Joseph Stalin, Nikita Khruschev, Slobodan Milosevic, Yahya Khan enter Parliament

NEW DELHI: Joseph Stalin, Nikita Khruschev, Slobodan Milosevic, Yahya Khan are surely not natural claimants to enter an Indian parliamentary debate on the President’s address, but they did form the cast of unusual signifiers in a BJP-Congress duel on who is autocratic and who is not.

It was the scion of the Nehru-Gandhi family who started it on Wednesday with an emotive outburst on his conception of nationalism and how the national flag was more than a piece of cloth. Miliosevic, Rahul Gandhi said, saluted the flag but divided the Serbs and Croats, resulting in the dismemberment of erstwhile Yugoslavia. He picked on Yahya Khan to make the point on how the Punjabi-Bengali divide under his reign led to the break-up of Pakistan. The unsaid bracketing of the PM in this list was surely not charitable to the dispensation.

Modi was prepared with a subtle, yet effective comeback. He pulled out a story from the erstwhile Soviet Union. Khrushchev, he narrated, would go about criticising Stalin after his death. At one such event, someone stood up to ask him why he hadn’t spoken earlier as he was also part of the regime. Modi said there was silence, following which Khrushchev said this was the problem. No one was allowed to speak before Stalin.

The PM’s message was clear that voices of opposition have all the space to articulate their views. For many MPs, the larger worry wasn’t autocracy but the throw back to Soviet Union and Yugoslavia during a budget session meant to debate reforms.