The slap on Sharad Pawar’s face reverberated in parliament last week. Before the Lok Sabha met on Friday last, several members went across to Pawar, who was seated in his usual first-row chair, as a gesture, which looked weird, more like him taking a guard of dishonour.

Speaker Meira Kumar said the house strongly condemned the unfortunate incident of assault on the agriculture minister. Rajya Sabha chairman Hamid Ansari too condemned the assault on Pawar at a public function on Thursday last. “People may express divergent views on any issue,... but the attempt to cause physical harm should be condemned by the entire house in the strongest terms,” finance minister Pranab Mukherjee said. Leader of the opposition Sushma Swaraj too condemned the attack.

Amid cries of ‘shame, shame’, JD(U) chief Sharad Yadav lambasted the electronic media for “showing one slap as 50 slaps by constantly focusing on such incidents and glorifying them”. Yadav was not wrong. A couple of TV channels also added a snapping sound to the slapping footage, reminding people of the famous slap Dr Dang (a character played by Anupam Kher in the 1990s hit Karma) received from Dilip Kumar. No, there wasn’t a background score in any channel’s coverage. Just that snapping sound — 100 times in an half an hour! TV reporters also went after opposition members outside the House to explore and stoke possibility of a sadistic smile. Obvious choices didn’t disappoint. Yashwant Sinha was visibly too happy while condemning the attack.  

And this came a few days after the media asked press council chairman justice Markandey Katju to shut up and mind his business when the latter said the majority of media are of poor intellectual level.

Are we as a country overreacting to most things? Has public life lost a code of conduct? Are we not able to keep our personal views away from our public conduct and reacting quite Pavlovian to every possibility of a paroxysm? A man makes the anger of the country his burden and slaps a minster. Media’s day is made. There are footages with that snapping sound. Politicians take it personally and too seriously. Parliament comdemns and its members march past the victim to show solidarity. And this makes a whole day in the world’s largest democracy.

The finance minister lost cool and said, “Slapping incident is condemnable. I do not know why media is publicising such incidents. I do not know where this country is going?” Pranab-da is an old man. He forgets. A few years earlier he had himself slapped a journalist in a fit of rage. When people are angry, slaps do happen. But he won’t agree now.

Strangely, through this all, the soberest of reactions — even Hazare’s reaction wasn’t at least Gandhian — came from Sharad Pawar himself, who said the incident should not be taken seriously. However, soon after the incident, when one Hindi reporter asked him if the incident wasn’t because of his long struggle against corruption(!!!), he ignored the question. Like he ignored the incident.