Earlier, the Telangana Assembly was noisy, argumentative, and partisan, but it still remembered that it was a legislature, not a street corner.
Members shouted and interrupted often. But they stopped short of dragging the vocabulary of the gutter into the sanctum that was once called the temple of democracy. That fragile line has now been obliterated.
Chief Minister A. Revanth Reddy’s use of outright abusive language on the floor of the House the other day is not an aberration. It is the logical culmination of a culture that has been carefully normalised over the last decade.
What shocked many this time was not merely the word ‘bhadwe’ (pimps) used, but the brazenness with which it was uttered, the relish with which it was delivered, and the indifference with which it was allowed to pass. It would be dishonest, however, to pretend that this rot began with Revanth Reddy.
KCR and the politics of profanity
The slide into verbal abyss began under former chief minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao, who made foul language fashionable in Telangana politics. From public meetings to Assembly interventions, KCR repeatedly demonstrated that contempt could be expressed more effectively with abuse than argument. His supporters cheered, his critics protested, and the institution quietly absorbed the damage.
This was the same KCR who proudly claimed to have read more than 70,000 books. One wonders how a man so widely read failed to stumble upon a single decent adjective or a civil metaphor while targeting his opponents.
For someone who invoked poets, philosophers, and movements when it suited him, the preference for crude invective was not a failure of vocabulary but a conscious political choice. Once the chief made it acceptable, the courtiers followed.
The heirs apparent join the chorus
His son, K.T. Rama Rao, and nephew, T. Harish Rao, ensured that the tradition did not die with the patriarch’s passing. Filthy language was hurled not only at political opponents but at constituents, officials, and anyone who happened to be inconvenient at that moment. The tone was belligerent, the language coarse, and the message unmistakable – power need not bother with dignity.
The Assembly, instead of acting as a corrective, became an echo chamber. What was once whispered at public meetings now entered official records, often without even the fig leaf of expunction.
Revanth Reddy takes it a notch lower
Revanth Reddy has merely taken this inheritance and amplified it. Threatening to cut tongues, speaking with the flourish of criminal intent, and deploying words that even street brawlers hesitate to use, the chief minister has reduced Assembly debate to verbal vandalism.
The irony is grotesque. Even while sermonising that abusive language has no place in the House, he indulged in precisely that conduct, secure in the knowledge that no authority would stop him.
The Speaker, who is constitutionally bound to protect the dignity of the House, chose instead to act as a passive spectator, if not an amused one. Unparliamentary words went unexpunged, decorum went unenforced, and precedent was buried quietly under the desk.
A lost tradition
There was a time when legislators quoted poets, Shays’s, and authors to make a point sharper. Some even recited their own verse, to the collective amusement and admiration of the House. Wit existed without vulgarity. Anger was expressed without obscenity. That Assembly now feels like a distant civilisation.
Today, abuse substitutes argument, volume replaces logic, and spectacle trumps substance. When Speakers no longer intervene, and chief ministers no longer restrain themselves, the House ceases to be an institution and becomes a theatre of licensed misconduct.
The tragedy is not that Revanth Reddy used an unparliamentary word. The tragedy is that no one in authority seemed surprised.
