India, July 28 -- A resignation, especially one aspiring to a higher morality, is meant to be a sombre affair. Which is why it isn't clear what the BJP lawmakers cheering and celebrating the former education minister (for his resignation) in Parliament on Monday were hoping to achieve. Sure, it was political, an expression of members of a political unit not used to setbacks that this - the minister's resignation - was no defeat. Still, all they served to do was to erode the moral high ground the minister and the government had sought to take with his resignation. And they presented just the kind of optics the government would have liked to avoid.

But on Monday, it wasn't these lawmakers - fortunately a minority - alone who were guilty of...