The meetings of the Bharatiya Janata Party parliamentary party held each Tuesday when Parliament is in session are closed-door affairs. As such, the media reports of the proceedings are invariably based on hearsay and prone to inaccuracies.

Consequently, we can only assume that the reports of Yashwant Sinha, now a Lok Sabha member of Parliament from Jharkhand, berating the party’s Rajya Sabha leadership for allowing the proceedings of the Upper House to proceed without too many interruptions and adjournments is a correct version of what transpired last Tuesday. My own inquiries suggest that on this occasion the media didn’t get the facts wrong.
The issue, to my mind, doesn’t centre on the titillating question of whether or not Mr Sinha was targeting BJP Leader of Opposition Arun Jaitley for being “soft” on a tottering United Progressive Alliance government. Likewise, Mr Sinha may or may not have problems with Mr Jaitley and these problems may or may not be linked to the wider question of Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi’s leadership. There is a larger issue at stake: how should the Opposition conduct itself in relation to a government that is increasingly resembling a lame-duck outfit? Is parliamentary disruption the most effective way of demonstrating resolute opposition to a discredited government?
A brief examination of the Westminster tradition, from which Indian parliamentary democracy is directly descended, may be instructive in this context. It is interesting to note that never in contemporary history has the House of Commons been adjourned by the Speaker on account of the boisterous conduct of its members.
Yes there is heckling, some noisy interruptions that are broken by the Speaker shouting “order, order” and there have indeed been occasions when a particularly wild MP has had to be named for persistent defiance of the Chair. In the mid-1970s, when the Conservative Party was in Opposition, Michael Heseltine gave vent to his anger against the government by twirling the Speaker’s mace in a threatening manner. I still recall the widespread indignation that followed this unparliamentary conduct. Curiously, when the colourful Tory MP Alan Clarke intervened in a Commons debate after over-indulging himself with some remarkably good claret, it was greeted with general mirth. Clearly, Mr Heseltine playing Tarzan was deemed a worse offence that Mr Clarke’s inebriated slur.
Interesting as these two incidents were, they were mere sidelights in the larger business of politics which consisted of the government proposing legislation and explaining policies and the Opposition quizzing ministers relentlessly to showcase the failings of the government. In short, the game of politics was governed by a set of unwritten rules and conventions which the three main parties adhered to.
To understand why Indian parliamentarians have shown scant respect for Westminster’s niceties, it is necessary to delve into history. India’s parliamentary history dates back to the Government of India Act, 1919, or the Montague-Chelmsford reforms as they are popularly known. The act, which was preceded by an assurance of a gradual transition to self-government, did not satisfy the main body of Indian nationalists. The group led by Mahatma Gandhi chose to boycott the legislatures, but an equally influential body led by Motilal Nehru and Chittaranjan Das formed the Swaraj Party with a programme of wrecking the Constitution from within. In short, the main body of elected Indian legislators entered the Assemblies with subversion as their principal objective. Between 1923 and 1930, the Swarajists made the working of the legislatures almost impossible and forced the government to rule through the exercise of special powers.
Arguably, those were different days and the political context was different. But the Swarajist experience introduced the notion that participation in legislatures was an act of expediency and an extension of politics that was being waged in the streets. It is doubtless true that the proceedings of the Constituent Assembly were conducted in the best traditions of Westminster. It is also undeniable that Jawaharlal Nehru loved the banter of Parliament and took parliamentary business very seriously. But these were exceptions. Overall, the disruptive Swarajist legacy continued to influence the conduct of MPs on both the Treasury and Opposition benches. Citing Lenin, most of the Communists perceived Parliament as a “pig sty”; the Lohia-ites loved disruption; and even elements of the Jana Sangh/BJP saw Parliament as a foreign implant, much like Gandhi who valued village democracy through panchayats.
It may sound cruel, even blasphemous, but it would seem that the political class has little respect for the conventions of the parliamentary system. This is not to suggest that it does not value democracy. Such a suggestion would be singularly untrue. It values representative government but not the institutions that keep alive the principle of accountability. Above all, with honourable exceptions, India’s politicians have a singular distaste for the decorousness that is indispensable for ordered dialogue and conversation. Things are made worse by the fact that even the Prime Minister doesn’t bother with Parliament.
If you imagine that I am overstating the point and making a broad generalisation on the strength of the disruptions that have made a mockery of the Monsoon Session of Parliament, you should take a closer look at the tone and tenor of the political chat shows that dominate the news channels on prime-time TV. The screaming, the bedlam and the cacophony that TV anchors manage to generate among the participants capture the essence of the Indian Parliament. True, there are some civilised discussions which include witty and acerbic rebuttals, but the tragedy is that such conversations fail to attract the necessary eyeballs to make them commercially viable.
Therefore, if Mr Sinha does indeed believe that disruption and repeated adjournments are the best ways to express robust opposition to the government of the day, he is merely echoing the prevailing wisdom of the political classes and those who view politics as a gladiatorial confrontation. The tragedy is that this unseemly behaviour —which is by no means the sole prerogative of the Opposition — is likely to contribute to dysfunctional governance. Assuming that next year the UPA is voted out and replaced by a BJP-led government, will the Congress in Opposition blindly emulate what its adversaries are doing now? Where will that leave Mr Sinha, in case he works his way back to a ministerial office in either North or South Block?

The writer is a senior journalist