Though Kannada literature is abound with different genres of creative reflections of excellence, the same cannot be said about original works in Kannada in the field of academic or scholarly studies. This is unfortunate because many great names in the field are from Karnataka and Kannada background. But this lack is complemented through committed translations. Some of these translations are rescuing Kannada readers from an intellectual handicap. The book under review is one such translation that enriches the Kannada academic world.
“Bharatada Samasattu- Ondu Karyanirata Prajaprabhutva”, the Kannada translation of scholarly work by Prof. Valerian Rodrigues and Dr. B. L. Shankar, first published in 2011 under the title “ The Indian Parliament, A Democracy At work”, translated to Kannada by Prof. G.S. Sadanand in 2018, provides a comprehensive history and critique of Indian Parliament. While Dr. Shankar is also an active politician and Prof. Rodrigues, is a big name in the field of social science. Prof. Sadanand, the translator is a well-known academic from the same field.
Naturally this rare combination of scholarship and expertise generates lot of expectation about the book. The book itself is a scholarly endeavour to answer the widespread “decline thesis” of Indian parliament and hence Indian democracy over a period of time. Thus, the main focus of the book is to show that the Indian Parliament has been successful as a premier democratic public institution, in spite of its inherent limitations and challenges. The authors contend that Indian democracy has both “deepened and widened” in the last decades and the Indian Parliament is a living testimony.
To prove their point, the authors, analyse the history of Indian Parliament in three different periods namely the formative 50s, the challenging 70s and the expanding 90s. The authors try to prove their point by analysing the data from the 14 Loksabhas that fall in the period of study in terms of representation, nature and issues of the debate etc. They successfully show how growing representation in the parliament in terms of caste, community etc, has broken the monopoly of traditional elites. The content analysis of the debates in the successive parliaments also shows how plural interests of different interest groups have come to the forefront substituting the so called national interests. The dethroning of English by regional languages in the business of parliament is also offered as another testimony of reflection of deepening democracy. Other chapters in the book dwell into the nature of relationship between Loksabha and Rajyasabha, the unsettled conflict of constitutional primacy between Parliament and the Judiciary and also the constitutional functioning of the Speaker in facilitating the effective performance of parliamentary democracy. The book also provides sufficient data from the original and secondary sources to prove the main argument.
While sound arguments and insights are provided to show how parliamentary form of democracy, rather than presidential form, has been proved the best given the proverbial diversity of Indian society, the book does not offer nothing new or original in a long and a macro view. Moreover, some of the important conclusions of their thesis are very unconvincing today, may be, because of the tectonic negative shift that has taken place after the period of study of the book. For example, the authors claim that the stability of the parliament has been achieved by passing Anti-Defection bill. Though both, 16t and 17 th Loksabha has produced single party majority after a tumultuous period of 25 years, the new unethical and destabilising Operation Kamala unleashed by the ruling regime under the watch of anti-defection bills and the self-imposed blinkers of both Election Commission and the Supreme Court, in different state legislatures, has not only ridiculed the very notion of stability but has also grown as a threat to the very sanctity of elections in a parliamentary democracy.
One would also wonder why the authors have not considered the aspect of increasing and prohibitive cost of elections which has made the Lok Sabha a club of millionaires there by raising serious questions about its representative nature.
Likewise, the authors’ conclusion that “parliamentary democracy is an effective answer to combat both extremism from the right and the left” looks like wishful thinking in these times where the market forces and the Hindu right are working as a deep state, challenging the very premises of our republic. The metamorphosis of welfare state into a Neo-liberal state during the 90s has effectively kept crucial decision making processes out of the purview of parliament scrutiny and thereby raising basic questions about the very depth of Indian democracy. The abrogation of article 370, endorsement of anti constitutional CAB ( Citizenship Amendment Bill), by both the houses of parliament etc, has thrown open the possibility of Indian democracy degenerating into an ethno-democracy like Israel.
This being the state of affairs the comfort in the authors’ conclusions is actually disturbing.
The extra care and labour of translation is visible and commands appreciation. Nevertheless, as the translator himself has pointed out, inherent epistemic difficulties in translating the scholarly works of the disciplines that are basically alien to the culture of language, remains.
