PARLIAMENTS serve different and often opposite purposes. They ply democracies. They ply autocracies. They work for the rich. They work for the toiling masses. The American parliament, Congress, made president Barack Obama look impotent and isolated by showering Benjamin Netanyahu with deafening applause and a standing ovation, mocking their head of state’s opposition to the Israeli leader’s visit. The Russian parliament, or the Duma, on the other hand, was attacked with tanks by its disputed and unconstitutional president at the time, Boris Yeltsin. The Duma had impeached Yeltsin, but he had the military behind him. Western capitals that have arrogated the right to declare what is kosher and what isn’t about the people’s will, applauded the assault on Russia’s elected deputies.
The Speaker’s role is vital in running parliaments or subverting them. History is replete with relevant lessons. The Reichstag Speaker’s role was key to turning Adolf Hitler into the unimpeachable Führer. It was a Nazi masterstroke to appoint Hermann Göring as the president of the Reichstag without whose machinations Hitler could not have continued as chancellor. A terrified German president Paul von Hindenburg got wind of Hitler’s nefarious plans to hijack parliament. He dispatched an emissary to dissolve the Reichstag. Göring carefully ignored the messenger, a rival right-winger Franz von Papen, until as the Speaker he had helped pass the Enabling Act to give Hitler his unbridled powers. It was only after the deed was done, so to speak, that he beckoned the emissary and read Hindenburg’s orders. As per the Nazi plot, Göring declared that Hindenburg’s orders arrived too late.
India’s opposition parties, principally the Congress, are ranged against Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla. They accuse Birla, who has had long-standing links with the neo-fascist RSS, of not letting them speak on crucial issues dogging the nation. They want to remove him but don’t have the numbers to vote him out. Now the BJP is considering barring Rahul Gandhi from parliament and future elections. There’s a trade deal with the US that needs urgent attention amid opposition accusations that it’s a sell-out.
Then there’s the spin-off from the Jeffrey Epstein scandal that has not left India’s ruling elite untouched. India’s foreign ministry moved swiftly to shield Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s unflattering mention in the files. The ministry slammed Epstein’s mention of Modi as “trashy ruminations of a convicted criminal”. Now the Mandelsons, the Andrews and the Starmers might help themselves to the stunning Indian response to arm themselves against the damning fallout.
Parliaments uphold democracy, and they subvert it just as readily.
In the midst of all this, a stalemate has stalled discussion, which opposition leader Rahul Gandhi has sought over a book by former army chief M.M. Naravane. The government says the book doesn’t exist even as Gandhi has been flaunting a copy without being allowed to discuss its embarrassing contents for the government. Delhi Police wasted no time in filing an FIR over the mysterious surfacing of a “non-existent book”. Caravan magazine first broke the story citing the ghost book which the publishers now need to explain to the police.
Parliaments uphold democracy, and they subvert it just as readily. Richard Nixon was impeached by his parliament and forced to resign. Bill Clinton and Donald Trump were impeached but endured the embarrassment to survive. Taciturn Narasimha Rao, believed to be an intellectual prime minister, insidiously betrayed India’s parliament by bribing MPs from Jharkhand Mukti Morcha to win a close trust vote. He was the toast of the elite for winning the vote, led by business dailies and their editors. The foundations of the celebrated liberalised economy owe more than gratitude to the corruption carried out inside the hallowed precincts of India’s parliament. Atal Bihari Vajpayee on his part refused to summon the Upper House to discuss the Kargil war, which he fought as a lame-duck prime minister after losing the Lok Sabha’s trust by a single vote shortly after the stunning 1999 Lahore summit with Nawaz Sharif.
Not letting Rahul Gandhi reference a former army chief’s book that the defence ministry has blocked is indefensible. Every major scam has come to the notice of India’s parliament and to the people through something that was published or broadcast by a local or foreign media outlet. What has changed? The Congress boasted parliamentarians of the calibre of Feroze Gandhi, a role model for as piring journalists. He unearthed such massive financial scandals that his father-in-law Jawaharlal Nehru’s government felt seriously jolted. Nehru didn’t use his political muscle to get the Speaker of the Lower House to stop his son-in-law and Indira Gandhi’s husband from revealing the embarrassing facts to the country. In fact, before the debate was over, the concerned minister was forced to resign. Those were the days of probity in politics, and professional scruples in journalism.
Other books have been quoted too to put the government of the day on the mat. The most memorable perhaps is Mystery of Birla House (1950) by Debajyoti Burman. It was a critical book, not a fictional mystery, that investigated the rapid and often controversial accumulation of immense wealth by the Birlas, particularly during the 1943 Bengal famine. It explored how the family business prospered while others suffered, highlighting close ties with the colonial government. The Birlas, as it turned out then and happens ever too often now, bought the entire first edition and the second edition of the book before they bought the copyrights of the book from Burman. He opened a leftist press with the money.
Had the economic history teacher at JNU, the late Prof Sabyasachi Bhattacharya, not mentioned it in his class, one would have perhaps never thought of tracking down the solitary copy of the book that evaded Birla’s clutches. If it can be found in the ‘rare books’ section of the Nehru library at Teen Murti Bhavan, it could only be thanks to the probity that parliamentarians of yore were committed to.
The writer is Dawn’s correspondent in Delhi.
Published in Dawn, February 17th, 2026
