Showdowns at the highest institutional echelons are not a trifling matter, nor must they become the new normal. But India’s parliamentary system is struggling to cope with an absolute breakdown of consensus. A motion has been submitted by opposition MPs that aims to unseat Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla over perceived partisanship. The cause of their chagrin: his refusal to allow Leader of the Opposition Rahul Gandhi to quote from an unpublished book by retired army chief General M M Naravane. The same debate, on the motion of thanks to the President’s address, saw another odd turn when Birla wrapped up proceedings without the customary reply from the Prime Minister. The Speaker, not without a sense of drama, cited a physical threat to the PM through an “unexpected act”. However, videos of opposition women MPs surrounding the PM’s chair with banners— while he was absent—suggested nothing more sinister than perhaps the chance of thunderous sloganeering. If they were deemed to hold the menace of an advancing army, it was within Birla’s remit to hold territory and ensure decorum.
Naravane, presented with another chance to make a battlefield decision on his own, has also chosen the side of caution. After police was deployed to investigate the case, publisher Penguin Random House said his memoir has not been put on shelves since the defence ministry barred it from doing so in 2023. It stated that no copies—in print or digital format— have been published, distributed, sold or otherwise made available to the public. When Rahul sought to go by Naravane’s 2023 tweet that said the book was “available now”, the general preferred to lean on the publisher’s official position.
Asking how Rahul got a copy of the book sidesteps the real question. Free expression of thought is a sine qua non for a mature democracy. The government ought not to have sat on the book for three years without indicating why. That said, Rahul could have moved on after Birla’s discretionary ruling but chose not to. No Lok Sabha Speaker has been impeached so far and the government has the numbers to comfortably defeat the motion. But as Birla himself has emphasised in the past, Speakers must not just be neutral, they must also be seen to be so.