The Hindu : Beyond Parliament

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Friday, May 03, 2002

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Beyond Parliament

By Rajeev Dhavan

India's parliamentary politics has been mortgaged to brute voting strength.

INDIA AND Indian institutions of governance are going adrift. The Gujarat Government stands accused of complicity in a terrible communal carnage. The BJP-led Union Government conspires in this complicity. The Gujarat Government's affidavit to the Supreme Court speaks of 13,000 people arrested and 3,500 charged with offences. This is only the tip of the iceberg. The human stories are painfully genocidal as the horror continues. The Centre has violated its constitutional duty to quell the riots and take over the governance of Gujarat. Narendra Modi should have resigned. The Prime Minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, should have sacked him. But he has not done so. Gujarat remains frighteningly and embarrassingly unstable.

Parliament had to be paralysed to secure a debate under Rule 184 to censure the Government. Earlier, the rule was that if it lost a major debate in Parliament, the Government would resign. But, this is no longer the case. Margaret Thatcher was defeated over 10 times on major matters but refused to step down. P. V. Narasimha Rao's Government was defeated over patents and TADA. But, a censure motion is not just a defeat on a policy or statute. It is a much more serious matter. In the past two years, Rule 184 motions against the Vajpayee Government have not succeeded. The first such motion of August 21-22, 2000, demanding a Commission of Inquiry on the Amarnath killings was not even permitted the dignity of a proper count but determined by a voice vote. The next motion of December 13-14, 2000, on the crucially secular issue of the Babri Masjid and dropping the then criminally indicted Ministers such as L. K. Advani, Murali Manohar Joshi and Uma Bharti was defeated by Government majorities of 291 to 179. In March 2001, the Balco motion was defeated by 263 votes to 154. Even the motion on the UTI scandal in which millions of people lost crores of rupees was defeated. This Government has made itself impregnable to any kind of attack in the Lok Sabha. The Government's defeat in the Rajya Sabha over the Ayodhya matter in December 2001 proved to be meaningless. Despite the censure, the Government defied embarrassment. Now, the motion over Gujarat has been defeated in the Lok Sabha by 276 to 182 votes with 8 abstentions.

India's parliamentary politics has been mortgaged to brute voting strength. So far, the allies have stood by the BJP-led NDA Government. If the BJP loses, they lose. The posturing over the Gujarat debate is without shame. The Telugu Desam's stance of walking out and abstaining if Mr. Modi's head is not offered on a resignation platter is symbolic, evasive, ineffective and cowardly. The AIADMK leader, Jayalalithaa, seeks to make a virtue of necessity by taking the stance that she cannot ask for some other Chief Minister's resignation — other than her opponents in Tamil Nadu — if and when it pleases her. If communal carnage is not a reason for bringing down a Chief Minster — leave alone a Government — what is? George Fernandes stands by Mr. Vajpayee to negate the very principles of democracy and secularism once associated with his name. Omar Abdullah has no choice but to stand up for secularism on the basis of which rests India's claim to Kashmir. But, in terms of votes, Kashmir counts for too little to upset Mr. Vajpayee's arithmetic. Ram Vilas Paswan may have resigned belatedly, but the allies seem to have forgotten their oath to the Constitution. Given these facts, manipulating a victory in the Lok Sabha and ignoring a defeat in the Rajya Sabha is within the Government's grasp.

What all this adds up to is the fact that Parliament has persistently failed as the conscience of the nation. And, in making governance accountable to it. This failure has been demonstrated again and again. Only staying in power counts. There seems to have been no coherent Opposition plan. The standard of debate was low and disorganised. Real issues were ignored. Dramatic stances were taken amidst turmoil. The debate strayed into whether the Congress created separatism in supporting the Khilafat movement in 1920-22. Somnath Chatterjee rightly quoted Mr. Vajpayee's speech of 1970 allegedly declaring that Muslims were not to be trusted. The debate reached its lowest point on whether Sonia Gandhi was chewing gum in the House; and, whether she should be punished for doing so, even though the central question of whether the Government should send in the troops under Article 355 was raised by her. There have been many communal riots before — no less in Gujarat in the late 1960s. But, the Gujarat carnage of 2002 surpasses all others. What hurts Indian governance is not that a communal flare-up has occurred. That is bad enough. The continuous killings and systematic plans of extermination encouraged not just by provocative pamphlets but allegedly Government-sponsored murder and mayhem suggests that a BJP-led Government can no longer control the pernicious communalism that the Sangh Parivar has unleashed to foment support to stay in power. There is both anguish and anger in the foreign response to what is happening. On May 1, the New York-based Human Rights Watch wrote a 76-page report stating that the "attacks were planned in advance with extensive participation by police and State Government officials". The European Union on March 24, 2002, refused to accept that an incident of such proportions could be an internal issue; and on May 1, E.U. diplomats issued statements that they were in little doubt that State Ministers were involved in one of the worst religious riots. The Ministry of External Affairs had little to say other than that it was an internal matter and that the E.U. diplomats had crossed the norms of diplomatic courtesy! On April 27, 2002, the E.U. President issued a demarche asking for a meeting. Indonesia's President, Megawati Sukarnoputri, had already expressed her country's displeasure. In England, Lord Adam Patel (originally from Bharuch in Gujarat) demanded that the British Foreign Secretary ask for a United Nations fact-finding team. India can plead its sovereignty against any or all of these efforts — including against the claim for compensation contemplated in proceedings before a British court. But the problem remains. India once held pride of place as the greatest experiment in secular multi-cultural living that the world has ever known. It is now besmirched as a communal society incapable of fair, just and objective governance. The Prime Minister refuses to act either politically to remove Mr. Modi or to constitutionally restore peace to Gujarat.

Parliament is the ultimate repository of constitutional power apart from the people. If Parliament fails us, where do we go next? On April 25-26, France was aghast at the prospect of a racist even reaching the second ballot for the Presidency. The power of the people was expressed through a unified demonstrative voice. Gujarat has got out of hand. Nothing can vouchsafe for India's future or its standing in the world if no action is taken. India, including Gujarat through Gandhi and others, has taught the world democratic protest. Mr. Vajpayee must feel the power of the people in whose name he rules. He must either resign or be made to use his full constitutional power to impose President's Rule and run that State through an all-party committee. Gujarat is Indian democracy's toughest test. So far, we have failed.

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