HVK Archives: Yet another Congress od faileth
Yet another Congress od faileth - The Observer
Jagpreet Luthra
()
April 2, 1998
Title: Yet another Congress od faileth
Author: Jagpreet Luthra
Publication: The Observer
Date: April 2, 1998
Ambition is a merciless thing. Like the chemical which exposes
and develops a picture from its negative to positive, cruel
ambition has exposed Sonia Gandhi. It has transformed her from
being a question mark for the nation to a non answer for
Congress, the reluctance of her loyalists to accept this truth,
not with standing.
In her hasty and illadvice journey from 10, Janpath a dark room
of politics that it is to the real politics of 24, Akbar Road,
Sonia Gandhi has emerged picture clear with her contours and
character visible to all.
Her negative image, moulded in rare and soft murmurs that came
>from the lips of 'sources close to 10, Janpath' had a halo
around it, that is, if you were an admirer of her eauty,
graces and
class or, it had ghost like shadows, if you were her critic and
looked at her through the third eye.
Sonia Gandhi's picture, washed in acid ambition, hides nothing
not her greed, not her smallness, not her cold and calculating
personality. Even her physical presentability has vanished in the
picture with the smile alone betraying myriad expressions that
would be more appropriate on the profile of a secret agent rather
than on that of a poor, vulnerable widow, soaked in the cents of
her family's acrifices' for the nation.
A very thinking school of thought, and that school in any country
is a miserable, often suspect, minority even believes that Sonia
Gandhi is a secret agent.
The whys, bows and whos of this belief, it says, are best left to
a John Le Carre to figure out but its argument is based on a very
intelligent truth: The best wont agent is one who does not know
it.
Given the defensive but nonetheless servile mood of the Congress
party, it could have serious objections to its recently-crowned
queen being cast in such a dubious mould but then truth is rarely
popular. Before her loyalists lose their sleep and disturb that
of those who look at her with suspicion, they would do well to
remember that she became an Indian citizen only after Surya
magazine, called Sonia Gandhi a 'Trojan Horse.'
But for such a serious insinuation, she would still be sitting
tight in her political powerhouse as a foreigner.
A decade and a half ago, when Sonia Gandhi acquired Indian
citizenship, the average Congress member was somewhat better
educated and understood the expression, Trojan Horse, and yet,
nobody got provoked by the story. What it brought was a
surprisingly constructive response from the official machinery,
which converted her from an Italian to an Indian almost
overnight.
The sidekick of the story, especially for those of us who had
just stepped into the profession, was our first taste of the
power of the press and the might of the pen, even though, in
retrospect, I think, we had called a spade not a spade but an
axe.
Much water has flown under the bridge since then and the
assassinations of Indira and Rajiv Gandhi have had a profound
impact on Indian as well as Congress politics. Equally important
is the fact that Sonia Gandhi has come out of the shadows to take
the centre-stage of her party. But, has she had the desired
effect on the fortunes of the party?
For an answer to this, one should ask her loyalists who lost the
Lok Sabha polls, apparently, because of her. The three most
telling examples of loyalty being punished rather than rewarded
are, Messrs Arjun Singh, ND Tiwari and Satish Sharma, the last
having had no qualms about admitting that he was a dummy
candidate for the Gandhis. His constituency, Amethi, for whom
the late Rajiv Gandhi was a foster farther, has made the family
look like political orphans, in what is yet the most clinching
evidence about the myth of Sonia charisma.
The other two, sure of a Congress victory at the husting on Sonia
Gandhi's steam, had no petty worries such is winning their own
seats but palpitations and sleepless nights over who of the two
would be chosen king by her.
It is the defeat of this trio proves, like nothing else, that
Sonia Gandhi presented as a 'polished apple' of the Congress eye
has turned into 'poisoned turd,' to quote Pablo Neruda. And yet
the party goes on pretending it is having honey and milk in her
leadership of the party organisation as well as the parliamentary
wing.
Another trio, Messrs Sharad Pawar, Rajesh Pilot and Madhavrao
Scindia, who won the election in spite of her, prove, not the
failure of Sonia, but their own to shed their servility.
Presuming that servility, which Congress thinks is another name
for loyalty, is a virtue, it still must learn that there is a
virtue nobler than that: Courage to accept the truth.
For this, however, Congress will have to be reborn and, for that
to happen, it has to make a dying confession that it sinned
against India when it allowed a dynasty to rob it of its most
precious asset: Democracy.
In the quarter century between Nehru's death and his grandson's
assassination, Congress shook the very foundations of democracy.
If that confession is too much to make, let the party at least
admit that the widow, who it used as an official wailing wall for
so many years, has fallen like a tonne of bricks on the party.
The Congress wounds will not heal but with the tincture of truth.
And, the truth about the 1998 elections is that it was a contest
between democrats and slaves, not between communalists and
secularists. The slaves have lost.
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