Emotions run high on use of word 'semantics'

New Delhi, Dec 19 (UNI) What is there in a mere word? Plenty. And when it comes to the use of the word 'semantics' in the Rajya Sabha, it leads to an inadvertent show of intellectual profundity, rancour, raising of political temperature, robust protest and also an apology from Finance Minister P Chidambaram.

It all happened within five minutes in the Rajya Sabha even though the Qustion Hour was going on smoothly till then.

CPM leader Brinda Karat, while shooting a supplementary on a question whether banks were reluctant to lend to minorities, made it clear the issue should not be dealt with at the 'semantics' level.

Ms Karat reeled out a string of statistics to bolster her contention that flow of credit to minorities had actually come down from 9.6 per cent in 2002, when the NDA was in power, to 9.2 per cent this year.

She attributed the phenomenon to a policy of ''active discrination'' against the minorities. She also wanted to know the full facts from Mr. Chidambaram on the progress of the Prime Minister's 15-point programme in this regard.

As Mr Chidambaram was making his reply, Samajwadi Party member Shahid Siddiqui butted in to remark that the reply should not be at the level of ''semantics''.

On hearing the word for yet another time, Mr Chidambaram lost his cool. ''Do you really know the meaning of the word semantics? Why are you using the word 'semantics' just because Ms Karat has used it?'' This trigered a strong wave of protests from the Samajwadi Party members. They were also joined by former Minister of State for External Affairs Digvijay Singh (Janata Dal-U), who wanted the minister to be ''more polite and modest'' in his reply.

''Instead of coming out with a straightforward reply, you are trying to make a show of your knowledge of English. This is an insult to your colleague in the House,'' he quipped.

As the din in the House continued for some time, Congress member V Narayanswamy tried to counter the protests from Samajwadi Party members even as Mr Chidambaram tried to pacify all of them.

''I only wanted to make a reply without being interrupted. I did not want to hurt anyone, but if my remarks have hurt, I am sorry to the member,'' he said, bringing the curtains down on the unsavoury controversy.

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