It all began, as most outrages do these days, with a WhatsApp forward. A quiet evening, a ping, and there she was – Sushma Swaraj in 2014, addressing the Lok Sabha as Leader of the Opposition, exuding grace, clarity, and a level of dignity so foreign to today’s Parliament that it felt almost fictional.
She spoke without bile or belligerence, made her point without breaking the sound barrier, and even wished the ruling party glory (yashashvi bhava) – though not luck (vijay bhava), because elections were looming. Opponents, she reminded us, are not enemies. And yes, she managed all this without a slogan, a scowl, or a T-shirt.
Cut to 2025; the current Leader of the Opposition thunders into the House like he has wandered off the set of a wrestling promo, backed by cheerleaders who treat the well of the House like a college canteen on strike day. What follows is not debate, it is decibel warfare. Not discourse, but disruption.
The lost art of civil opposition
Sushma Swaraj in 2014 showed us what it meant to be a dignified dissenter. Her speeches had spine without spite. She credited her political mentor, L.K. Advani, for teaching her how to oppose without derailing. There was warmth in her wit, poetry in her barbs, and restraint in her rhetoric.
Earlier, Parliament was not just a place for shouting matches and finger-wagging. It was a forum of ideas, where shayari and kavita replaced shrillness. The poetic repartee between Sushma and then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was not just tolerated, it was celebrated. When leaders exchanged verses instead of insults, democracy danced, not ducked for cover.
Rallying cry or roadside rant?
Today, the mood has changed – and how. Rahul Gandhi, the new-age LoP, takes the mic with all the nuance of a foghorn. His speech, somewhere between a rallying cry and a roadside rant, is high on drama and low on detail. His attire screams rebellion, his voice strains for attention, and his message… well, we are still waiting.
And, in the Upper House, Mallikarjun Kharge hurls barbs with equal disdain. Together, they have led the Opposition into a new era of boisterous bickering, where disruption is a KPI and civility a liability. Parliament now resembles a street corner argument, just with better lighting and worse acoustics.
Noise is the new narrative
Forget the economy. Forget development. Forget legislation. The Opposition has no time for such mundane matters. They are too busy inventing newer, noisier ways to stall proceedings.
I wonder if this is simply political amateur hour, or is there a playbook we do not see? Could this chaos be not just incompetence, but imported disruption?
Opposition or obstruction brigade?
This is not principled opposition. It is a noisy substitute for statesmanship. What Sushma Swaraj once embodied – grace under fire – has been swapped for aggression without aim. The House, once a symbol of national dialogue, now doubles as a soundstage for egos in free fall.
It is not that the current Opposition does not stand for something. It is that they stand against everything, including the dignity of the institution they inhabit.
A tragedy in too many acts
So here we are, watching Parliament’s great descent from poetry to pandemonium, while the Leader of the Opposition and his ever-flexing chorus confuse volume for value and posture for principle. One might dismiss it as mere incompetence – until you notice the precision with which reason is drowned, decorum torched, and governance stalled. At some point, you stop asking what they are doing and start wondering for whom.
From decorum to dadagiri
This is not just a fall from grace. This is an Olympic dive, headlong, into the cesspool of political street-fighting. Sushma Swaraj’s legacy of firm yet respectful opposition has been torched in favour of testosterone-fuelled noise fests masquerading as ‘people’s voice’.
The House, once home to ideas, is now hostage to insults. If Parliament were a school, today’s Opposition would be the class clowns – loud, disruptive, and tragically unaware that no one is laughing anymore.
And to think, there was a time when humour ruled the House. Now we just have hostility. We went from shayari to shouting – and no one is writing paeans about that.
