The first day began with a General Speakers’ List (GSL) with 20 speakers, lasting 30 minutes. The topic of discussion was the Uniform Civil Code(UCC). The first couple of hours consisted of banal back-and-forth between the opposition and the government, with all representatives making the same points – the opposition stating, “you can’t impose your rules on other communities,” and the government enlightening them: “ Many of the personal laws are prejudiced against women in general. Hence, we must have a uniform code to ensure parity for all.”
The opposition mentioned that the implementation of UCC in Goa(a BJP-ruled state) was imperfect and “not actually uniform”, but Minister of Finance Sitharaman sets them straight by womansplaining to them that those laws were brought about by the Portuguese, and honestly it’s unreasonable to blame the current government for them.
Nitin Gadkari asked the pertinent question of human rights taking precedence over all other rights and choice. He said that you can still practise your own religion, but the evil laws should be rid of. This is true even of Hinduism, as in the case of Sati. However, Akhilesh Yadav took offence to Gadkari’s unapologetic usage of the word ‘evil’, raised a right to reply… AND LOST. like a bich. So he had to shut up for 15 minutes
Next up, Manoj Tiwari made an interesting analogy about a son not wanting pizza from Domino’s when asked if he wanted to order online(he compared this with the opposition discussing the implementation of UCC when they hadn’t even decided if UCC would be implemented), and Vijayan responded by saying they don’t want pizza at all. (I know, right? What a weirdo. Whatever. More pizza for the rest of us) The overarching theme seemed to be that the opposition wanted a UCC, but were not in favour of the ruling party formulating it, as their laws were apparently “hInDu-BiAsEd”.
Amidst all this, Yogiji raised his hand to speak, but the rapporteur ignored him >:( that’s strike one.
Shashi Tharoor started talking again, and disrespected Tejaswi Surya. What he didn’t realise was that he had forgotten his haute “accent”. Thanks to the rapporteur for pointing that out. You’re off the hook. For now. We break for an hour.
The topic for the second session is “If not UCC, then what?”
We’re supposed to hear the alternatives the opposition has to a UCC. (Spoiler: none of them are any good)
Rahul Gandhi pipes up, and stumbles through his speech. Elmayo noob. His own associates disturb his speech, showing a lack of unity and coordination in Congress and the opposition as a whole. He takes the metaphor in a completely new (and nonsensical) direction by bringing up pineapple on pizza
I mean, you’d think an Italian would know better than to defile pizza like that, but okay, I guess.
Then the opposition comes up with a frankly quite dumb idea of giving people in each case a choice of whether they wanted to allow UCC to apply to them. Any intelligent reader would be able to tell that that defeats the purpose of a uniform civil code.
Something to note is that Asaduddin Owaisi coughs very loudly in assembly, thereby
- breaking decorum and
- putting his fellow delegates (and more importantly, the press) in danger of falling ill.
He then proceeds to address the honourable Prime Minister as ‘shrimati’ instead of ‘shriman’, a blatant act of disrespect for the representative of the nation. Then he accidentally provides a ringing endorsement of Modiji by pointing out that Benares has a 30% Muslim population, and yet Modiji one. This can only mean that Our Dear Leader is loved by all – regardless of what seditious elements may say.
Farooq Abdullah brings up the Special Marriage Act of 1954 in the context of inter-faith marriages, but what he perhaps doesn’t know is that there are a lot of flaws with the act, such as any person being allowed to object to the marriage upto THIRTY DAYS from the marriage being filed.
There was another embarrassing moment for the opposition as Arvind Kejriwal continued his hapless day where he went against everything he’s said in the past, by appearing to question Asaduddin Owaisi, even though he’s not, you know, supposed to be doing that.
There was another right to reply instance where the Hyderabad MP used allegations which had been dropped against Tejaswi Surya, to question his integrity. Tejaswi lost, and was silenced for 15 minutes.
Meanwhile, Kejriwal manages to group reservation in with corruption and police brutality as issues to be fixed. Honestly just a bad day all around for him.
Modi and P- Rahul Gandhi have a debate where RaGa suggests that Modi focus on fixing the legal system first before he implements UCC. Modi thanks him for his ingenious solution of fixing the legal system, but he believes that that is not in the list of things he is supposed to do, so no, he will focus on UCC instead.
Then we reached the most entertaining part of the day as Ramesh Pokhriyal and Mamata Bannerjee kept making barbs at each other’s positions and the speaker was hapless until both were gagged.
However, Pokhriyal did manage to make some points. He introduced educational reforms – abolishing madrassas would prevent brainwashing and provide knowledge that could actually be used. In his opinion, shutting down madrassas would be more important than shutting down gurukuls. He also claimed(rightly) that Ramayan and Mahabharat teach us about the history of India. He made a parliamentary enquiry for a mic to drop, was denied, and promptly left. As will I. BYE
PS: I managed to snag a short interview with Rahul Gandhi. Here’s how it went:
- He said he was strongly opposed to the UCC, but hadn’t spoken out until now because he felt that the word of other senior Congress leaders would have been enough
- He believed me when I said Priyanka Gandhi(his sister) had spoken out against UCC (she hadn’
- He is of the opinion that the BJP is creating a “politics of polarisation” which will be a “central challenge” in India
- He seemed unable to adequately explain his remarks of “I am a Hindu… India belongs to the Hindus”