ANALYSIS Pepper spray in Parliament, and possibly a knife. Does it surprise really? Many of our lawmakers have a penchant for hurling paper balls, footwear and expletives at targets across the benches in both the houses.
This skill goes well with their ability at relentless shouting from the back benches and trooping into the well at the smallest perceived provocation. For a people so used to such antics and disruptive behaviour, we should not lose sleep over the L Rajagopal matter. The only question that begs an explanation is what on earth L Rajagopal, the Congress MP from Vijaywada, was trying to achieve by using pepper spray on fellow parliamentarians.
According to Wikipedia, pepper spray is a lachrymatory agent — a chemical compound that causes tears and temporary blindness in the target — used by police to control riots or unruly crowds. The non-lethal compound is also used in personal self-defense, including defense against dogs and bears. Why did he think such a chemical was appropriate for fellow parliamentarians? Well, he operates in close proximity to them; he should know.
The choice of weapon is a bit odd, but it could be explained away. As attention-grabbing tools, paper balls, footwears and other missiles are passe. Being loud among so many loud people was never a good idea. Some of his colleagues are already through the routine of breaking mikes and tearing papers.
These have been used so often in our Parliament and assemblies that these no more generate any excitement among the larger target audience. He had to go for something different, something more sensational. Pepper spray was a good option, considering its ability to move people to tears.
He was sure not many around him were sympathetic enough to his demand for the revocation of the idea of the bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh - the Congress and the BJP have agreed to the division in principle. The sight of everyone coming out in tears over Telangana would have been good publicity for his cause. If his intention was to hog the limelight, Rajagopal has done well.
He has been all over television after his pepper spray act. It might not help his cause, but it certainly will earn him political brownie points. One TDP member is believed to have taken out a knife. One is not sure whether he meant to use it as a weapon of defence or attack or he carries a knife as a matter of habit. Since all parliamentarian are ‘honourable’, let’s accept it as an innocent action aimed at attracting attention.
The problem, however, is a knife won’t be good enough the next time. Someone else will smuggle in firearms the next time. The bigger, the more menacing, the better. On a serious note, where does all this end? Parliament has been reduced to a platform for theatrics and grand posturing by all parties. That poor behaviour in the House is being beamed live to people has hardly proved a deterrent for our representatives.
They have simply stopped bothering about the dignity of the institution. "What happened is disgraceful, unprecedented, unforgivable," said senior parliamentarian Jaswant Singh reacting to the incident. “It is very shameful. It hurt me after seeing what happened. I never imagined that in the history of Parliament something like this would happen…” said BJP president Rajnath Singh. “It is terrorising parliamentary democracy…” said senior minister Veerappa Moily.
Only yesterday, Prime Minister manmohan Singh had said "My heart bleeds to see what is happening in the House." All this is okay, but where is the collective action to restore the dignity of the House? The current Lok Sabha has been the least productive with disruptions and forced adjournments proving more the order than the exception.
Worse, with the equation among parties so bitter and acrimonious, there is little hope of the next Lok Sabha performing any better - even the reaction to today’s incident was along partisan lines. Whose job is to find a solution? It is time for the parliamentarians to get serious.
Pepper spray in Parliament: Who is desecrating Indian culture now?
“This has shamed us.” No, this is not the Shiksha Bachao Andolan Committee talking about The Hindus: An Alternative History. It’s the speaker Meira Kumar talking about Our Parliamentarians: A Very Mainstream History. A knife brandished in parliament by a TDP MP. Pepper spray sprayed by an expelled Congress MP.
There is no shiksha to bachao here. However it’s clear that there is much shiksha to impart. Dinanath Batra and his committee would do much more good trying to instil some good old fashioned Bharatiya values in our elected representatives instead of ferreting out sex in 779-page tomes. If there was a “hidden agenda to denigrate Hindus and show their religion in poor light” in that book, the agenda to denigrate parliament was not hidden at all here.
Or at least it was hidden in plain sight. The expelled MP who used the pepper spray had already told INNLIVE that he would not allow the bill to be tabled at any cost. “You will see that.. when they introduce you will see,” he had said making it clear the pepper spray was not just a heat of the moment flourish but something pre-meditated.
Minister for parliamentary affairs Kamal Nath said MPs are not checked for weapons and pepper spray because our founding fathers didn’t imagine that the men and women we elect to uphold our constitutional values could ever desecrate the Lok Sabha itself. The guardians of our public morality are very busy looking for the foreign hand that they think desecrate our cultural and religious traditions from the ivory towers of Chicago.
But the real goondas march with impunity into parliament with pepper spray and claim they are striking a blow for freedom and democracy. And why not? Our political parties have routinely turned a blind eye and actively or passively condoned their supporters ransacking and vandalizing anything they do not approve of – an art exhibition, an academic’s office, a magazine’s headquarters, toll plazas.
So why should we expect the political master of the goons to be lesser goondays? Of what more hallowed soil are they fashioned? In 2001 terrorists attacked the Indian parliament from outside. Today the ones elected to serve in it happily attacked it from within. A black day for Indian democracy as politicians are declaiming on television. A new low. Except our politicians, especially the ones who love their 15 minutes of fame on the night’s news, are always on the lookout for newer lows.
This did not happen in isolation –a grand aberration to the courtly parliamentary debate our founding fathers envisaged. The way to the pepper spray was paved with mikes snatched from speakers and members tearing up bills. And it didn’t just happen today. Mamata Banerjee once held a Samajwadi MP by the collar and dragged him out of the well of the Lok Sabha to prevent him protesting the Women’s Reservation Bill.
A study conducted by PRS legislative research shows there has been a steady decline in the number of hours Lok Sabha met in the past two decades. The 15th Lok Sabha, completing two-and-a-half years, is the most disrupted as it utilised just 72 per cent of the allotted time so far. Surely L Rajagopal understood that tearing up a bill and littering the Lok Sabha was now old hat to disrupt the Lok Sabha.
Pepper spray however was a new and audacious low, sure to catapult him to the top of the news. In that sense it worked. L Rajagopal is now famous. Well, infamous to be correct, but the line between infamy and fame is increasingly meaningless. On a day when the highs and lows were suppose to be coming from the IPL auction in Bangalore, parliament provided us with the real lows.
The IPL when it started horrified purists by turning the gentlemen’s game into something that felt like the buying and selling of livestock to the highest bidder – a crass commercial glitzy enterprise that made cricket all about leggy cheerleaders and astronomical sums of money, an exercise in commerce instead of cricket. The IPL auction however has been a model of dull decorum, the participants impeccably polite, the bidding orderly and the auctioneer never had to reprimand anyone or tell them “Shaant ho jaaiye.”
The channel broadcasting it often felt like a snooze fest. Who would have thought that the real fireworks channel would be ones showing the Lok Sabha? The Prime Minister has said his heart bleeds. Jaswant Singh said that’s pretty pointless when the UPA is responsible for the mayhem in Parliament. “UPA and Congress must atone for this great sin,” said Singh. Political parties being political parties will try to exact maximum mileage from this.
But the fact remains that none of our political parties are exempt from this race to the bottom. It’s not clear that for all the hand-wringing any real repentance is in the works. The MP who was accused of brandishing a knife is saying it was not a knife, but a mike part as if that is somehow far more honourable and keeping with hallowed traditions of parliamentary debate.
The Shiksha Bachao Andolan Committee is happy. They have succeeded in their objective of saving India from “a woman hungry for sex”. Her books will now be pulped. But what do we do when men hungry for power have no qualms about pulping the norms of democracy itself?
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