Opinion Allow the Leader of the Opposition to speak
And if he seeks to make a point by reading from the memoir of a former Army chief, on events related to the India-China eastern Ladakh stand-off of 2020, there should not be any problem in his doing so.
When a government withholds or clamps down, it is the Opposition’s responsibility to frame these questions. The ongoing face-off in Parliament between the Speaker and senior ministers on the Treasury benches on one side and Leader of the Opposition in Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi on the other is ungainly. The attempt to prevent the LoP from speaking in the highest deliberative forum of the country, be it by citing the rule book, or by invoking “national security”, goes against the democratic letter and spirit. The LoP must be allowed to speak. And if he seeks to make a point by reading from the memoir of a former Army chief, on events related to the India-China eastern Ladakh stand-off of 2020, there should not be any problem in his doing so. Excerpts are already in the public domain, details about purported phone calls with the Defence Minister in circulation since December 2023. The government’s argument that General M M Naravane’s Four Stars of Destiny is unpublished is specious, its approval is pending. Publisher Penguin Random House is curiously quiet on the sequence of events. But by being seen to silence Gandhi and other Opposition MPs — eight were suspended from the Lok Sabha for the rest of the Budget session Tuesday — the government gives the impression that it’s thin-skinned even as the excerpts from the book that are public are neither particularly damning nor revelatory.
That said, the drama does not cast a flattering light on Congress and Rahul Gandhi. To be sure, as LoP, Gandhi can, and must, ask questions and demand answers from the government on its navigation of fraught circumstances, whether it be the India-China stand-off or the India-US deal more recently. But by reducing a large and serious questioning to an insinuation about “pradhan mantri ka character (the PM’s character)”, as he sought to do on India-China, and by joining the dots now, conspiratorially and indiscriminately, between the Prime Minister, who, he says, is “compromised”, the case in US courts against businessman Gautam Adani and the “Epstein Files”, Gandhi undermines his own argument.
India and China have moved on from that moment in 2020. There have been 23 rounds of military-level talks, political engagement at summits, confidence-building measures and resumption of connectivity. But unanswered questions about the flaring of tensions on the border have not gone away; they must not be allowed to linger on. On the India-US deal, details are awaited as the fine print is worked out by the two sides even as Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal has underlined that farmers’ interests are protected. These are crucial issues that need honest public discussion. When a government withholds or clamps down, it is the Opposition’s responsibility to frame these questions. It needs more rigour and wisdom than tweeting AI-generated reels linking Epstein to a landmark trade deal.
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