Following the mimicry of the behavior of the Rajya Sabha Chairman Jagdeep Dhankar, carried out in public by an MP in the precincts of Parliament, which was video-taped by Rahul Gandhi, Dhankar has addressed a long missive to the Congress leader P. Chidambaram. He accuses his party men of `ravaging the institution of the Chairman,’ and coming to his own personal grievance, he complains that they have insulted `him, his background as a farmer, his position as a Jat….’ (December 19, 2023).
This is a serious charge which merits examination. To start with, in order to deserve respect, the Rajya Sabha Chairman is expected to live up to the standards of behavior laid down constitutionally. Has Jagdeep Dhankar adhered to those standards ? In fact, he himself had `ravaged’ the institution by shouting down and preventing Opposition MPs from raising questions that challenged the ruling party. In an ugly demonstration of his intemperance, on one occasion he jumped up from his bench and gesticulated against those MPs – a scene which was recorded on video and went viral, provoking laughter. He thus denigrated the position of the Chairman to that of a butt of ridicule.
This is not the first time that Jagdeep Dhankar had violated the constitutional norms. Although he is required to be above political party loyalties, he came out with a public statement describing the BJP Prime Minister Narendra Modi as `Yug Purush’ (Man of the era), placing him above Gandhi, whom he relegated to the inferior position of `Maha Purush’ (Great Man). Even earlier, during his tenure as the Governor of West Bengal from 2019 till 2022, he earned notoriety for his frequent confrontations with the Trinamul Congress run government there. He let out his fury in rude outbursts against its Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, over Twitter and in the media. As a result, he came to be mocked at by people who described him as the ‘leader of the Opposition’ in West Bengal – in other words, an agent of the BJP ! As a reward for carrying out his party’s agenda from his gubernatorial post, the BJP nominated him as the vice-presidential candidate in 2022 – a post which he won with ease by virtue of his party’s numerical majority. That is how Dhankar has come to occupy the seat of the Rajya Sabha Chairman.
Comparing Jagdeep Dhankar with his predecessors
Let us remember that this reverential seat in the Upper House of Parliament had been graced by a succession of eminent personalities, beginning with the scholar-philosopher Dr. S. Radhakrishnan who presided over it from 1952 to 1962. He was succeeded by the well-known educationist Zakir Husain, after the end of whose tenure, Varagiri Venkata Giri took over in 1967. Giri came from a background of active politics, wherein as a student he participated in the anti-colonial freedom movement. He later trained himself in law and joined the Congress party. He presided over Rajya Sabha till 1969, in which year he was elevated to the office of the President of India. (In a personal aside, let me add that as a reporter I used to cover the proceedings of the Rajya Sabha during Giri’s tenure, and I watched him giving a patient hearing to the Opposition party MPs, while advising members of his own ruling Congress party to be equally patient in listening to their criticism till their turn came for responding).
Among those who were to occupy the chair later was B.D. Jatti (from 1974 to 1979). He was a lawyer, and a former MLA in the Karnataka legislative assembly. His successor was M. Hidayatullah, a barrister who had earlier served the Supreme Court as a judge in 1968. After the end of his tenure in 1984, R. V. Venkataraman took over to preside till 1987. He came from a political background as a student activist in the 1942 Quit India movement, to evolve later into the role of a Supreme Court lawyer. Those next in the line were Shankar Dayal Sharma (from 1987 till 1992), a barrister and Congress politician; K. R. Narayan (from 1992-1997), India’s former ambassador to UK, China and other countries, who was once described by Jawaharlal Nehru as the “best diplomat of the country,” and M. Hamid Ansari (from 2007-2012) who was also an ambassador of repute.
Decline of the Rajya Sabha under BJP governance
It was only under the BJP regime that there was a departure from this traditional practice of having well-known qualified personalities as Rajya Sabha chairmen. Under the A. B. Vajpayi-led BJP government during 1999-2004, an obscure person with dubious reputation became the chairman in 2002. He was Bhairon Singh Sekhawat, a former sub-inspector of police ! His only qualification in the eyes of the ruling party was his membership of the old Bhartiya Jana Sangh (which was to reincarnate itself as today’s BJP) in 1950, to be followed by his election as a party MLA in 1952. In 2017, after the expiry of the term of M. Hamid Ansari, under the then BJP regime, Venkaiah Naidu became the chairman. What was his qualification ? He was an RSS activist who acquired a degree in law, but never practiced – thus lacking experience in any profession that could qualify him to conduct business in the upper house. As expected, he turned out to be a bumptious character, indulging in rude jokes against Opposition MPs. One of his most atrocious comments was targeted against the veteran Congress politician Renuka Choudhury. In March, 2018 , when she was retiring from Rajya Sabha, Venkaiah Naidu body-shamed her by laughing out and advising her to “lose weight.”
It is this masochist culture of uncouth behavior, in which the RSS trains the BJP politicians that have determined the behavior of their nominees who have been Rajya Sabha chairmen. The present occupant Jagdeep Dhankar is thus no exception to the ignominious tradition set by his predecessor, the BJP leader Venkaiah Naidu. After making himself an object of ridicule by his intemperate behavior from the seat of the chairman, Dhankar is now trying to salvage the situation by dragging in the caste issue and projecting himself as a victim of upper caste prejudices. He accuses the Congress of `insulting his background as a farmer, his position as a Jat….’ But then, when farmers from his Jat community sat on month-long dharnas against the anti-farm laws enacted by his party’s prime minister Narendra Modi, did he ever come out in their support ?
Jagdeep Dhankar will leave behind a black spot on the history of the Rajya Sabha and its reputation.
Sumanta Banerjee is a political commentator and writer, is the author of In The Wake of Naxalbari’ (1980 and 2008); The Parlour and the Streets: Elite and Popular Culture in Nineteenth Century Calcutta (1989) and ‘Memoirs of Roads: Calcutta from Colonial Urbanization to Global Modernization.’ (2016).
