Why Should I Address them as Honourables...?

RAMAN SHARMA

Morally ‘Respect’ cannot be claimed by anyone as a matter of right  but it is to be earned by a person him/herself with the  conduct, attitude, approach but unfortunately here in India  people with the fear of law compelled to demonstrate respect  for  certain Individuals and Institutions.  In India besides Judiciary the prefix adjective ‘Honourable’ is often used to address the people occupying political posts like ministers, Parliamentarians and State legislature like Honourable Minister/M.P/MLA/MLC. And if somehow anyone ignorantly forgets to prefix this adjective to address them , certainly heaven falls for these ‘Honourables’ and they make it a prestige issue and may also make the person to bow on his knees, they may bring breach of privilege motion.  

Though there are obviously some upright and honest politicians in our country irrespective of political affiliation including ministers and legislatures but one question obviously comes to our mind whenever we find this adjective before the name and designation of those corrupt and criminal politicians against whom there are serious allegations and criminal charges. Before scripting  this piece of writing the writer have carefully gone through the dictionary meaning of ‘HONOURABLE’ and the synonyms of this word are “ the honest, moral, ethical, principled, righteous, right-minded, full of integrity; decent, respected, respectable, venerable, virtuous, good, upstanding, upright, worthy, noble, high-principled, fair, just, truthful, trustworthy, trusty, law-abiding, incorruptible, reliable, reputable, dependable, illustrious, distinguished, eminent, great, admirable, glorious, prestigious, noble, notable, creditable, renowned and  esteemed etc. But to be honest with self, today the political class of the country must introspect and then decide that should the today’s political people deserve to be called as honourable and how many of our parliamentarians and state legislatures are honest and high-principled and how many of them are full of integrity and incorruptible, the reply would obviously not reveal and depict a healthy scenario of Indian political system.  It is perhaps official compulsion and a matter of diplomatic courtesy that in the official communications whether written or verbal these politicians are addressed as ‘Honourables’. Though India have switched from monarchy to republic and democratic set up but the mindset of some of our leaders have not changes and still they want to have all the privileges and the legal immunities so that they can be appeared as superior over the rest of the citizenry. It is a very serious issue that here in our country we have two sets of law one for the common masses and the other for the so called honourables, for example the union government and its political functionaries are time and again orchestrating against providing subsidies to the people and acting on this firstly they allowed the oil companies to decide the petrol charges and then on domestic LPG cylinders they put a cap of 9 cylinders in a year.

On the rising inflation the political class have the readymade reply that it is international phenomenon but this is just to befool the people and this argument by our so called honourable holds only for common people but for themselves the rising inflation is not an issue which is evident from the fact that the parliament canteen is immune from rising inflation and since year 2000 there are only three revisions of their rate list and the last revisions was done some 3 years back and since 2010 no price hike there in the canteen for our so called honourables. Can anyone amongst these honourable reply that why no rising inflation in your canteen since 2010 whereas on the other side in these three years the princes of all commodities have increased at least 50-60 %. Moreover the price of lavish items served in this canteen is unbelievable and to run this canteen for over around 800 MP’s a daily subsidy of Rs. 333333 is given.  For a common man there are number of reason to object to use the prefix ‘honourable ’  for example take the case of Cola drinks ban, we all know that in year 2003 there were reports by a credible NGO that all major brand cola drinks hold high level pesticides in it, though after some time the matter was buried under the carpet but even today all cola drinks with their names are strictly banned in the parliament canteen but these cola drinks are openly sold out in hospitals (even in maternity hospitals), in schools.  In camera string operations  (14^th Lok  Sabha) we have seen how does these honourables sold themselves even to raise questions in the parliament, recently also we have seen some honourables allegedly demanding money to give recommendation letters to some fictious companies. We have seen our honourables involved in criminal cases like forgery, rape extortion, murder and corruption is the most common blame. As a human being my conscious do not allow me to compromise and I find it quite difficult to address them  as ‘Honourables’, though I have all the respect for the institution of Parliament and the constitution of the county. About Author: Raman Sharma is a RTI activist and can be reached at jkrtiact@gmail.com, 9796811012

-------

 published in state times on 21/dec/2013, Kashmir Times on 11/Jan/2014

http://www.statetimes.in/news/address-honourables/
http://www.kashmirtimes.in/newsdet.aspx?q=27530