Om Birla, a veteran Bharatiya Janata Party lawmaker who was re-elected on June 26 to the post of speaker of the lower house of Parliament, arrives at the Parliament building in New Delhi. (Photo: AFP)
India’s 18th Lok Sabha, the lower house of parliament, constituted after the 2024 general election, began its first session on June 24. The parliamentary continuity, through political upheavals, war, pestilence and disasters, is a testimony to the innate strength of the democratic instincts of the Indian people.
This commitment to democracy is an inheritance from Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi’s massive peaceful, unarmed freedom struggle, which defeated not just colonial Great Britain, but also an entrenched feudalism of several millennia.
The elections of 2024 also brought political equilibrium in parliament, bringing to life a set of political parties that had been decimated in the 2014 and 2019 elections in which Narendra Modi emerged as India’s prime minister.
He led his Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) to victory on a platform that was equal parts rabid Islamophobia and visions of rapid development that targeted “aspirant” classes of hundreds of millions of young voters who had been led to believe that the fruits of freedom had been grabbed by the poor, the Dalits and other deprived classes, and the religious minorities, especially Muslims and Christians.
The changes in the new parliament were testified by the election of Rahul Gandhi as the Leader of the Opposition, the first such election in the 10 years of Modi’s previous two governments since the general election of 2014.
Modi heads his third government as a coalition with a razor-thin margin. All the sheen and starch of the first two tenures were washed out in his party’s virtual rout in two major states, Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra, their strongholds. Modi’s own winning margin had been whittled down to a fifth of what it was when he won in 2019.
He has, however, presented a brave and perhaps even aggressive face to the people and his critics. He continued with his old cabinet — barring the many junior ministers who lost their seats — when he was sworn in on June 9.
He almost immediately went on his first foreign jaunt as a third-term prime minister as a guest at the meeting of developed nations. The pope had been invited to speak on issues of artificial intelligence and of climate change. Modi embraced him, took a selfie with the young prime minister of Italy, and was photographed with the leaders of Europe and America.
Back home, he sought to reassert himself by nominating Om Birla as Speaker of the Lok Sabha. The Rajya Sabha, the upper house of parliament, is always headed by India's vice president, a position currently held by Jagdeep Dhankar, a life member of the BJP before his elevation.
The future of this Lok Sabha may well depend on whether Modi, whose regime was dubbed dictatorial by critics at home and abroad, will embrace a more humane and democratic way of governance.
His ensuring that Birla was elected speaker after defeating Kodikunnil Suresh, a Congress member from Kerala, was part of his showing the people that the election results had not shaken him. He has also not agreed to the opposition's demand that the deputy speaker be from their ranks.
In an arrogant opening speech after the installation of Birla as speaker, Modi focused almost entirely on the emergency imposed 49 years ago by the late prime minister, Indira Gandhi. The slogan against the emergency has now been mouthed by every BJP functionary, including the speaker.
Gandhi suspended the constitution on June 25, 1975, after her election was overturned by the Allahabad High Court. For close to 20 months, she and her younger son Sanjay Gandhi ran a government that suspended civil liberties and imprisoned tens of thousands of political leaders across the country.
The people punished her when she lifted the emergency early in 1977. Her Congress party was wiped out in north India, winning a humiliating two seats. In later developments, she was temporarily arrested, her membership of the Lok Sabha revoked, and a judicial inquiry ordered. Gandhi returned to power in the 1980 general election and was prime minister till her assassination by her Sikh guards in October 1984.
Modi’s arrogance, however, may not work when serious legislative business begins in which he will be challenged for debate on every point by the opposition.
Now with a formal leader and a critical political mass, the opposition will check him on every clause of every bill. Parliament hopefully will see new laws come after being fully discussed and negotiated.
The new parliament demands that the government seek the cooperation of the opposition, instead of ramming decisions and legislation down its throat. That had been the practice in the last 10 years, and for the last five when Birla as speaker connived with the prime minister.
This may not come naturally to Modi. He is steeped in the ways of the 99-year-old Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, an unregistered religious and nationalistic organization with a uniformed cadre, and the political goal of a Hindu nation.
His nearly 13-year rule as chief minister of his home state Gujarat, and 10 years as prime minister, have shown a megalomaniac persona that demands total and instant obedience and brooks no criticism, much less opposition.
In Delhi, as in Gujarat, he has bent the judiciary, police, bureaucracy, and the education system to his will, massively eroding democratic institutions. Many think he came close to threatening the constitution itself.
Among the structures he injured was his own party, the BJP, which he ran like a personal and willing cadre, its token leaders no more than rubber stamps.
The election results told him the people were no longer willing to obey. His party, battered in its stronghold in the large state of Uttar Pradesh, seems to be saying the same thing.
In a flash, so to say, the people have recalled and remembered the hard way in which they won their small and large freedoms — equality in religion, caste, gender, aspirations and opportunities.
India became a republic on Jan. 26, 1950, with a written constitution and well-defined freedoms, including the cherished freedom of religion and belief. Arguably, for the first time in 3,000 years, all Indians, including women, were equal in the eyes of the law.
Caste remained an integral part of the majority faith of Hinduism, but untouchability was a federal crime now, with strong penalties. That caste tensions remain close to eight decades after independence is another story.
*The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official editorial position of UCA News.
