Opinion Parliament Winter Session: Vande Mataram and vote ‘chori’, all heat, little light

The debates this week in Parliament, on ‘Vande Mataram’ and electoral reform, enlivened both Houses after a long time. In a political moment when the deliberative institution seems besieged, this was much needed, very welcome. That said, the debates were significant not for the discursive spaces they opened up, but for their blind alleys. For one, the discussion on ‘Vande Mataram’ seemed to be solely in service of a vanity project of the ruling BJP. The Ram temple is built and consecrated and the dhwajarohan last month marked a symbolic closure of sorts in Ayodhya. In recent days, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself leading the charge against Macaulay’s children, it has seemed that the BJP, in search of a new grand theme, has found it in “decolonisation”, which also folds in its long-running campaign against “appeasement” as a secondary theme. The excavation of the events that surrounded the adoption of two stanzas of ‘Vande Mataram’ as the national song in a Congress-dominated polity offered the BJP a tempting opportunity to bring together these two planks and launch a double-barrelled attack on Congress, and the BJP seized it with both hands. It was foretold that that debate would not shed any light, only work up some heat.

The second debate, on electoral reform, is much more of a missed opportunity. In recent months, ever since the Election Commission launched the Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls in Bihar, questions have been raised about the best way to enhance the integrity of the electoral process. A debate in Parliament could have been the opportunity to take this important conversation forward, to widen it to encompass other consequential issues, such as cleaner and more transparent election funding, or the terms of the EC’s independence and its verification processes. Indeed, this seemed to be the rubric under which the discussion was framed — poll reform. What happened, instead, was a repeat of the same old political thrust and parry. Rahul Gandhi, who set the tenor for this debate, gave a speech that left no room for questions, or for a movement towards answers. It accused, it indicted and pronounced the verdict. The government had stolen all elections, said the LoP, and it had captured all institutions, including the EC. If there was any possibility of the government engaging with the substantive issues of electoral reform — of which there is no evidence — Rahul Gandhi’s indiscriminate hurling of allegations put paid to it.

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Parliament needs to come alive more often. But it also needs to use its time carefully and wisely. The ‘Vande Mataram’ and SIR debates reduced it to a platform for blame games and a showcase for a political standstill.