Stop trivialising Kargil, Sonia!
C R IRANI
The Statesman
June 14, 1999
Title: Stop trivialising Kargil, Sonia!
Author: C R IRANI
Publication: The Statesman
Date: June 14, 1999
THE Pawar Congress jamboree in Mumbai did not set the Arabian Sea on
fire and some comments in the speeches of senior leaders, including
Sharad Pawar himself, raised questions which were either irrelevant or
gave the impression of scraping the bottom of the barrel. Pawar wanted
to know why Sonia had remained Italian for 15 of the 30 years she had
lived in India, why she had not mastered a single Indian language in
30 years and what were her qualifications for becoming Prime Minister.
He forgets that he has been a party to all three until he decided to
part company the other day. That Sonia chose to remain Italian until
she saw the way open for her husband to become Prime Minister is a
more telling point than retaining her Italian nationality for a
certain number of years. To be fair to her, till Sanjay was around the
focus of her attentions was her family and Italy, and Sanjay always
used to complain that he had to pay her a great deal of money every
month to prevent her from taking his brother away to Italy. It seems
appropriate at this point to stress that Rajiv Gandhi concentrated on
the good life as much as his wife and showed no particular concern for
the country except what he could get out of it; Rajiv's portrait
nevertheless hung alongside Mahatma Gandhi, Nehru, Maulana Azad and
Indira Gandhi at the Pawar Congress.
As to mastering an Indian language, not being able to do so by itself
counts for nothing. It may be an impediment during campaigning, a fact
that should be to the advantage of Pawar and other parties in
Opposition. As to qualifications, it is a fact that no qualifications
are necessary even to contest a seat for Parliament, except
requirements as to citizenship and not having suffered a criminal
conviction, for instance. If in Sharad Pawar's view she lacks
qualifications - and he may well be right - he also has to explain why
until the other day he was quite happy saying publicly that everything
was being left to Soniaji.
Pawar's colleague, PA Sangma makes a more telling point when he
discloses that no CWC meeting was held to deliberate over the vote of
confidence and evolve an alternative government. This underlines what
this newspaper has always held - that the decision to pull the rug was
made in a hurry; the day the Supreme Court allowed Ottavio Quattrocchi
to come to India for a fortnight to face interrogation in the Bofors
case a CWC meeting was convened the same day without notice. We now
have Sangma's word that the meeting merely heard Sonia's decision and
gave no proper thought to the matter or how to carry it through, with
consequences that we see today.
SONIA Gandhi's publicity gestures of personally handing a cheque for
Rs 1 lakh to the widow of Flt-Lt PV Ravi, a fighter pilot who died in
the Kargil operations, while she was on an electioneering tour of
Rajamundhry, her contemplated visit to Kargil and the firm decision to
send a delegation of Congressmen there a day ahead of the Prime
Minister, are beneath contempt. Pawar thinks Arjun Singh and others
are advising her; it is difficult to believe that Arjun Singh, a
seasoned politician, can have been so crude. It seems more like
Sonia's own idea, crafted from the depths of her inexperience and
total lack of any feeling for the occasion. And this at a time when
the country is traumatised by the disclosure of mutilated bodies of
Indian soldiers being returned by the Pakistan authorities. No praise
can be too high for the way the Prime Minister is keeping himself and
official reactions in check until a decision can be made as to what to
do with the visit of the Pakistan Foreign Minister; by the same token,
no condemnation can be strong enough for the way in which Sonia is
seeking to turn it into a game of one-upmanship. She knows no better;
the party on which she has forced herself would be well advised to
have second thoughts - before it is too late.
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