The Vice-President who chairs the Rajya Sabha by dint of his high constitutional post has taken umbrage at the skylarking of a member of the Opposition who mimicked him within the Parliament complex. His anguish at the theatrical exhibition on the steps of the new Parliament building also evoked much sympathy for him from the President, the Prime Minister, and members of the ruling alliance in the Upper House.
While acerbic satire can seem very personal and spiteful to those mimicked in this manner, the background of the occurrence against a world record number of expulsions of Opposition MPs from the Winter Session must also be considered. The Parliament, like the Senate from the early days of the Roman Empire and the Athenian boule, has by its very nature historically pushed members into taking adversarial positions as they are compulsorily divided along partisan lines.
Several Prime Ministers of the country have been insulted on the floor of the House. For instance, India’s first Prime Minister was even compared to “a constipated cockroach” in Parliament. And yet many of them, from Jawaharlal Nehru and his daughter Indira Gandhi to A.B. Vajpayee and Manmohan Singh, have tolerated harsh words and the excessively agitated state of Opposition members as a legitimate feature of democracy that invites free and open debate and discussion in Parliament.
Amid the din, the mimicry episode has been highly distracting from the triggers that led to stentorian expulsions of MPs who may not have done themselves proud in carrying placards into the House to make their point. Having been through this phase of extreme antagonistic positions post the intrusion into the “temple of democracy” by protesters, the time has come for a bipartisan approach to the complexity of running Parliament sessions meaningfully in the democratic Indian ethos.
The censuring authority as well the worked-up Opposition members and their parties must seek common ground to resolve rather than exacerbate the latest of standoffs that have tended to reduce Parliament to a house of slanging matches and premises for the patented Indian habit of taking offence at everything rather than consequential debate on the lives of 144 crore Indians and how to better them.
