What Sushma Swaraj can teach us about being unparliamentary
"Lie" and "Liar" are words that are considered unparliamentary in India. They form part of a list of “Unparliamentary Expressions” published by the Lok Sabha Secretariat.
Other unparliamentary expressions include "badmashi", "bag of shit", "ashamed", "videshi", "source of amusement", "shy" and "stunt".
Hence, if a Member of Parliament were to say, “What the minister of external affairs said on August 3 about not requesting the videshi British government for any travel documents for Lalit Modi seems to me like a lie and a bag of shit which she isn’t shy or ashamed of. This, despite the fact that she, by her own admission, has aided someone who may be guilty of much badmashi. In fact, the whole thing seems to have been designed to be a political stunt but has turned out to be little more than a source of amusement,” then many words in these sentences would have to be expunged from the parliamentary record.
For a clearer picture, this is what they would look like:
“What the minister of external affairs said on August 3 about not requesting the videshi British government for any travel documents for Lalit Modi seems to me like a lie and a bag of shit which she isn’t shy or ashamed of. This, despite the fact that she, by her own admission, has aided someone who may be guilty of much badmashi. In fact, the whole thing seems to have been designed to be a political stunt but has turned out to be little more than a source of amusement.”
Expunging such words is a duty that the Lok Sabha speaker Sumitra Mahajan and the Rajya Sabha chairman Hamid Ansari have been entrusted with.
Since we’re speaking of Britain, it's unparliamentary to call someone a liar in the UK Parliament as well. So, in 1906, Winston Churchill decided to use a euphemism for the word "lie": “Terminological inexactitude”.
It just so happens that, in the case of what Sushma Swaraj said in parliament yesterday, terminological inexactitude would serve as a better descriptor than expressions that would be expunged from parliamentary record.
Here’s how.
What Sushma said:
“I have never never requested the British government for travel documents for Lalit Modi.”
What Sushma had tweeted earlier:
Taking a humanitarian view, I conveyed to the British High Commissioner that "British Government should examine the request of
— Sushma Swaraj (@SushmaSwaraj) June 14, 2015Lalit Modi as per British rules and regulations. If the British Government chooses to give travel documents to Lalit Modi,
— Sushma Swaraj (@SushmaSwaraj) June 14, 2015- that will not spoil our bilateral relations.
— Sushma Swaraj (@SushmaSwaraj) June 14, 2015The British High Commissioner is a representative of the “British government” in India. And, while Sushma didn’t “request” him “for travel documents for Lalit Modi”, she has admitted to saying that the British Government “should examine” his request. She has further said that if the British Government chose to give him travel documents it would “not spoil our bilateral relations”.
Telling a key government representative that he or she should do something tantamounts to an assertion that not examining Lalit Modi’s request is something he or she shouldn’t do.
This is further cemented by the implication of a country’s foreign minister saying that relations between her country and the country whose representative she is speaking to will not be hampered if the country’s government “chooses to give travel documents to Lalit Modi”.
Hence here’s the terminological inexactitude. Sushma didn’t just request the British government for travel documents for Lalit Modi. What she seems to have done, by her own admission, is gently prod the British government to grant Modi these travel papers. This amounts to more than a request. It falls in the grey area between a request and positive political pressure.