Can Pasta Become Paratha?

Sonia Gandhi seems desperate. She spent 50 minutes with a man who had questioned her right to be a leader in light of her foreign origin. After she left his house -- and her pride – he must have slapped his ample Maratha thighs, ordered himself a large glass of kesar-flavoured milk and told his cronies, “Porgee phaslee re phaslee…” She is not a porgee, girl, but she is trapped. It is a sad fall for a woman who had been touted as the saviour of an old fogey of a party, the true inheritor of the mantle of some of the most revered leaders.

She has just announced that she is not the prime ministerial candidate. She should have done that when she took over as Congress Party President. The present statement might well be a strategy to form convenient alliances, lure enemies who are at loggerheads with one another and then, if the party does manage a majority with these allies, there would be a fight over who should lead. They might settle for her because, ironical as it may seem, despite her feeble abilities, she is being pitted against Atal Behari Vajpayee. No one else from any other party is in this enviable position.

Therefore, one is forced to look at both sides of the current scenario - why she is so completely irrelevant and how she just might be important enough.

Pardesiyon se na ankhiyaan milana

Not long ago, she was the prima donna – world leaders paying their courtesy calls, veteran Congressmen quaking at the very thought of her ire, and ready to be at her beck and call. Suddenly, the woman was being lauded for no reason other than the fact that she was the widow of a prominent family. And this was indeed an achievement in a country where widows are treated like dirt and a ‘foreigner’ seen as some exotic alien, not to be respected, but certainly inviting awe-struck admirers.

Ms. Gandhi played to the gallery. She enacted both roles effectively, that of the victim and of the whiplashing strong woman. And when she spoke of her ‘vedna’ (sorrow), they applauded her new-found identity. They said she had reinvented herself. What she had done was just helped form several warring factions that felt they could come under one umbrella, where the lady would rule and they would all get a piece of the pie.

That did not happen. She became greedy, insensitive and revealed slowly that she was very much an outsider, completely at sea, assuming every fish to be a shark. Her tragedy was compounded when even her children did not fall in line with her thinking. They went along to give her moral support, but she lost them ideologically.

Priyanka turned out to be very much her own person. One does not know what her ambitions are and how she wants to shape her destiny, but it is certainly not at mamma’s bidding. Rahul was being forced to be the kind of man he clearly wasn’t. The really Indian thing about Sonia is that she has always felt that the son should be the inheritor, but she wanted to hold the keys to his life as well. Very subtly, he disabused her of that notion and did what he wanted without really upsetting the apple-cart.

Now, there was potential for Ms. Gandhi to do the ‘I am all alone in this world’ routine, but she would be coming desperately close to Maneka Gandhi’s strategy. She also had to keep in mind the future. She knows that the immediate future may be hers, but for a long-term gain she has to prepare the next generation.

Her insecurities have made her do the most appalling things. Which politician and leader of merit would, for example, look to a school dropout as the hope for the future? I could understand it if one of the lumpen ‘netas’ indulged in this sort of thing, but Sonia Gandhi, the one who snubbed many a dhoti-clad minister and sniffed the air around her like royalty? It did happen in 2000. The lady had come down to earth in a little village called Bharkhani in Hardoi district of Lucknow. The beneficiary of her changing face was Anupam Dixit, who had been appointed the chief of the ‘Bal Congress’. He was 16, dressed up like someone fed on kitschy Hindi films and, as a report said, “With his mouth full of paan masala, he makes queer noises when a local acquaintance urges him to talk and then walks away.”

The serious concern here is that he was a minor, and his father was not even aware that his son had acquired celebrity status. As one neighbour pointed out, “Humko nahin maloom ki Anupam kya ban gaya hai, magar yeh kehta hai ki bada Congress neta ho gaya hai.” A big Congress leader?

Was this the future Sonia was anticipating for India? Was this her way of discovering the real India? Then she was fooling herself and a lot of people. It was also grossly unfair on her part to go for a school dropout considering that she got her children educated in the best institutions. It sends out the wrong signals and shows just how populist she can get when she wants to.

It is sad to imagine that there was a time when people did think she could save a doddering party and lead this country. But she is only a selfish woman who knows nothing beyond her own safety net.

Aaja re pardesi

Yet we need to look at the flipside, however limited be its appeal. Sonia Gandhi certainly has more of a right to speak on behalf of the country than the NRIs. Recently there was a ‘Pravasi Divas’ and about 1200 “dil hai Hindustani” hearts made their way from 61 countries to hold forth on the issues regarding their place of birth. A sprinkling of Lords, lobbyists and lightweight movers and shakers from foreign shores spoke about where India could go. With their investments being a mere 3.78 per cent of the Indian economy, they were discussing where we were going wrong.

They also tell us about exit policies, about Gujarat, about Hindutva, about secularism. The BJP government is talking about giving them voting rights. Lord Meghnad Desai went to the extent of saying that this is not about emotionalism. His mantra was, “Let’s talk business.”

By this logic, Ms. Gandhi is doing precisely that. If she became a citizen of this country years after her marriage, the expatriates are not even that. If we wish to permit them to cast their vote, knowing full well that they will do so only on the basis of what they get ‘materially’ out of the deal, then why not a person who lives here?

Let us examine the arguments against her:

1. She is a foreigner.

She was. Her Hindi is bad but then her English is even worse than Uma Bharati’s. Besides, India is not merely the Hindi belt. This is the country where the ‘bahu’ is co-opted and made to adhere to the in-law’s culture. She has adopted Indian ways. And when we are flaunting a Praveen Togadia, who came in from the cold, and who is shoving Hindu heritage down our throats, why must we have a problem with a woman who talks about ‘Bharatiya parampara’, Indian culture?

2. She has no experience to take over as PM.

True. But a post is merely that: it is the person who makes of it what s/he will. Rajiv Gandhi came straight from the cockpit of an aircraft to the hot seat. We have several people in charge of portfolios they have no clue about. When Manmohan Singh, who revolutionised the liberalisation movement, took over as finance minister, he had no ‘political’ experience and had not contested elections or worked at the grassroots level. There are people with police cases against them who are ministers.

There is the insinuation that with Sonia at the helm the defence of the country could be endangered. We will have to go back to Tehelka and see who has been caught with their hands greasy and in situations where the security of the nation could be at risk. And can we forget the Indian patriot George Fernandes and his infamous coffin deal? In the film ‘LOC Kargil’, it is amusing to hear Bofors being praised several times. “That Bofors is a damn good gun,” is the refrain. Irony or more?

3. She has not encouraged a second-rung leadership.

Unfortunately, those of some merit like Madhavrao Scindia and Rajesh Pilot are no more. The dissenters are essentially rebelling for their personal gains. Besides, what second-rung does the NDA have? There are smart and savvy politicians like Arun Jaitley, Arun Shourie, Pramod Mahajan, Sushma Swaraj, Uma Bharti, but put them up as PM candidates and watch what happens. The BJP has only Vajpayee as their USP.

The Congress may not think Sonia is a great selling point, and they have conveyed it. I personally do not think she is worth it, but we need to see the options. Especially when the fight this time might turn ugly. There was a report in the papers that someone had filed a case against Rahul Gandhi under the Immoral Traffic Act, because he was with his girl-friend at a Kerala resort together with his sister and brother-in-law!

This is nasty and hypocritical when leading ministers of the ruling party are running roughshod over these same moral values. What happened to Gopinath Munde and his tamasha artiste affair? To Pramod Mahajan and the Shivani Bhatnagar murder case? To the defence minister who permits a special lady to accept bribes in his house? To the open live-in arrangement in Uttar Pradesh? And we will not even get into the qualified rumours about many others. These are private matters and public figures must look into the mirror occasionally.

Then comes the most important question on which the BJP wants to ride to power: peace with our neighbour. It is assumed that the chemistry between Vajpayee and Musharraf is incomparable. As far as I am concerned, this ought not to be an election issue for the citizens of the country. But if you insist, how about Jemima Khan for PM of Pakistan? It might be interesting to watch as a Catholic and a Jew decide the fate of a large number of Hindus and Muslims. Just as they have been doing for years across the world.