The mudslinging was so fast and furious that it was impossible for anyone to emerge unscathed from the spectacle that yesterday played out in the Indian Parliament. The house was turned into an “akhara” — as venues for wrestling matches are popularly known in the cow-belt of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. Honorable members of Parliament rolled up their sleeves, flexed their muscles and traded insults at each other in probably one of the worst shows of unruly behavior ever witnessed in the well of the house of the world’s largest democracy.
What’s worse, wads of rupees were pulled out of bags and brandished as Bharatiya Janata Party’s members of Parliament leveled accusations of vote-buying against Mulayam Singh Yadav’s Samajwadi Party that had come to the rescue of the Congress party-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government.
What was a live televised session of Parliament — called for a vote of confidence over a civilian nuclear deal with the US — was reduced to an explosive session of hooliganism as the world watched the antics of seasoned politicians on the small screen, with horror. Indeed, it was a show to beat all shows as ratings of even popular soaps took a beating.
The trust vote, as was apparent, became the sideshow and was all but called off at one stage. What took centerstage was a damning accusation of vote-buying which, if true, could taint the result of the trust vote. But, if proven otherwise, could taint the very course of Indian democracy.
Of course, the irony in all this was that nothing of what the Indian public saw — or heard — yesterday came as a surprise. Both the Congress and its allies, and the opposition and its cohorts, have, in turns, been accusing each other of horse-trading for the last couple of weeks. Figures were tossed — one Left leader put the going rate for an MP at a whopping 250 million rupees! — dinner diplomacy was in full swing and independents and small regional parties were openly wooed.
To put it bluntly, it was a field day for all. New Delhi had turned into one big circus as politicians and their loyalties swung like pendulums. They were seeking an audience with Congress President Sonia Gandhi in the morning, hobnobbing with Communist Party of India General Secretary Prakash Karat in the afternoon and, come evening, they were rallying around Bahujan Samaj Party chief Mayawati, the uncrowned queen of the Dalits.
When one leader was questioned why he jumped onto the Mayawati bandwagon and started opposing the nuclear deal, he replied with a straight face that the issue was no longer about the deal but about the next elections. Oddly enough, he switched loyalties just after getting the Congress party to rename the Lucknow airport after his illustrious father. Clearly, Ajit Singh was more interested in seeing his grounded political career take off than get weighed down by renaming an airport.
Mayawati, who was trying to project herself as a third force and possible prime minister, tried everything in her bag — and, by all accounts, that bag was pretty full — to wean away votes from the government.
But the Congress was not in a mood to cut corners either. Take the case of Shibu Soren. In return for the support of his five members of Parliament, the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha chief, who was earlier forced to resign from the government, managed to get back a Union Cabinet post, a minister of state berth, the deputy chief ministership of Jharkhand for his son and a host of other goodies.
Nothing of this was hidden from the masses. Television channels had been working overtime to expose what was going on in India’s capital. Cameramen trailed politicians, reporters quoted “sources” about the latest developments of vote-buying and shifting loyalties, and editors took the high horse to denounce horse-trading.
Phew. This was indeed a long week for Indian politics. A very long week for Indian democracy.
However, it was the climax that shook everyone. As the debate on the vote of confidence began and the number-crunching game entered its final lap, nerves began to get frayed, tempers started rising and everyone’s true colors pretty much came out in the open.
Things began getting murkier and it became clear to one and all that the nuclear deal was no longer the issue around which the pivot was revolving. What mattered now was what deal each politician was able to cut for himself.
Everyone seemed to be reveling in this free-for-all as party leaders valiantly tried to keep their flock together. Things reached a head and parties gave a clarion call to all their MPs: Criminals serving jail sentences were requisitioned and patients recuperating in hospitals were airlifted.
The gravity of the situation was not lost on anyone.
Indeed, there was not a soul in New Delhi who could say with confidence how the confidence vote would turn out. In a best case scenario, the UPA would scrape through. In the worst, they would end up bruised.
Till then it was pretty civil. Or as civil as civil can be in this cesspool that Indian politics has turned into.
But the newfound spring, the widening smile and the victory sign that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh flashed on arrival at Parliament House at the opening session of the debate let the proverbial cat out of the bag. Knowing that victory was well within his grasp, the normally reticent Singh oozed confidence.
To be honest, it was probably this confidence that sent the opposition scurrying. The end game was near and the numbers were just not adding up. Desperate situations call for desperate measures.
Political parties are nothing if not self-serving and are distinguished by their ability to seize political victory in every failure. Not to be outdone by its imminent failure to bring down the government, the opposition sought to use the trust vote as a plank on which to build their next election campaign on. Anyone who has been watching Parliament proceedings would tell you that probably the last thing on everybody’s mind was the nuclear deal issue.
Every other leader who took the microphone was more interested in making a case for himself or his party and it is not surprising then that the attacks became more and more personal. There were no holds barred for the leader of the opposition L.K. Advani. After “enlightening” Parliamentarians he would renegotiate the nuclear deal should his party come to power — so much for all his thundering attacks on the issue — he trained his guns firmly on Manmohan Singh and went as far as describing him as the “weakest prime minister”.
singh, for his part, did not take this lying down. During his short speech before putting the motion to vote — it was unfortunately drowned in all the humdrum in the house — he said with uncharacteristic vitriol: “At his ripe old age (Advani is 81), I do not expect Shri Advani to change his thinking. But for his sake and India’s sake, I urge him to at least change his astrologers so that he gets more accurate predictions of things to come.”
But that’s not all. Singh let loose: “Can our nation forgive a home minister who slept when the terrorists were knocking at the doors of our Parliament? Can our nation forgive a person who single-handedly provided the inspiration for the destruction of the Babri Masjid with all the terrible consequences that followed? Can our nation approve the conduct of a home minister who was sleeping while Gujarat was burning, leading to the loss of thousands of innocent lives?”
Strong questions. Indeed, very strong. But the question is this: Was this the appropriate time to raise these questions?
In the end, where was the nuclear issue? The issue on which Singh had put his government on the line.
True to nature, our politicians had conveniently sidestepped the nuclear issue and raised their personal agendas to make the most of the political mileage they were getting at this great big media bazaar when they had the nation as captive audience.
Of such stuff are politics and politicians made. Never mind. What happened in Parliament made every Indian — including those like you and me, sitting thousands of miles away — hang his or her head in shame.
Pity, for most of our politicians, it may have been just another day in Indian politics.
— Shafquat Ali is Associate Editor at Arab News
