James Bond dialogue in Indian parliament, with guiding lessons from opposition

James Bond always overcomes seemingly impossible and unexpected challenges. But for all his preparedness, he could have never expected to become embroiled in an Indian Parliament debate. During a heated discussion in the Lok Sabha on Wednesday on the French Rafale aircraft deal, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley quoted a dialogue by the master spy from a James Bond film.

Jaitley appeared to have scored a political point with the cinematic allusion until Opposition Trinamool Congress (TMC) member Saugata Roy called him out to point out that the minister had wrongly put words in Bond's mouth.

Attacking Congress chief Rahul Gandhi, Jaitley had said, "James bond has said 'If it is once, it is happenstance. It can happen. If it is twice, it is a coincidence and if it is thrice, it is a conspiracy.' And, the conspirators of various defence deals today have the audacity to raise an allegation against others."

Roy pointed out that Jaitley had misquoted the dialogue from Bond movie "Goldfinger", saying that the actual dialogue was: "If it happens for the first time then it is happenstance, if it happens twice it is coincidence and if it is thrice then it is enemy action."

"Jaitleyji, your memory is failing you. If it happens thrice, then it is enemy action and not a conspiracy," Roy said. It also turned out that the dialogue was not delivered by Bond but by his nemesis Goldfinger in the 1964 movie starring Sean Connery as Bond and Gert Fröbe as Goldfinger.

The TMC MP also nitpicked on Jaitley's pronunciation of the name of former French president Francois Hollande. Jaitley had pronounced it as the country Holland, but in French, it is pronounced as Ollanday. Roy also said the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government had to borrow a member from the Rajya Sabha, who is not even a defence minister, to speak on the Rafale deal. Jaitley is a Rajya Sabha member.

(With inputs from agencies.)