Author:
Publication: Organiser
Date: April 2, 2006
URL: http://www.organiser.org/dynamic/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=124&page=3
(Note from the Hindu Vivek Kendra: This article
by Justice (Retd) Rajinder Sachar is extracted from the book Sonia ´The
Unknown´ published (in 1999) by India First Foundation compiled and
edited by Dina Nath Mishra. It makes an interesting reading as Justice Sachar
is in news as head of the controversial Sachar Committee on Minorities formed
by the very dispensation that Sonia Gandhi is heading. While one can understand
politicians changing colours according to the need of the day, when members
of judiciary do it there is a major problem for the country.)
Sonia Gandhi must be regretting having allowed
herself to be persuaded to join politics at the instance of small-time political
operators who had no bases of their own but wanted to use their perceived
proximity to her for self-aggrandisement.
The expulsion of Sharad Pawar, P.A.Sangma
and Tariq Anwar was inevitable, considering the culture of sycophancy in the
Congress which holds that any dissidence against a member of the 'dynasty'
(even if indirectly by marriage) is a treasonable act. It is intellectually
dishonest to label this issue as an outcome of communalism or xenophobia.
Surely, a combination of Pawar, a Hindu, a Christian and Tariq Anwar, a Muslim,
who were only a month back praised as top secularists and the first two recognised
even by their opponents as of Prime Ministerial mettle cannot suddenly have
become communal, unless of course the premise is that anyone who does not
accept the undisputed leadership of Sonia Gandhi and the Congress party's
junior partners, the Communists, is automatically to be branded as communal.
It is also wrong as some well meaning academics seem to suggest that the question
of foreign origin is an attack on our multi-religious society.
In the United States, Article 11(4) of the
Constitution provides that "no person except a natural born citizen...shall
be eligible for the office of President." Thus Henry Kissinger US citizen
and erstwhile Secretary of State, whose brilliance and statecraft are beyond
doubt is ineligible to stand for President. Similarly Khorana, Nobel laureate,
who I take it is now a citizen of the US and is settled there for decades
is ineligible, having been born in India. Madeleine Albright, US citizen and
the present Secretary of State whose ferocious loyalty to the US is shown
by her hawkish stance in Kosovo has to remain content and accept that she
can never become President of the US, having been born in Czechoslovakia.
In the United Kingdom, the law provides that "no person born out of the
Kingdoms of England, Scotland or Ireland or the dominions thereof...shall
be capable to be of Privy Council or a Member of either House of Parliament".
Would the apologists of Sonia Gandhi call these legislations racial or communal?
I believe there is a good reason for restricting
the highest offices to natural-born citizens. A person who has spent a good
part of her life in the country of its birth acquires a culture, memories
and loyalties which subconsciously continue to have a permanent influence
on him or her. Thus even if he or she adopts the citizenship of another country,
the subconscious link with the country of birth remains powerful. A recent
news item of young Indians and Pakistanis born in England and whose families
have acquired British citizenship years ago, still cheering Indian and Pakistani
cricket teams against the English team of their co-citizens much to the annoyance
of Englishmen is of relevance in this context.
Some apologists of Sonia give the example
of Annie Besant who became Congress president, even though no born in India.
Nothing can be a more unfair to the memory of that great leader. Annie Besant,
who had already made a name for herself in British political life before she
came to India, spent a lifetime here to fight against British imperialism.
Annie Besant's instance is of those souls
who were willing to don the mantle of sacrifice, deprivation and imprisonment
who did not join a race for the coveted plums of the highest executive office.
Incidentally it may be emphasised that there was no separate Indian citizenship
prior to 1947. Both Jawaharlal Nehru and Annie Besant had the same citizenship,
namely, British.
Sonia Gandhi must be regretting having allowed
herself to be persuaded to join politics at the instance of small-time political
operators who had no bases of their own but wanted to use their perceived
proximity to her for self-aggrandisement. She was enjoying the privileges
of a Queen Mother, but the moment she decided to become a reigning queen,
such like situation was bound to arise.
Politics is a cruel game. One feels distressed
that many well-meaning persons, though rightly against the Sangh parivar's
communalism and obscurantism, are yet ignoring the equal danger of dynastic
feudal zamindari politics being revived by the Congress party. The Communist
wooing of Sonia seems inexplicable unless one recollects what de Tocqueville
said, "In politics shared hatreds are almost always the basis of friendship".
But that is not how the evil of communalism
can be fought; only a people-oriented programme to expose the hollowness of
both the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party would be effective. One would
have thought that the action of Sharad Pawar and others would stir the Congressmen
to free themselves from the shackles of dynastic leadership. But the rot has
gone too deep.
