On The House

by Rajpal Abeynayake

(November 16, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) There is something very telling about what the Indian members of Parliament wear to their two Houses — the Rajya Sabha and the Lok Sabha. A good proportion of these worthies wear loose tunic shirts. The vast majority, I would say, wear open neck shirts with no tie.

Contrast this to the Sri Lankan parliament which went substantially underwater last week.

The more patently unparliamentarily the behaviour the more dramatic the exterior decoration of any member concerned, and this can generally be taken as a rule of thumb.

I have not seen a single member of the Sri Lankan parliament in an open neck shirt without a tie. Apparently, the rules written or unwritten prescribe either the Western lounge suit complete with tie and trappings, or the national dress for any member of our legislature, unless they are women, in which case apparently the sari is mandated.

Many of us recall the obnoxious spectacle of the Speaker of the last parliament ejecting a female MP from the House objecting to her clean colourful and presentable Shalwar Kameez.

If this same worthy was the Speaker of the Indian lower house for instance, he would probably have no time to do anything else other than ejecting members of the assembly for wearing open neck shirts without ties waistcoats and trappings.


Asia’s lounge lizard paradise

I’m sure there would be the usually suspect hordes who would be stung by the above comments, and who would probably be rearing to take me on for the audacity of comparing India — poor India — to Sri Lanka, Asia’s lounge lizard paradise.

That same poor India that is a member of the G 20, has the fourth largest army in the world and is a nuclear power to boot, I may add ...

It embarrasses me that we insist on such absurd and slavish sartorial conformity in our legislature, when our powerful neighbour to the north of us thinks nothing of allowing legislators to attend House sessions in comfortable shirts with their sleeves rolled up.

But let me tell you, we are Sri Lankan, and we do not do simple.

What happened in Parliament this past week should be testimony to that for anybody not convinced.

Some reports stated that the government made use of adverse weather conditions to pass certain financial bills, but the argument doesn’t hold water, certainly not three feet of water over which these bills were supposed to have been passed.

This government could secure passage for any bill at any time courtesy of the unassailable strength of numbers. Apparently party leaders agreed to the particular session in the inundated House, in which case it’s clear that the reported hasty passing of bills was amply Opposition aided and abetted.


Military personnel carriers

If the opposition connived in this farcical exercise the question needs to be asked why sarongs were lifted and legs were parted in ungainly stances on that particularly day, so that national clad MPs could hoist themselves on to military personnel carriers? Is this nation such gluttons for embarrassingly gross spectacle come rain or shine?

We are not. But apparently it has been decided that people had to be given bread circuses and regular legislative water sports.

So it seems to be clear that as a nation we cannot accomplish anything without the regular drama with the stage costumes. The costumes are mandated unlike in India where political theatre, if enacted at all, is in people’s preferred comfortable casuals.

But our costumed parliamentarians often speak for a nation that confuses the outer shell for substance. Ours is a nation that collectively reaches for the hairy rambuttan skin ignoring the fleshy edibles inside.

The upshot of it is that conformity in the sartorial sense or otherwise, breeds conforming minds. The image the parliamentarian with the rolled up sleeve in the Indian Lok Sabha conveys to me is of a man willing to get into the trenchers and begin work.

In contrast costumed parliamentarians here seem to portray an over abundance of blithely held caution.

You wouldn’t expect them to get into the trenches for fear of getting their national whites soiled or their pinstripes wet.

The more we regiment minds, the more we seem to regiment all aspects of life from dress to daily routines. I’m not surprised that being stifled by the social straitjackets in the form of dress codes and such as described, there is little or no original thinking to speak of in Sri Lankan public life. People are too busy looking good or looking more acceptable than the other guy in Parliament.

No doubt the baying hordes would throw arguments at me as if they were coat-hangers or shoe-horns but I would bow my head to the first parliamentarian who would have the good sense to table a Motion or whatever is necessary to simplify the dress code in the House. (While they are at it let them also promulgate some strictures about avoiding circus high-wire acts to get to waterlogged chambers.)

May I add, may no honourable member ever suffer the indignity in future of having her status as people’s representative being taken away on account of a Shalwar Khameez.

The supreme irony of it all is that in our supreme legislative assembly very often behaviour is such a constant indicator that the best dressed can very often be the most naked.