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Assault on Parliament

Nobody would ever mistake Mamata Banerjee, who stands about five-feet-nothing in her chappals, for an Olympic athlete. But looks can be deceiving as Daroga Prasad Saroj would cheerfully testify. In case you are unfamiliar with the name, he is the Samajwadi Party MP who swears that he was "assaulted" by the tiny lady from West Bengal.

We can leave the Speaker to play the referee on this impromptu episode of the WWF. But for all his volubility, Saroj didn't enlighten us as to what provoked the wrath of the Trinamul Congress leader. And this, I am afraid, was something very serious indeed. When he was, shall we say, intercepted by Mamata Banerjee (amongst others judging by what I saw on television), this shining light of the Samajwadi Party was on his way to the Speaker's seat. Nor do we need to strain our imaginations to wonder what led him there, given that we know that the Women's Reservation Bill was about to be introduced in the House.

I remember the last occasion the Lok Sabha was about to consider this legislation. Samajwadi Party members and their comrades in arms, Laloo Prasad Yadav's Rashtriya Janata Dal, stormed over to the Treasury benches, snatched the papers from the hands of the stunned Union law minister, and tore them to bits. Most unfortunately, the episode was forgiven after Mulayam Singh Yadav and Laloo Prasad Yadav made some of the most hypocritical apologies ever heard. Having got off so lightly in that episode is what encouraged the Samajwadi Party boss to stage a second assault on the dignity of Parliament.

There shall be, I am sure, plenty of people ready to condone the Samajwadi Party's actions, or even to pass them off as the result of emotional outbreaks. But let us see them for what they are: deliberate and desperate attempts to thwart the will of the majority of the Lok Sabha. I described them as 'deliberate' and 'desperate'. And both those adjectives are well chosen.

It is deliberate, because Mulayam Singh Yadav knows perfectly well that he and his troops don't have any chance of stopping the bill in open debate. The BJP, the Congress, and the Left Front, in other words the three biggest groups in the Lok Sabha, have declared that they are in favour of the bill as it stands.

Between them, these three have over 375 votes in a 543-strong House. That is an invincible majority even without the support of smaller parties such as the aforementioned Trinamul Congress. Compared to that, the 37 votes that the Samajwadi Party-Rashtriya Janata Dal duo can muster are mere straws in the wind.

That explains why Mulayam Singh simply refuses to permit the House to function when the question of introducing the bill arises. But why is the Samajwadi Party boss so unhappy with the idea? This is where the 'desperation' comes in; the spectre of irrelevance is haunting Mulayam Singh Yadav. He fears being crushed between the BJP and a rejuvenated Congress (possibly aided by the Bahujan Samaj Party).

Yadav, of course, was never the most popular leader in his native Uttar Pradesh to begin with; he was content to rely on what he described as the 'MY formula' -- Muslims and Yadavs. But Muslim voters are returning to their old friends in the Congress, leaving the Samajwadi Party boss stranded. So when the Women's Reservation Bill came up, Yadav had a brainwave: "Reserve seats for Muslim and the other backward classes. Or I won't allow Parliament to function!"

I wonder if Yadav realises the forces he is unleashing. There is an unhappy precedent in Indian history. In the election of 1937, Jinnah's Muslim League was thrashed everywhere, failing to win a majority in any province. The response was not to tone down their rhetoric, but to stoke separatism. We all know the results.

How is it any different today? Jinnah's target was Muslim voters in the United Provinces; Mulayam Singh is wooing the Muslims of Uttar Pradesh (the same state under a different name). Jinnah wanted guaranteed separate representation on the basis of religion; so does Yadav. Jinnah urged his followers to stage 'Direct Action'; so has the Samajwadi Party boss.

"Divide and Rule!" won the day in 1947. Will Parliament permit it to succeed again, or will the majority finally assert itself? The Lok Sabha has repeatedly affirmed that it shall fight terrorism. But it must remember that not every terrorist is to be found in the hills of Kashmir.

T V R Shenoy