Telling behaviour

Mr Bidhuri's outburst should not become the new normal in politics

South Delhi MP Ramesh Bidhuri managed to mar what would have been rare multi-party unity in Parliament with the passage of the Bill for women’s reservation, by addressing a Muslim MP in Islamophobic language of the type typically reserved for uncouth street-level brawls. Though his remarks were expunged, the MP has received little more than a metaphorical slap on the wrist in the form of a lukewarm “warning” from Speaker Om Birla and a show cause notice from his party. Defence Minister and House Deputy Leader Rajnath Singh immediately apologised for Mr Bidhuri’s unparliamentary language, though the MP himself is yet to do so. These can be seen as perfunctory, politically correct responses since the comments come as an embarrassment for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which is actively campaigning for Pasmanda Muslim votes in the upcoming Assembly and Lok Sabha elections.

It is unclear whether the party will take stronger action against the MP. Several Opposition MPs noted that members had been summarily suspended for lesser offences. It says much for the understanding of etiquette among the ruling party’s rank and file that Mr Bidhuri found support from a fellow BJP MP who wrote to the Speaker, openly defending Mr Bidhuri’s language as an expression of “patriotism” because he was defending an objectionable remark against the Prime Minister by the Muslim MP, an allegation the latter has denied. Even if this were the case, such touching gallantry for his leader does not warrant responding in kind. Mr Bidhuri is not a newcomer to politics. As three-term MLA, two-term MP and current chairman of the standing committee of the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural gas, he must be aware of acceptable standards of parliamentary decorum. That he considered it appropriate to deploy such crass language on record in Parliament is a pointer to the wilful coarsening of the political debate both inside and outside Parliament over the past decade.

This sharp deterioration in political culture, which is directly proportionate to the growing communal divide in politics, reflects an unambiguous response to signals from the top. When senior leaders openly refer to Muslims as “outsiders” or make gratuitous derisive comments about their culture on campaign trails, the party faithful are likely to follow their lead. There is precedent, too, that those who deploy the grammar of hate speech get off relatively lightly. In 2014, for example, Sadhvi Niranjan Jyoti, a little-noticed BJP MP, attracted the national spotlight for her abusive references to Muslims in a Delhi campaign speech. In the uproar that followed, she tendered an apology in Parliament. But she was not stripped of her post as minister of state for food-processing industries, which she held all through her government’s first term. In 2019, she was appointed junior minister for rural development and, in mid-July 2021, was made junior minister for consumer affairs, food and public distribution. It is regrettable that the first session in India’s new Parliament building should have been marked by such an unsavoury incident. It is critical that party leaders insist their members observe the minimum level of decorum inside and outside Parliament, which is one of the basic guardrails of a vibrant, multicultural democracy that India claims to be.