As a fierce election campaign is underway in the state of Uttar Pradesh, a key state because it is where a huge number of Indian MPs come from, Rahul Gandhi, the latest in a long line of Congress Party politicians, recently claimed to a crowd that his grandmother Indira had "divided Pakistan" in 1971 to create Bangladesh. As horrified members of other parties and the Indian Foreign Office squirmed at this insult to two neighboring countries and to the memories of hundreds of thousands of martyrs in a long and deadly struggle for self rule by the people of Bangladesh, the reaction of Pakistan was expectedly severe – accusing India of always having interfered in it’s internal affairs, a Pakistani government spokesperson slammed India in a statement that is certain to affect recent moves at improving relations. All of a sudden, in a country that had worked hard to build better relations across both it’s borders to the west and the east, the ridiculous remarks of the latest Nehru-Gandhi tyrant in the making threaten to undo everything that has been achieved.

And this is no idle fear – Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, widely derided as a "domestic servant" of the Gandhi family by the opposition in India, played the sycophant’s role to form. He announced to the nation that it would have to prepare itself for the role that Rahul Gandhi would have in it’s future. Bootlickery has historically been a tradition of most politicians elevated to high office by the Gandhis within their party. Giani Zail Singh, made President of India by Indira Gandhi would announce that he would have swept the streets of Delhi if she had commanded him to do this. And Zail Singh did prove a loyal servant when, after Indira Gandhi’s assassination, he did not invite Pranab Mukherjee, then Finance Minister, to become Prime Minister but, instead brought Rajiv Gandhi, Indira’s son, to rule India. Manmohan Singh’s fawning, public praise, deserves to be seen in that same light.

The Gandhis have been known as a family with a cynical approach to ruling India – their manipulation of several forces led to the near breakup of the Indian nation several times, dragged India into completely unnecessary wars in neighboring Sri Lanka and forced on India the problems of the insurgencies in Punjab and Kashmir that are still festering wounds after decades of fighting that have left hundreds of thousands of people dead. It was the rigging of Kashmir’s Assembly in throwing out then Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah and his replacement with his own estranged brother in law, G M Shah, that set off an angry movement in that state that nearly broke it away from the Indian Union. And, earlier, Indira Gandhi had sat idly by while a small time cleric, Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale casually finished off people who were hostile to her party in Punjab, especially inconvenient Communists who were organizing farm laborers and the owners of newspapers that were critical of her party in that state. She would send the army to kill Bhindranwale only when there was a real threat that Punjab might secede from the Indian Union, similarly setting off the mess that ahs still not been resolved in Kashmir.

Amid this, the bootlickers of the Gandhi family were always at hand demanding that India look at making them India’s permanent monarchs because, as one of these "notables" put it some time ago, he believed that "no other family had done more for India." The man happens to be the editor of one of India’s larger newspapers today and is a constant fixture in the cheerleading for the Gandhis. But nothing could beat the cheerleading by the party’s political minions right through the lies that the party’s leadership has been known to historically toss out as casually as a would be Casanova flirts with pretty young women at a party. Rahul Gandhi also told the country that, had his father been in charge of ruling the country, the Babri Masjid demolition would never have taken place. This conveniently ignores the fact that it was his father who allowed the Masjid to be reopened after the British had shut it almost a century earlier and allowed a Shivalinga to be placed inside and worship carried out.

Perhaps, Manmohan Singh’s adulation for his future master is for a reason. In the past, the Gandhis were a family that specifically lied to the Indian population and sought to present themselves as leaders of international repute to the rest of the world even as they made clownish attempts like Rahul’s father did when he turned up uninvited at a meeting of leaders of Non Aligned Nations in Harare after he had been deposed as Prime Minister, and claimed that the "Ex" in his "Ex Prime Minister" designation actually meant "Executive Prime Minister." Like monarchs of yore, this family seeks, perhaps, to install itself as a permanent ruling family in India. And, on an international note, the family seeks, perhaps, the kind of recognition that other tyrants have managed to achieve. Henry Kissinger won the Nobel for Peace despite having danced ghoulishly over the genocide of 3 million Bangladeshis. Rahul Gandhi probably sees himself as a future member of this elite club, with his having demeaned the Bangladeshi peoples’ struggle for independence in claiming, Indian masala film style, that it was a family vendetta that drove his grandmother to "divide" Pakistan. His father’s desire for the Nobel for Peace was a public joke when he ruled over India. And, when Rajiv Gandhi learned that he would not get it, he founded the "Beyond War Foundation" along with Raul Alfonsin and Andreas Papandreou and the foundation presented it’s three founders a "Beyond War Award" in a lavish public display. Cut to the present and Rahul has taken over in performing his act before the Indian people, this time, ghoulishly dancing like Kissinger himself, over the murdered Bangladeshi people, with the Nobel for Peace, perhaps, in mind, even as he seeks to become the next Indian Prime Minister.