(Dr. Shashi Tharoor, a two-time MP from Thiruvananthapuram and the former Union Minister of State for External Affairs and Human Resource Development, is the author of 14 books, including, most recently, Pax Indica: India and the World of the 21st Century.)The controversy surrounding the appointment of former Chief Justice of India P. Sathasivam as Governor of Kerala has begun to subside. Once he was sworn in and assumed office, there was no question of the Congress Party (which rules Kerala) behaving discourteously, let alone boycotting him, as some had feared. Indeed, as the MP for the state capital, Thiruvananthapuram, I was among the first to pay him a courtesy visit a few hours after his swearing-in, for a very pleasant conversation. We know the proprieties.
But does the BJP? This is not the first time that the BJP Government has shown scant regard for conforming to our country's conventionally accepted standards of political behaviour. The earlier decision to appoint Nripendra Misra as Principal Secretary to the Prime Minister, a position for which he was ineligible under the prevailing laws (which barred a Telecom Regulatory Authority Chairman from any further position in the government), offered the first such instance.
Messrs. Misra and Sathasivam are merely two examples of the government riding roughshod over propriety. I have nothing whatsoever against either gentleman. Each is highly regarded and each is considered a paragon of both efficiency and civility. Yet, in offering them such appointments in violation of the established canons of governmental practice, it cannot be said that the BJP has behaved with the utmost propriety. Nor has it done so in squeezing Governors out of office, in disregard of Supreme Court dicta, for the mere sin of having been appointed by the previous government.
Propriety is not always easy to define or explain. Its synonyms include decorum, correctness, appropriateness and rectitude, but what the notion of propriety boils down to is the quality of one's conduct being right, appropriate, or fitting.
When a Chief Justice is offered a gubernatorial assignment just four months after retirement, or a favoured bureaucrat is appointed in violation of law (and the law then amended to conform to his appointment), neither right nor fitting are the words that apply.
Apologists for the government's conduct have pointed to two precedents - a Chief Justice, Ranganath Mishra, nominated to the Rajya Sabha, and a retired Supreme Court Justice, Fathima Beevi, appointed a Governor, both by earlier Congress governments. But Mishra was nominated seven years after he had retired, long after any notion of a quid pro quo could have applied, and the selection of Fathima Beevi, the first woman Justice, was favoured across the political spectrum. (Similarly, former Chief Justice Hidayatullah became Vice-President of India seven years after he had concluded his term.) The widespread criticism, notably from fellow members of the legal profession, of the Sathasivan appointment puts it in a different category. And Mr Nripendra Misra's case in a class of its own.
Some readers may think I am unnecessarily making an issue of something as minor and intangible as propriety when there are far more serious issues involving the BJP Government that worry the nation - notably its contributions to poisoning the communal atmosphere in the country, and the Prime Minister's refusal to send a simple signal of reassurance to the minorities that he does not condone the words or deeds of the more unpleasant of his followers.
But in fact impropriety is the thin end of a sharper wedge.
A cavalier disregard for propriety hints at a far more dangerous refusal to respect the rules and the laws that govern our nation. If the BJP can blithely disrespect the law in appointing an individual, it can ignore the laws that protect our civil liberties and freedoms as well. If today it is indifferent to the canons of propriety in appointing an individual who ought not to have been offered a governmental sinecure so soon after demitting his august office, then tomorrow it can toss aside the conventions governing the treatment of other individuals too - officials, journalists, Opposition MPs....
When a government respects propriety, it sends a signal of reassurance to the entire nation that it is reliable and predictable and will not tamper with laws and precedents to suit its convenience. When it shows scant regard for propriety, it sends the opposite signal, prompting the anxious question: if they can violate this, what next might they violate?
Propriety: it may not matter in itself, but it matters when it is violated. Is the BJP Government conveying to the nation that it considers itself the supreme executive, not bound by any convention or rule-book at all? And if so, what next, indeed?
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