AA Edit | Leaders Must Mind Their Language

Politically, the present is, perhaps, the most polarised of times. This has spawned an atmosphere that may be the furthest removed from cordiality among people like politicians who are in public life. But, even given a deeply divided environment, the use of strong words by two major political figures of the country was less than acceptable.

The most recent occurrence of this syndrome of poisonous words further vitiating the atmosphere came in the president of the Congress Party, Mallikarjun Kharge, calling the Prime Minister Narendra Modi “a terrorist”. He then put up the contrived explanation that what he meant to say was that the holder of the high office “terrorises” people. Neither the nuance nor the semantics was forgiving of the demeaning comment by a senior politician.

As president of the main Opposition party and its leader in the House of Elders, the super senior politician was expected to keep public discourse civil. But a pattern of words born of frustration of being in the Opposition for the last 12 years have been heard to flow from the stalwart in Parliament and outside. It is questionable if such a seasoned politician should have to speak thus to please his party’s first family.

Just days before Mr Kharge’s slip of tongue or mind, the senior chief executive of the country was seen using his office to address the nation on a blatantly political subject of the dual bill of delimitation and women’s reservation failing the Lok Sabha test thus inflicting the first legislative defeat on his ruling party and alliance.

Everyone is aware of the answer to the basic question of whether the Prime Minister needed to speak to the nation in blatantly partisan terms castigating a group of Opposition parties. That a model code of conduct was in force for polls to be held in Tamil Nadu and West Bengal on April 23 and 29 made this national broadcast an affront to the basic principles of democracy.

Charging Opposition parties with “foeticide”, as the Prime Minister did, betrayed his intent of speaking at a time with a timing that was as poorly judged as the very exercise of seeking a vote on the bills during the year’s election season. It is a given that a pliant Election Commission will take no action on a violation of the spirit of democracy. We only wish our senior-most leaders had exhibited better judgment than to take everything for granted and be vocally political.