The Bharatiya Janata Party must decide on its own identity. No, the reference is not to its advocacy, or otherwise, of Hindutva. It is to an even more profound dilemma within India’s self-confessed party of the Right. The BJP must decide whether it believes in parliamentary democracy or not. Its belief in parliamentary democracy cannot be proved solely on the basis of its voluntary participation in the election process. The more important test lies in its willingness to allow Parliament to function. In the past few days, it has stalled and disrupted proceedings without any shame and without any consideration of the basic conventions of parliamentary democracy. The government, in its wisdom and under some pressure from one of the coalition partners, has formed a committee to look into the details and intricacies of the nuclear deal between India and the United States of America. This has nothing to do with Parliament, neither does the nuclear deal. The BJP may not like the committee and the deal, but this does not allow it to stop the functioning of both houses of Parliament again and again. Such a move makes the functioning of the legislature impossible even though the issues on which the protests are taking place are actually executive decisions.

L.K. Advani, one of the most important leaders of the BJP, has waxed eloquent on the Opposition’s right and role in Parliament that he thinks are being violated by the present government and by the formation of the committee. What Mr Advani needs to ask himself and his party is whether disrupting the proceedings of the House falls within the rights of the Opposition, and whether the BJP is actually performing the Opposition’s role. Mr Advani is too old a hand not to know the distinction between functions of the legislature and of the executive. He knows, because he has been a minister, that there are certain executive decisions that do not fall within the purview of the legislature. The Indo-US nuclear treaty is one such decision. By its persistent stalling of parliamentary proceedings, the BJP is precipitating precisely what it most wants to avoid, the sine die adjournment of the Lok Sabha. Such an adjournment can only foreshadow the dissolution of the Lok Sabha — a consummation that the BJP, given its own disunited state, would devoutly like to avoid at the present juncture. An identity crisis is often the condition that leads to suicide.