Author: Surjit S Bhalla
Publication: Business Standard
Date: April 01, 2006
URL: http://www.business-standard.com/common/storypage.php?storyflag=y&leftnm=lmnu5&leftindx=5&lselect=2&chklogin=N&autono=220768
Yesterday, it was a non-democratic Ordinance;
today, it is a resignation. Sorry, but where is the sacrifice?
There are some things I would like to understand,
but am unable to. Ms Sonia Gandhi recently resigned from her Parliament seat
amid much acclaim and felicitations for her "sacrifice". But it
was just yesterday when her government was planning to bring in an Ordinance
at the midnight hour (tried quite successfully by her mother-in-law, Mrs Indira
Gandhi, when she imposed the Emergency some thirty years ago) just to protect
her from her "sacrifice". Having resigned, she claims to have been
a victim of unfair practices of the Opposition! Now you see why I find it
difficult to understand these exciting times.
There are three possibilities about the planned
but not implemented Emergency-type act of an Ordinance. First, Ms Gandhi knew
about it. Second, she came to know about it only at the midnight hour. Third,
she came to know about it when she read about the government's planned draconian
measures in the Indian Express, the enterprising newspaper that broke the
story.
Is her relinquishing a hip pocket parliamentary
seat from the ancestral home of Rae Bareilly an act of sacrifice, as the Congress
party functionaries, and its sycophants in the media, portrayed it? Or is
it plain old-fashioned political expediency, i.e. you claim the butler did
it. Only if Ms Gandhi obtains her news about activities of a party of which
she is a leader from the Indian Express would her resignation begin to be
construed as one of sacrifice, defined as "forfeiture of something highly
valued for the sake of one considered to have a greater value or claim".
If Ms Gandhi came to know about "it"
only from the newspapers, then the question arises: who's in charge? Shouldn't
somebody be fired? Should we also assume that in the Quattrochhi case Ms Gandhi
knew nothing about it until she read about it in the papers? Was the request
to the President for signature, on the dissolution of the Bihar assembly,
sent at midnight while Ms Sonia Gandhi was sleeping? And in Jharkhand, was
the minority government of charge-sheeted UPA minister Shibu Soren installed
without Ms Gandhi being aware of what her minions were up to?
There is a pattern here. In the oil-for-food
scam, the Congress party was named as a beneficiary of Saddam's largesse,
as several other socialist/communist parties in the world and individuals
like Natwar Singh, who had to resign. Better that he, trusted soldier, trusted
loyalist, Congress Working Committee member for generations, hang separately.
Or Buta Singh and Bihar-better that the Supreme Court censure Buta Singh rather
than the Congress leadership, which issued the instructions, take any of the
blame.
Is Ms Gandhi a hostile witness? Yesterday,
she was part of a party doing democratic crimes; today, she says she did not
witness any misdemeanours, let alone murders.
With apologies to Paul McCartney, "How
she came to know of it, she wouldn't say, She just found out about it …
Yesterday". One can go on, and on, but let us fast forward to the punch
line: Is there a single domestic, political act that Ms Gandhi's government
has undertaken in the last two years that makes one proud to be a democrat,
and an Indian? If not, then shouldn't the Congress refrain from using words
used for genuine sacrifices, as practised, co-incidentally by another Gandhi,
Mahatma Gandhi. Is there a subliminal Madison Avenue type of advertisement
going on: Gandhi = Gandhi, so sacrifice is equal to sacrifice?
People have a right to know whether Ms Gandhi
was privy to prior knowledge of the UPA's many non-democratic acts. If she
did, then the media may have reached even its own extraordinary supplicant
self by anointing a very cynically political, and expedient act as a moral
act. If she didn't, then either Ms Gandhi should ask for various resignations
from her various advisers for acting not in her interest, or herself resign
permanently from politics because she did not know of several political acts
done in her name. The buck has to stop somewhere.
It is true that Indian politicians resign
only in name, and so a resignation is an act different than others. But really,
to compare like with like, isn't Ms Gandhi's resigning from the parliamentary
seat exactly the same level of "sacrifice" as Mr Vajpayee's many
resignations from the BJP party? And, thinking aloud, wouldn't Ms Gandhi's
sacrifice be a bit more of one if she did not have a hip-pocket constituency
and/or if she were running without the Gandhi name, say Ms Shah?
One final point. How much of the Teflon nature
of Ms Sonia Gandhi-led Congress is due to the nature of the Indian media?
There are two forces at work here. First, several media "leaders"
have TV shows with which they, as individuals or their firms, are associated
with. So there is a built-in compulsion to be "nice"-be nice and
thou shall have Congress guests at your show. Be honest, and …
Doesn't it bother our intellectuals to call
a politically expedient act a sacrifice? Is it just a co-incidence that the
first part of sycophancy is also a major Hitchcock movie? Do these media dons
not know any better or is it the case that they are desperately seeking a
government job, or a committee appointment, or is it the Rajya Sabha seat
that they really aspire to? If they so want to get into Parliament (as several
of us, and I will confess, I myself do) then why not do it the sacrificing
way: run for Parliament. But if they do that, they will have to spend some
money, possibly lose face, and pay some price for their achievements. I realise
that most of us do not have a dynastic name, but hey, worth trying, no? Much
better sometimes to have run and lost than to always play the sycophant's
game? Much easier, though, of achieving goals the new-fashioned way.
