It is not the building, but what happens inside the building that matters for an institution, and parliament is no exception. The magnificent structure of the new parliament building could not conceal the hatred, intolerance and the communal slur that emanated from the BJP MP Ramesh Bidhuri who abused Danish Ali, a fellow MP from the Bahujan Samaj Party. It was horrible to watch Bidhuri speaking in the Lok Sabha.
It was not a mere instance of hate speech. It was a hate crime. If a common man used the same words against a fellow citizen in public, it could have impacted communal harmony and ideally, the person would be booked for offence under Section 153A of the Indian Penal Code (IPC). This provision punishes the offender for “promoting enmity between different groups on grounds of religion” and “doing acts prejudicial to maintenance of harmony”. Even Section 153B of the IPC dealing with “imputations and assertions” which are “prejudicial to national integration” would have been invoked in such a scenario. The words uttered were clearly toxic, and when it was done in parliament, it was enough to shake the country’s foundational values.
The Third Schedule of the Constitution contains, among other things, the form of the oath to be taken by a Member of Parliament. Bidhuri also affirmed that he would “bear true faith and allegiance to the Constitution of India”. No one in her senses would think that Bidhuri’s conduct in the Lok Sabha was in tune with India’s constitutional values. It was, in substance, a breach of that oath on the Constitution.
It is doubtful whether there will be any action against Bidhuri in the present scheme of things. The complaints made to the speaker and the Prime Minister, though they hit the headlines, have not resulted in any action. On the other hand, Bidhuri has been given a key role in BJP’s election campaign in Rajasthan. It is crystal clear that the dispensation at the Centre thrives on creating division and hatred across the board and Bidhuri’s action was only a reflection of it.
If an offence is committed in parliament, when the House is in session, it is erroneous to exonerate the offender under the rubrik of parliamentary privilege. Hate crimes are not protected under parliamentary privilege. Even otherwise, that Bidhuri was not suspended on the spot indicates the present dispensation’s total disregard for the values of the Constitution. When the regime at the Centre does not believe in the ideology of the Constitution, it is futile to think that Bidhuri will be punished.
The hate crime that happens in the legislative bodies, when committed by responsible persons and abetted by the ruling dispensation, is a complicated issue that cannot be dealt with merely by the tools of law. The Supreme Court, in Kaushal Kishor v State of Uttar Pradesh (2023), has tried to answer the question whether the freedom of speech of public functionaries could be restricted other than by invoking any device under Article 19(2) of the Constitution, which talks about reasonable restrictions. The court answered the question in the negative. Yet, Justice B V Nagarathna underlined the need to maintain constitutional values in the language used by public functionaries. This should apply particularly to our parliamentarians. Since the words spoken by Bidhuri clearly amounted to a hate crime, going by the parameters laid down by the Supreme Court in Amish Devgan v Union of India (2020), an action is clearly overdue, at least legally.
Neither the court nor the laws can effectively act in a situation when the Rule of Law faces a threat from hatemongers who demolish the very institutions of democracy. Therefore, it is essential to realise that what happened to Danish Ali in the Lok Sabha is part of a larger calamity that has befallen the nation. It was not an isolated individual episode. A country that is being ‘deconstitutionalised’ is witnessing institutionalised hatred, something the founders of our republic never wanted to happen. In the process, the Rule of Law is one of the first causalities.
American civil rights activist Nadine Strossen, in her work titled HATE (Oxford University Press, 2018), has remarked that the remedy against hate speech lies in more speech, not censorship. Yet, this principle may not be adequate to decriminalise hate when it amounts to an offence like the one already codified in the IPC. The question we face is the misuse, non-use, and selective use of the law. Therefore, it is fallacious to think that when hate crimes happen, the law will take its own course and deal with the menace.
Karnataka, in the recent Assembly election, has shown the way ahead for the country’s fight against divisive politics. During the ‘hijab ban’ controversy in certain educational institutions, the state went through one of its dark periods in recent history. The state of the great Basavanna, that by and large practiced religious and communal fraternity in an exemplary way, faced serious threat from the divisive politics imported from elsewhere.
The people of Karnataka, however, realised what was at stake. It is erroneous to reduce the recent electoral outcome in the state to the five promises made by the Congress party. It was also the Karnataka people’s reaction to the politics of hatred, to which Bharat Jodo Yatra contributed immensely, in its own way. The danger of divisive politics is still there, but Karnataka has shown that it is not invincible.
To me, it appears that Karnataka shows the real solution to the danger of hatred in the country, for which Bidhuri was only an instrument. There is a need to tell the masses about the India as designed by the country’s founding fathers and founding mothers. This can happen, however, only with a deep-rooted constitutional education using the common man’s language, rather than the lawyer’s rhetoric. Constitutionalism requires a language that can communicate to the people.
(The writer is a Supreme Court lawyer)
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