It is in a sense pointless to criticize Congress (I) and CPI members of the Rajya Sabha for having obstructed the business of the House on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. This is so not so much because they had a legitimate grievance – the government had refused to concede their demand for allotting a day for discussion on corruption in high places in the context of the charges against Mr. Kanti Desai – as because it has for years been a normal practice for aggrieved MPs to block parliamentary proceedings. Indeed, resort to strange variants of Gandhiji’s high-minded concept of satyagraha in parliament appears to have become an accepted part of Indian democracy. The constituents of the present ruling party indulged in these practices in the previous Parliament before the emergency and a substantial section of the previous ruling party has been doing so since it moved into the opposition in March 1977.
But this is a dangerous innovation; it is wholly contrary to the spirit of parliamentary democracy wherein it is taken for granted that issues can be settled through free debate and that the minority, however just its cause, accepts the decisions of the majority, however misguided and partisan, till such time as it is able to convert itself into a majority; and it can undermine dignity of Parliament to a point where it will become ridiculous for anyone to expect the people to respect it and its decisions. This is not a counsel of perfection. It is plain commonsense that the agitation approach to politics can have no place inside Parliament and that to disregard it is-to court disaster. In fact, it will not be much of an exaggeration to suggest that the turbulence in Parliament over the Tulmohan Ram affair in 1974 helped push Mrs. Gandhi and her advisers to the view that the political system had become dysfunctional in terms of the needs of the people. It was then that she began to look for ideas for overhauling the system. Can our MPs then avoid asking themselves the question whether they are once again giving the country a push in a similar direction? No, the issue has become more than pertinent. It has become urgent. This business of obstructing the proceedings of Parliament must stop. But how?
No one in his right mind would attempt to provide a definitive and comprehensive answer to this question. But it is self-evident that if the problem is to be begun to be tackled, the government must be responsive to the opposition’s reasonable requests and that the opposition should in turn be generally co-operative in maintaining the dignity of Parliament. This is, of course, easier said than done in situation like ours when emotions are running high. But an earnest attempt has to be made to break out of the vicious circle in which political parties, Parliament and the country are apparently trapped. It may not be quite accurate to suggest that if the constituents of the Janata had not gone in for the kill in the Tulmohan Ram affair in 1974, the Congress (I) and the CPI would not have pressed the Kanti Desai issue as hard as they are now doing. For one thing, the former home minister, Mr. Charan Singh’s stand in the latter case has given the two parties a handle which they might have used anyhow. For another, there is the question of the prosecution of Mrs. Gandhi which the Congress (I) cannot but regard as a provocation. But there is a connection between the Tulmohan Ram affair and the Kanti affair. Which is that too many active politicians with less than adequate moral right have come to talk too much about corruption in high places and to treat their vague charges as proven. There is doubtless corruption in high places which needs to be exposed and fought if the people are not to become cynical and politicians are not to lose all together the moral title to political authority. But the talk of corruption can be and has, in our view, been overdone because the necessary perspective and balance have been missing.
By the standards of most other authoritarian regimes, the emergency in India was a mild affair. We should be concerned that there is corruption in high places and that we should have had emergency at all. But we should have the good sense to recognise that in respect of both public morality and personal liberty we have not done too badly. And even those who differ from this view should be able to concede that we are not likely to promote a clean public life by undermining Mr. Morarji Desai’s position, and liberty by expelling Mrs. Gandhi from Parliament and sending her to jail. For if public morality and liberty cannot prosper amidst moral decadence and disregard for norms by those in authority or close to authority, they cannot prosper amidst self-righteousness, intolerance, endless name-calling and character assassination either.