archive: Modelled after Amma
Modelled after Amma
Swapan Dasgupta
India Today
June 7, 1999
Title: Modelled after Amma
Author: Swapan Dasgupta
Publication: India Today
Date: June 7, 1999
It is not necessary to be a fawning 10 Janpath Groupie to argue that a
political party has an unfettered right to choose a leader of its
preference. Equally, it is not necessary to be a rabid trishul-waving
xenophobe to suggest that after last week's AICC, the Congress is fast
resembling a national chapter of the AIADMK.
The analogy is not needlessly cruel. Poor M. Thambi Durai invited
taunts for prostrating himself before the supreme leader Puratchi
Thalaivi J. Jayalalitha and the hapless R.K. Kumar was mocked was
routing his resignation from the A.B. Vajpayee government through
Chennai's Poes Garden. By that judgmental yardstick, how should we
look upon the endless stream of Congress functionaries who prostrated
themselves before the dynastic deity during the nine-day tamasha at
Delhi's Akbar Road? Or the three Congress chief ministers whose
so-called resignation letters never reached the Raj Bhavans but landed
up dutifully at 10 Janpath? From frenzied genuflection to attempted
self-immolations, the culture of the AIADMK is taking over the
Congress. "Indira is India," said D.K. Barooah in celebration of the
Emergency; "Rajiv Gandhi is diamond, " screamed Kalpnath Rai at the
height of the Bofors controversy. Now K. Natwar Singh wants to do one
better: "She (Sonia) married history and has a historical role to
play." Added Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dixit: "The poor have come
to regard her as the personification of Indira Gandhi."
It doesn't stop at obsequious followers. For the AIADMK, the last
word is always Amma. Even the slightest hint of disloyalty invites
ruthless punishment from a party whose campaign theme centres on the
high emotional pitch of a perennially wronged woman. Can Congressmen
look the electorate in the eye and say their party is different?
"No longer," said the determined Sonia, "shall we tolerate the
negative forces which seek to target the dignity of a woman through
calumny and falsehood. Maharashtra's Ranjit Deshmukh was booed when
he referred in his AICC speech to "Sharad Rao ji"; he got back the
audience by calling his erstwhile mentor a gaddar (traitor). "Those
who want to be with me must do so completely with their minds and
hearts," the supreme leader said in her Talkatora Stadium declamation,
"and those who have even the smallest of doubts must travel separately
on their own." To drive home the point, Sonia met AICC members in
small groups to get them to individually affirm their loyalty to her.
A1 14-year-old party that once accommodated stalwarts as disparate as
Rajaji, Subhas Chandra Bose, Sardar Patel, Rajendra Prasad and
Jawaharlal Nehru in the same Working Committee cannot countenance a
suggestion that says that the prime minister of India should be
unequivocally Indian. It's not a retreat; it's an audacious
redefinition of all the assumptions governing the Congress. In the
three decades since the split of 1 9 69, though the mental range of
the party has been steadily shrinking it still retained some
character. Now, Sonia wants to replace the anarchy of an umbrella
coalition with the robotic rigour of a politburo. It's a daring
initiative whose success is yet to be measured. But as she proceeds
to overwhelm a laid-back country with steely emotion, Sonia should
recall history. Even Mussolini, Goebbels once remarked with prophetic
exasperation, would never be able to make anything but Italians out of
the Italians".
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