Spice of Parliament
By Adil Jussawalla

ONE of the funnier aspects of intellectual life in the country is the way some thinking people expect. Indian politicians to behave like British politicians. Our parliament has stuck to the Westminster model through thick and thin — surprising given the thicks and thins it’s been through for more than 50 years —but our parliamentarians and would-be parliamentarians have gone their own ways. If the British model was a recipe for parliament, we have added our own spice to it.

That this is an inevitable consequence of political freedom and the freedom of choice that followed seems to have escaped some people. They are intelligent people but with mind-sets which are easily shaken — just as well-set jellies are easily shaken — by what they see as incongruities in a decent system. That system is parliamentary democracy as engendered by Britain, the mother of parliaments. Baby parliament, our parliament, is expected to mirror mother in all her charming ways.

How awful. If Parliament really went Westminster (Westminster as it is today), much of life as I know it would cease. What would I have to look forward to? What joy would there be in knowing that all I could expect from my members of parliament would be endless debates on the rupee, a resignation because of a late-night stroll in Connaught Circus, or a public confession of having had homosexual encounters while in college?

What’s there to look forward to if I know that Shah Rukh Khan will never become the Prime Minister of my choice, that Phoolan Devi will not eleminate Jayalalitha by using means which are less than parliamentary, and that ministers, including the Prime Minister, will be debarred from reciting poetry in the house?

Because if there’s one thing MPs in Westminster won’t tolerate, it’s poetry. Actors as PMs and dacoits as MPs they may one day allow but not poetry, not poets. Poetry is the ultimate embarrassment, the ultimate faggotry that a British MP can be subjected to while the house is in session.

I imagine the MP’s standing in unison should such occasions arise and crying: "What! in our own house!" like Lady Macbeth her reaction — a phoney one at that — to a murder of a royal guest in her castle.

In banishing poets from their democratic sphere of parliament, the MPs of Westminster don’t murder but they out Plato Plato who banished poets from his ideal democracy. Plato at least gave poets the credit of stirring up bad forms of excitement, of being subversive. For Westminster’s MPs, reading poetry out loud while the house is in session is like admitting to having AIDS.

So thank you Prime Minister Vajpayee for not having such hang-ups, for not following the Westminster model. Thank you and thank all you MPs who showered poetry on members of your constituencies during the elections and who will continue to recite poetry in parliament.

We need all the poetry we can get even if we don’t need your government.