Thursday’s unprecedented fracas on parliament premises over the home minister’s remarks about B R Ambedkar was a new low in Indian democracy. It should have been avoided at any cost.
The acrimonious face-off between members from the ruling NDA and the opposition took an ugly turn with claims of assault from either side of the aisle and police complaints registered against lawmakers on both sides. What transpired was shameful for the largest democracy in the world, whose foundation is owed in no small measure to Mahatma Gandhi’s principle of non-violence.
The animosity between the two sides that spilled out in the open would never have happened had the lawmakers addressed their differences with maturity and sat across the table to resolve them, as is expected of them.
Parliamentarians, of all people, should never take the law into their own hands. As the saying goes, what would happen to the crop if the fence were to eat it? The adversarial engagement between the NDA and INDIA bloc has reduced what needed to be a serious engagement on critical issues, bills and policies into a binary fight between the two sides.
Parliament’s time is extremely precious; for it to be squandered in such a squabble in the sanctum sanctorum of the nation’s democracy is a sheer waste. Whatever happens with the charges and counter-charges on MPs on the streets outside, we hope that Thursday’s violence would not roll over into a scuffle in parliament on Friday, the last day of the winter session.
Ironically, Ambedkar’s reflection on the relevance of productive discussion while drafting the Constitution resonates on a day a conflict over his relevance has blown up.
“The task of the Drafting Committee would have been a very difficult one if this Constituent Assembly has been merely a motley crowd, a tessellated pavement without cement, a black stone here and a white stone there in which each member or each group was a law unto itself. There would have been nothing but chaos.”
Our lawmakers need to go back to the classroom to learn a lesson or two in parliamentary propriety and constitutional morality. Dissent is healthy for a democracy. Parliament should give up what Babasaheb called “the grammar of anarchy” for the sake of India’s democracy.