Democratic India’s firm red lines

Politicians such as Somnath Chatterjee, LK Advani and now Sushma Swaraj have been hailed by “public intellectuals” and a section of the media as “decent”, “democratic” and so forth for either openly siding with the ruling UPA dispensation or extending hands of friendship to it.

But their parties have taken a dim view of the same. Indeed, the CPI(M) had expelled Somnath Chatterjee in July 2008 when he refused to quit the post of speaker and join the party’s no-confidence motion against the UPA-I government on the contentious Indo-US nuclear-deal issue.

Who’s right?

There’s nothing called absolute democracy. India’s parliamentary democracy is entirely legitimised, guided by, and subordinate to the constitution. The Supreme Court safeguards the constitution and its basic structure. A constitutional parliament mediates in-house political discourse with rules and procedures.

Political parties are governed by party constitutions. Dynastic parties like the Congress, DMK, Samajwadi Party, etc, have elastic rules favouring the respective ruling families. That is usually not so with non-dynastic, quasi/ full cadre-based parties like the BJP and the CPI-M, which also discourage personality cult.

Now take Somnath Chatterjee’s case. He was elected to the Lok Sabha on a CPI(M) ticket. A CPM-UPA deal made him speaker. He was brazenly partisan as speaker, but that is not material to this piece.

What matters is that after the CPI-M/Left withdrew support to the UPA on the nuclear deal, Chatterjee refused to vacate the speaker’s post. As speaker, you are expected to be impartial. But if your party wants you back as an ordinary MP, you obey.
That is the only moral course open, besides resigning membership.

But Chatterjee stayed on, backed by a pro-establishment intelligentsia. He had the temerity to invoke Jyoti Basu’s friendship and applied media pressure for re-induction into the CPI(M) after expulsion. Shamelessly, he was lionised just to show the CPI(M) down.

Advani, for his part, went wrong in two cases. In the first, he called MA Jinnah “secular” on the basis of his Pakistan constituent assembly speech. The speech was stirring. But by supporting the two-nation theory and forcing partition, how does Jinnah remain secular? He gave himself a lawyer’s brief to win Pakistan and succeeded amidst bloodshed.

Advani failed to appreciate Jinnah’s deeply-flawed character and went against the party line in elevating him. He claimed it was his personal view. But in party politics, you cannot publicise personal views. (This holds too for Jaswant Singh and his controversial Jinnah book.)

Debate by all means, internally. But in public, you have to accept the collective line, as in cabinet decisions. The door’s always open to leave.

It’s similarly black-and-white in the matter of Advani’s “regret” to Sonia Gandhi for a BJP document about her and Rajiv’s alleged Swiss funds. This writer cannot authenticate the contents of the document. But it was publicly released by Advani which ipso facto conveys his acceptance of it.

When Sonia wrote to Advani expressing “hurt” at the allegations, he regretted it. This was played up as apology. When the BJP objected to Advani’s “regret”, the counter was he was being “decent” and “democratic” and the party boorish.

Dynastic politics’ downside is that allegations of wrongdoing unstoppably become personal in nature. Properly, Advani should have acknowledged the document to Sonia as of his party’s which he stood by. The party is supreme in parliamentary democracy.
In Sushma Swaraj’s case, this is as clear. After brilliantly combating the venal appointment of PJ Thomas, she tweeted to move on after the prime minister’s offhand apology in Jammu. The party refused.

Confronted in the Rajya Sabha, Manmohan Singh blamed others for the CVC scandal, whence he has been further enmeshed in untruths. Sushma Swaraj’s forgiveness would have set him free.
And do not forget the Congress’s snub to Manmohan Singh for comparing his infirmities with Jawaharlal Nehru’s early troubles with the satraps. All parties have inviolable red lines.