Sen

New Delhi, Nov. 22: Parliament’s privileges committee has accepted that diplomat Ronen Sen’s “headless chickens” remark was not aimed at MPs, but not before giving three definitions for the phrase.

It has also advised the ambassador to the US on the “fine art” of diplomacy and the finer points of virtue and worldly success.

The 15-member panel, asked to consider if Sen had “cast aspersions” on MPs, tabled its report today.

“If someone rushes about like a headless chicken, they move very fast all over the place, usually, without thinking,” it quoted from UsingEnglish.com. A second definition, from an online thesaurus and encyclopaedia, said roughly the same thing.

The third, borrowed from online encyclopaedia Wikipedia, went into the phrase’s origin: “In the 19th and 20th century, it was common practice for farmers to behead chickens… (which) would then proceed to run around in circles like mad until finally dying. Such behaviour has entered folklore as representing blind panic or action without thinking.”

Sen’s comment, during a media interview, had stalled Parliament’s monsoon session amid suspicion that it was aimed at critics of the Indo-US nuclear deal. Sen later said he meant the media.

The panel has cleared him of breach of privilege or contempt of the House but rapped him for the “many misgivings” his “inadvertent, off-the-cuff” remark had created.

“Shri Ronen Sen was one of the critical players from the Indian executive which were assiduously working for successful clinching of the deal. In such a scenario, even inadvertent, off-the-cuff remarks... should have been well avoided,” the panel said.

“It is in cases such as these that the fine art of diplomacy, the strength to suppress the irrepressible urge to proffer comments and air views become sine qua non (a necessary condition) for a seasoned diplomat.”

The report quoted English essayist Joseph Addison (1672-1719) to remind Sen and his fellow diplomats that discretion in speech was more important than eloquence.

“Without it (discretion), learning is pedantry, wit (is) impertinence, virtue itself looks like weakness,” the report said.

It added that there was a “need to review” the dos and don’ts for diplomats and evolve “certain checks and balances to avert such piquant situations”.

The report said a man who had “all the perfections” but lacked “discretion” would be of “no great consequence in the world”.