Getting into language row all too often

NEW DELHI: Semantics, in a House of debate can be everything, as minister of state for food processing Sadhvi Niranjan Jyothi is finding out to her cost. Even as the Parliament remained jammed for a second day in a row over her rather offensive speech during a public meeting in Delhi on Monday, she can draw heart from the fact that it doesn’t take much to be on the wrong side of the parliamentary thesaurus. According to the booklet of Parliamentary expressions brought out by the Lok Sabha, to be used by parliamentary reporters while taking down the proceedings, even phrases like “Burger King” and “dipstick” and “face saving” can be termed unparliamentary.

While there is no doubt that Sadhvi Niranjan Jyothi’s speech was uncontravertibly offensive, the booklet put out by the Lok Sabha (version 2011) is a fascinating collection of words which have at some point or the other been deemed unparliamentary. These words have been drawn not just from the debates in the Indian Parliament but also from across the democratic world. A large number of the entries are from Australia, where the state legislatures in fact are given to very colourful expressions, which make even innocuous words like “Dill” (a rather bland spice) offensive. An example of this is from the Queensland assembly in June 2009, where a member hectored the state government thus: “Is he in charge or is the dill next to him still in charge?” needless to say the heat of the exchange ensured that even bland little “Dill” was expunged from the proceedings.

“The biggest challenge is the fact that language is constantly evolving and new expressions have to be understood and accommodated, or expunged, if offensive. In this case the Speaker’s discretion is the most important,” said P D T Achary former secretary general of the Lok Sabha. “In most cases,” he adds, “normative view is taken. For example to say that someone is a liar is unparliamentary, while you can say that the member spoke an untruth.”

Such sophistry however is unlikely to save the minister from the current contretemps, questioning someone’s parentage is offensive in every language and form.