.
I can imagine a cockpit conversation:
Pilot 1: Hey, these important guys… We fly for them, die for them… rising and leaving home before the sun rises… “Important people” I told Wifey as I was leaving home today. “You sure care for ‘em more than you do for me and the kids…” she said… “They are more important for you than us…” and I couldn’t say no…
Pilot 2: …Yep… they’re important alright… very important… you know I’ve read somewhere of a phrase… VIP… Very Important Person.
Pilot 1: Cool!… VIP! That’s high-larious… sky-high-larious… VIP… and… VVIP… Will tell Wifey… “Those guys are VIPs… but you are my one and only VVIP”… Cool…
It will do VIPs great good to know that the expression that confers status (though not stature) on them, that makes people cut pathways for them, rise when they approach, bow when they pass, scurry away from enclosures with signs saying VIP or VVIP on them, groan when stopped on roads for their convoys to materialise, scream silently when they are overtaken in queues by them, has more than a touch of sarcasm in it, a dash of derision.
The innocent organisers of arrangements or events with VIP compliance do not mean to be sarcastic. Good Heavens, No! They are wholly earnest. They mean well. But VIPs and VVIPs should know the truth about their three-letter or four-letter status.
Around this time last March, Bhadra Sinha reported in The Hindustan Times: “The Supreme Court has asked the Centre to ‘enlighten’ it with the origin of the terms — Very Important Person (VIP) and Very Very Important Person (VVIP). Taking strong exception to the rampant misuse of red-beacon lights, sirens, hooters and security cover, the bench headed by Justice GS Singhvi verbally told additional solicitor general (ASG) Siddhartha Luthra and senior counsel Harish Salve to address the court on the issue of what is meant by the word VIP on April 3. Salve is assisting the court as amicus curiae in the matter... ‘Please enlighten us with the origin of the word VIP and VVIP and what its place is in a democratic polity,’ the bench said expressing concern at the increasing trend of flashing of beacon lights... The SCI has in the past strongly disapproved of police protection given to ‘all and sundry’ including MPs and MLAs facing no security threat.” The court had taken note of the VIP issue after a petition challenging Z+ security to a Congress leader in Uttar Pradesh was filed before it.
On December 10, 2013, the Supreme Court passed a very carefully calibrated order in Abhay Singh vs State of Uttar Pradesh & Ors which recognised the protocol-related need for differentiation with respect to high dignitaries. But it also made it mandatory for several modifications to be carried out consistently with our democratic status. The court said inter alia: “… there has been abysmal failure on the part of the concerned authorities and agencies of various State Governments and the Administration of the Union Territories to check misuse of the vehicles with red lights on their top. So much so that a large number of persons are using red lights on their vehicles for committing crimes in different parts of the country and they do so with impunity because the police officials are mostly scared of checking vehicles with red lights, what to say of imposing fine or penalty.”
I find their lordships’ academic interest in the origins of the phrases invaluable not just from the lexical point but from the social and cultural setting in which the phrases are
employed. And their asking what place the concepts had in a democratic polity, I regard, as constitutionally pertinent.
The VIP and VVIP nomenclatures are made to work for four objectives that may be called the four S-es in the cause of the VIP or the VVIP: to secure Security, to recognise Status, to augment Speed of Services, and to formalise Social Stratum. Those who are not troubled with a sense of insecurity, or inferiority and do not subscribe to stratified views of hierarchies would not care for the titles of VIP and VVIP. Those would encumber them, embarrass them. They would hold high offices without thinking of VIP and VVIP tags. It is those who suffer the pangs I mention that seek and covet them and end up looking the very opposite of what the initialisms mean.
They also run a risk. By announcing themselves as VIP and VVIP through red lights and hooters and the like, they attract attention, not just of the bored on-looker like R.K. Laxman’s Babuji but of the anti-social, the downright criminal and outright terrorist.
There is a great Sanskrit word which must out ‘S’ the four S-es that I have mentioned — shobha, or grace. VIP and VVIP tags get the four S-es but lack the fifth, shobha. The Hindi phrase about something that lacks grace — shobha nahin detaa — says it all, negatively.
Will the ‘high dignitaries’ of the Republic of India ever see that the concepts of VIP and VVIP do not fit a democratic republic any more than titles (which have been abolished)? Will they ever want to add to the four S-es, the fifth, shobha? Or has all grace fled from us?
