Opinion Express View on Tamil Nadu governor’s overreach: R N Ravi is a bull in a china shop

Non-BJP ruled states — from West Bengal to Punjab, and Kerala — showcase a dismal pattern: The Governor is at loggerheads with the elected government. The politicisation of the gubernatorial office goes back decades, of course. But recent instances of the Governor’s over-reach, ranging from the refusal to assent to bills passed by the assembly, to tussles over appointment of university vice-chancellors, have sharpened disquieting questions about the diminishment of a constitutional office. In this context, the conduct of Tamil Nadu Governor R N Ravi stands out — for his churlishness vis-à-vis the DMK government, and also, and more disturbingly, his lack of sensitivity and care in stoking long-settled ideological faultlines.

On Monday, Governor Ravi entered the record books for the “shortest address” by a governor to a state assembly. “This address has numerous passages with which I convincingly disagree… lending my voice to them could constitute a constitutional travesty,” he said, before walking out. He also claimed that “due respect” had not been given to the national anthem — the custom in the TN assembly is for the House to sing “Tamil Thai Vazhthu” at the start of session and close with the national anthem. This is hardly the first time that Ravi has stoked controversy. Last year, he refused to read out sections of his speech in the assembly that referred to the Dravidian model of governance and leaders like Periyar E V Ramasamy, former chief ministers, K Kamaraj of the Congress and C N Annadurai and M Karunanidhi of the DMK, and B R Ambedkar. He said that the state should be called “Tamizhagam” instead of Tamil Nadu. Given his own record, therefore, Governor Ravi’s invocation of the constitutional principle on Monday was ironical. In 1974, a seven-judge bench of the Supreme Court ruled in Shamsher Singh v State of Punjab that a governor can act “only upon and in accordance with the aid and advice of their ministers”. In his address to the House, the governor — like the President in Parliament — outlines the vision of the government.

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In the first decades after Independence, significant issues in what is now Tamil Nadu formed the core of what is colloquially called the “North-South divide”. That these were accommodated and resolved within the federal and democratic framework is a credit to India’s political system. By trying to reopen debates long-settled, by constantly overstepping the bounds of his office, R N Ravi is making his own position increasingly untenable.