Mahabharat Analogy In Parliament: Did Congress Attempt ‘Operation Shikhandi’ Against PM Modi?
· Free Press Journal
The BJP has always been accused of performing operation lotus, or Kamala, to reduce the Congress’ strength in an Assembly. Engineering a split is much more difficult, given the two-thirds defection required by the anti-defection law. So, the second best was operation lotus—contrive large-scale resignations from the Congress so that the truncated Congress is close to a minority government. The rest is simple.
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The Congress’ plan in the Lok Sabha seems to have been more brazen, not to gain a majority, for which it is placed hopelessly in terms of numbers, but to catch the eyeballs of the TV audience of the Lok Sabha proceedings.
Shikhandi in the Mahabharata analogy
Shikhandi was a significant figure in the Hindu epic, Mahabharata. Born as a daughter (Shikhandini) to King Drupada but raised as a male and later transitioning to a man, Shikhandi was the reincarnation of Amba, seeking revenge against Bhishma. Shikhandi was pivotal in the Kurukshetra war, acting as the cause of Bhishma's downfall because Bhishma refused to fight someone he considered a woman.
Lord Krishna, the war strategist for the Pandavas, placed Shikhandi in front of Arjun as a protective shield. Bhishma couldn’t pierce through the shield, and Arjun rained arrows on the helpless and vulnerable Bhishma. Was the Congress counting on PM Modi being similarly disarmed in the face of some ten women MPs laying siege to him when he was about to reply to the presidential address? To be sure, no physical attack would have been planned, but the spectacle of PM Modi warding off his women interlocutors would have embarrassed him and the BJP, much to the amusement of the Opposition.
The plan, with unpredictable results, however, came unstuck with the Speaker, Om Birla, stopping Modi in his tracks. He pre-empted the possible operation Shikhandi by asking Modi not to present himself in such a hostile atmosphere.
Gimmicks and desperation
People resort to gimmicks when they are frustrated. Both operation Kamala and the putative operation Shikhandi belong to the gimmick genre. But then the Congress has been desperate with a string of Assembly defeats after a reasonably good performance in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
Rahul Gandhi, the scion of the Nehru-Gandhi family, is getting restless. He thinks, being blue-blooded, the prime minister’s chair rightfully belongs to him, and Modi is its usurper, if not a pretender. In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, he hurled the abuse ‘chor’ (thief) against Modi in the context of Rafale fighter plane purchases from the French government, which the Modi government interposed so as to make it a government-to-government deal to pre-empt the charge of kickbacks rampant in private seller-state purchaser defence deals.
He had the mortification of having to apologise to the Apex Court for bringing it into the murky waters of politics. Charges of EVM being manipulated and vote chori, in which the Chief Election Commissioner was a willing ally of the Modi government, then followed in his desperation to discredit his arch rival without a shred of evidence.
Reforming the speaker’s office
That said, the Westminster model of parliamentary democracy has quite a few warts, including the first-past-the-post system (FPPS) and the Speaker being the handmaiden of the ruling dispensation. There is no reason why the Speaker needs to be an elected member of the ruling party or alliance. The CAG doesn’t remain beholden to the ruling dispensation.
Likewise, the office of the Speaker must be delinked from party politics and affiliations. Let the Speaker be the senior-most retired CJI. And if he is disinclined, the next senior-most, and so on. Much of the angst and accusations of the Opposition benches are against the Speaker for his alleged partisan role.
Any disciplinary action by such a disinterested Speaker, including calling in the marshals to physically remove the obstreperous members, would be more acceptable. No no-confidence motion should lie against him or her. Given the long hours devoted by the Speaker to his job, invariably ad hoc Speakers from a panel have to do duty during the Speaker’s brief or long absence.
Such interim Speakers too should be shorn of party affiliations. At the end of the day, the Speaker occupies a quasi-judicial office. A sense of fairness and evenhandedness goes a long way in removing bitterness and acrimony in House proceedings.
Live telecast and political theatre
The wisdom of the live telecast of the parliamentary proceedings is also debatable. Members tend to play to the galleries, not of the two Houses but of the viewers ensconced in their homes. Fiery and comical harangues make for free entertainment. For the Opposition, rushing to the well and gheraoing the prime minister are good photo- and e-ops. The bottom line—waste of precious resources and taxpayers’ money.
Meaningful debates are rare in the milieu of unending hostilities between the treasury and Opposition benches. The protection against defamation given by Article 105 to members of Parliament emboldens them, especially those from the Opposition benches, to hurl unsubstantiated charges.
The BJP accused Arvind Kejriwal of AAP of never adjourning the Delhi Assembly sine die so that he could convene it anytime whenever he needed to let out his spleen from the cocoon of the floor of the Assembly, with television channels beaming his thundering charges.
Mercifully, the Supreme Court revisited its own verdict in the JMM case of the nineties, when it granted immunity to the JMM MPs from the charge of bribe-taking for voting in favour of the minority government headed by Narasimha Rao. On review, it has conceded that Article 105 immunity didn’t extend to criminal acts, including bribe-taking.
One nation, one election debate
Can one nation, one election (ONOE), which clubs both the Lok Sabha and Assembly elections into jointly held quinquennial polling, reduce the tension among the political parties? It is true that with the election pot boiling every year, there are mounting and ceaseless tensions.
Ergo, the quinquennial celebrations of democracy would leave at least four years for the ruling dispensation to govern, though four years is too long a time for the Opposition to bide and sulk.
TV news channels, too, provide forums for all the political parties to expound their views through articulate spokespersons. But they are as cacophonous as the parliamentary proceedings, though couch potatoes lap up both.
S Murlidharan is a freelance columnist and writes on economics, business, legal and taxation issues.