Last week, memories of December 13 visited Parliament in the form of a hoax. Sansad Bhavan’s staff and security, some of whom so valiantly sacrificed their own lives that day four years ago, once again gave exemplary account of their alertness. Now, alas, the elected representatives at whose service they excel could be all set to reduce the institution to a farce. Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee has approved a proposal to have the House discuss Sourav Ganguly’s exclusion from the last Sri Lanka Test. He is no doubt seized of the outrage that’s convulsing MPs. Rajya Sabha, too, will presumably open its floor to similar grandstanding, with its fiercest new entrant, Brinda Karat, already bristling at the “injustice” parcelled out by cricket selectors. And how very convenient it will be for all of them. A colleague heads the BCCI. It will be so effortless to simply put him on trial.Sit back, then, grab the best seats in the House, and brace yourself for a pathetic spectacle. In recent sessions, Parliament has so summarily absented itself from one of its key responsibilities—to usher in debates and concerns from the street—that this possible show of enthusiasm could be instructive. Sadly in this case, instructive about Parliament’s misplaced priorities and erroneous perceptions about its remit. Cricket administration is outside that remit. Cricket’s appeal for our politicians is easy to account for. Nothing quite matches it for emotive and populist potential. However, long arguments in court have established that the state has no legitimate role in its affairs. Parliament has not received the message. In case Chatterjee does not have a fortuitous change of mind, Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar must restate it. He must refuse to speak in the House in his capacity as BCCI chief. That office is not accountable to Parliament.There is, in addition, a coincidence that is more than a little worrying. All the strident voices piping up on Ganguly’s behalf happen to belong to politicians from West Bengal—from CM Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee to Defence Minister Pranab Mukherjee to those MPs forever in search of a cause, Basudeb Acharia and Gurudas Dasgupta. They are welcome to their parochialism. But let them leave Ganguly out of it. He is, even in the first draft of India’s cricket history, too special a son to be reduced to an emblem for narrow politicking.
