India, June 22 -- Last weekend would have been painful for Uddhav Thackeray, with six out of the nine members of Parliament belonging to his party - Shiv Sena (UBT) - defecting. There are rumours that the Samajwadi Party (SP) is also set to suffer defections. Can it be true? SP supremo Akhilesh Yadav has vehemently denied the possibility. But Thackeray had been denying defections just as vehemently two days before these became clear. This trend of defections began with the disintegration of the Aam Aadmi Party's parliamentary party in April. Where will it end? Is it part of a bigger strategy? Political pundits feel that the Union government wants to urgently pass the delimitation and one-nation-one-election Bills in Parliament, and the recent splitting of political parties is a reflection of that grand design. If that is the case, why is the Bharatiya Janata Party not offering the rebels a space within itself? The answer is simple. After their win in Odisha and West Bengal, the party believes that if it wants to expand further, it needs to maintain its ideological purity at all costs. Modi's strong leadership, tight organisational structure, and nationalist ideology have proven to be excellent vote gatherers for the BJP. Apart from this, "outsiders" - those who defected to the party - have become a source of discontent among the party cadre. The party was also accused of being a "washing machine" - any Opposition leader accused of corruption or any other such misdeed could cast off all charges against them by joining the party. If you are shocked by the cross-voting during the Rajya Sabha elections and the daily defections, then please understand that this is not new. But yes, the trend that began in Indian politics in the 1960s has now become an established norm. Let me take you back to 1967. It was the first assembly election in Haryana, and Gaya Lal was elected as MLA from Hasanpur seat. Within a mere 15 days of his election, he had defected thrice - having been elected as an independent candidate, he first joined the Congress, then defected to the United Front, returned to the Congress, before again going back to the United Front. When he joined the Congress for the second time in this episode of exits and comebacks, Congress leader Rao Birendra Singh said while presenting Gaya Lal before the media, "Gaya Ram ab Aya Ram hain" (Ram who had left is now the Ram who has come back), mistakenly calling him Gaya Ram instead of Gaya Lal. Ever since "Aya Ram, Gaya Ram" has been part of India's political lexicon and the idiom has become a trend. Between 1967 and 1971 - a span of just five years - 1,900 cases of defections were reported in Parliament and various state assemblies. It led to the fall of 32 state governments and 212 defecting MLAs and MPs got ministerial seats. India hadn't even celebrated the silver jubilee of its Independence and our electoral democracy was being shamed by political and ideological hypocrisy. The trend was aided and abetted by the changing political scenario. Until 1967, the Congress ran the government at the Centre and in almost all the states. But the same year, it lost power in nine state assemblies. Indira Gandhi was still a novice in the corridors of power. Senior leaders like Morarji Desai, S Nijalingappa, and Neelam Sanjiva Reddy would openly criticise her within the party's internal forums and she would constantly be compared with her father. It was a dangerous situation for the new leader. The party's defeat obviously made her nervous. As a result, she used every trick in the trade to bring down Opposition governments and install puppet chief ministers. If defections wouldn't do the job, then Governors would invoke Article 356 to dismiss the elected governments. The most blatant misuse of power was witnessed during the Emergency. As a result, she lost the subsequent elections. She may have been out of power for a brief period but the sapling she planted had by now grown into a banyan tree. In 1977, after becoming Prime Minister (PM), Morarji Desai sacked nine Congress governments in the states. Desai and his home minister Chaudhary Charan Singh argued that the Congress's defeat in general elections proved that the voters have lost confidence in the party. In such a scenario, there was no "moral justification" for these state governments to be in power. Even if we accept their action as ethical, then why were the governors of 15 states forcibly removed? The next major instance of political decline mediated by defections came in 1991. Benefitting from the void left by the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi, PV Narasimha Rao, who was on the brink of retirement, was catapulted to the PM's chair in New Delhi. He didn't have a majority, and defections were the only option. As a result, he crossed the line. On July 26, 1993, when a no-confidence motion was moved against his government, he needed 15 votes to defeat it. After the voting, it was clear he won by a wide margin. How was it achieved? It was alleged that every MP was given a suitcase containing Rs.3.5 crore. Later, the CBI found that a few days after the no-confidence vote, large sums of cash were deposited in the bank accounts of some of the MPs. All the MPs went to jail and even Narasimha Rao had to face a trial. After dragging its feet for three years, a lower court in Delhi sentenced Narasimha Rao and his associate Buta Singh, but they were freed by the High Court. A trader named Lakhubhai Pathak accused Rao of receiving a Rs.1-crore bribe at the PM's residence. From then to now, our politics and politicians have plumbed new depths of decline in conduct. Is it the fault of our politics or the character of power that even the best go astray? The only way to deal with it is for our voters to rise above caste, religion, region, language and financial inducement. But it's a tall ask. However, till we emancipate ourselves from such narrow constraints, we have no right to complain....