An increasing divide

Boycotting new parliament's inauguration is unfortunate

The 19 months of the Emergency aside, rarely has the Indian political system been so ruptured in the past 75 years as it is today. Twenty one Opposition parties have said they will boycott Sunday’s inauguration of a new parliament building, a momentous occasion in the life of any democracy. The Opposition’s stance is unfortunate, as was the decision of some of these parties to stay away from the June 30-July 1, 2017, midnight ceremony to mark the roll-out of goods and services tax. But unlike six years ago, when the government reached out to the Opposition leadership, it is regrettable that the ruling party’s top leadership appears unwilling to extend its hand across the aisle.

The Opposition’s argument that President Droupadi Murmu, and not Prime Minister Narendra Modi, should inaugurate the building has merit. The President summons, prorogues, and addresses Parliament and must give assent to an Act of Parliament for it to take effect. It is also specious to argue that previous Prime Ministers opened the parliament annexe and the parliament library building, for it is the main parliament building that symbolises the Indian republic, not its adjunct structures, and the President is the head of the republic. Indian politics has become more divisive and polarised, and a good part of the responsibility for that lies with the government at the Centre. The Opposition’s concerns, as listed in its May 24 statement, are not unfounded. It has flagged the disqualification and suspension of Opposition MPs, that they are not allowed to raise issues of public concern, treasury benches disrupting house proceedings, crucial Bills passed without any debate in the din, and parliamentary committees ignored.

The Opposition has rightly pointed out that the Prime Minister laid the foundation of the building during the peak of the pandemic without any consultations with the MPs. Therefore, it is the Centre’s primary responsibility to seek out some middle ground and give the Opposition more space than it has been inclined to do so far. However, the Opposition’s criticism that India could have done without a new parliament building is short-sighted. India needed a modern, more spacious parliament building, and now has one. The inaugural ceremony focused on the Prime Minister, at the time his government is celebrating its ninth anniversary, with him receiving the Sengol, a gold sceptre whose handing over by priests to a new king symbolised the transfer of power in the Tamil tradition, was avoidable in a secular democratic republic.

That said, there should be other ways of registering protest, not by boycotting a historic occasion such as this. The Opposition should resist the temptation to use the event to shape its unity with an eye on the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. A boycott of a formal state occasion is simply the wrong thing to do over a matter of symbolism and protocol. It should be willing to set aside its concerns and criticisms, and participate in the formal function. Intriguingly, May 28 is the birth anniversary of freedom fighter and Hindutva ideologue V D Savarkar, but neither the government nor the Opposition parties have brought attention to that fact or whether it contributed to their respective decisions — of holding the inauguration ceremony on that day or the reason to boycott it.