A Shameless Polemic Against the Nehru-Gandhi Dynasty

Awesome diatribe. I agree with every thing you have said. I especially love the conclusion.

Indians should consider themselves lucky.

The Nehru dynasty may not be the best thing in the world, but it is still a lot better than the Bhutto dynasty.

For all his faults, Rajiv Gandhi, unlike Benazir Bhutto, did not have 61 off-shore accounts, through which he siphoned the state`s treasures. And while he was allegedly a culprit in the Bofors scandal at one point, Rajiv wasnt` convicted by the one court that usually convicts no one, i.e. Swiss court.

And for all of Indira`s faults, and the fact that she may have acted like a Nawab, she, unlike Zulfiqar Bhutto, wasn`t a real nawab or feudal landowner.

And for all of Sonia`s faults, she - the daughter-in-law of the Nehru dynasty- is not known as Mrs. 10%. Unlike the son-in-law of the Bhutto dynasty, Mr. Asif Zardari, who retired as Mr. 30%.

And Priyanka will have to be elected by the Congress to become its head. Even if the election is a sham. Unlike Bilawal Bhutto, who, when he is old enough, will become the lifetime head of the PPP, requiring no election; much like his mother is today (and from what I heard, Ras Siddiqi has already agreed to be Bilawal`s campaign manager, when Bilawal reaches puberty....)

And for all of the benefits the Rajiv`s siblings may have enjoyed and maybe even misused, at least they did not hijack an airplane. Unlike Murtaza Bhutto, Benazir`s elder brother, whose organization hijacked a PIA plane, and then killed a passenger in cold blood.

Believe me, you haven`t seen, ``bad,`` until you have seen the political dynasties of Pakistan.

Count your blessings.......

#2 by Romair

Nehru dynasty may be better than Bhuttos - but that`s hardly re-assuring to present-day Indians. It`s a non-starter.


[Come to think of it - even the corrupt Bhuttos would have served Pakistan better than the ruling military Junta]

It is interesting that the author does not b!tch about Rajeev Gandhi, part of the dynasty. Rajeev sowed some seeds of reform by establishing some meritocracy and technocracy by attracting some of his doon school buddies and likes of Sam Pitroda in politics. Unfortunately, much of his class (e.g. pilot etc) are dead along with him. So, perhpas the way to get a more reformed congress in a twisted way, is by getting the new Priyankas in fast!

In the new mood of developmetal politics, the only way alternatives to BJP will show up is via local grassroot politicians like Sheila Dixit, SM Krishna, Naidu and S. Pawar like folks, who dont have to say ``Hanji`` to congress brass. And one hopes that muslim disillusionment in UP and Bihar translates to removal of mulayam and laloo

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Ashish,
Thanks for an awesome article. I completely agree with you. It is really sad to see the depths to which the Congress Party has sunk to. It is utterly shameful to see senior leaders like Arjun Singh, Pranab Mukherjee et al, literally lick the feet of an unqualified Italian woman who was simply lucky enough to marry a Gandhi. That too for years and years. Now I can understand how any tom, dick and harry invader could effortlessly conquer and rule India for centuries. This entire Nehru-Gandhi clan has to be kicked out on its rear before the Congress Party has any hopes of ever gaining power. You have brought up Punjab in your article. The entire Kashmir problem is also their creation with constant rigging of elections and playing power politics with the people. I feel that if it were not for Manmohan Singh and his economic program, India would have broken up in the early nineties.
On a side note, it is interesting to see that the Muslim League in Pakistan has also sunk to equivalent depths. With clowns like Nawaz Sharif as their ex-leader, what else can one expect ? Now the party has apparently split up and some unknown characters run the show and lick the feet of Musharraf every day. It is a far cry from the forties when the original Gandhi and Jinnah ran the show on either side. What a descent !!

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Chowk Staff edited the first paragraph of my piece. The original opening paragraph reads like this:



*One of the most pathetic sights in the entire world today is to watch various Congress party officials beating their breasts over secularism and the rise of Hindu nationalism. In fact there is very little in the world more pathetic than the sight of Congress party functionaries full stop. The word lickspittle was invented for them. Their self abasement before the Nehru-Gandhi gangster family brings to mind more disturbing images of gimpery and other sado-masochistic sexual practices which involve ritual debasement.

It is interesting that the author does not b!tch about Rajeev Gandhi, part of the dynasty. Rajeev sowed some seeds of reform by establishing some meritocracy and technocracy by attracting some of his doon school buddies and likes of Sam Pitroda in politics. Unfortunately, much of his class (e.g. pilot etc) are dead along with him. So, perhpas the way to get a more reformed congress in a twisted way, is by getting the new Priyankas in fast!

In the new mood of developmetal politics, the only way alternatives to BJP will show up is via local grassroot politicians like Sheila Dixit, SM Krishna, Naidu and S. Pawar like folks, who dont have to say ``Hanji`` to congress brass. And one hopes that muslim disillusionment in UP and Bihar translates to removal of mulayam and laloo

what you have said may be true...but if i was an Indian I would vote for the Congress over the BJP genocidal hindutva maniacs any day....please don`t tell me that the BJP aren`t corrupt either... but at least the Nehru Gandhi dynasty were well bred and educated...

If Pakistan had had a Nehru as its first PM we would not have been in the mess we are in now...

Romair

I think that Amit makes some excellent points. Indians might seem lucky in comparison to Pakistan because the Bhuttos are pretty messed up themselves, but personally I believe that the only reason the Corleone family of Indian politics have not destroyed the entire fabric of the Indian polity is because the institutions of India at least had some integrity and stopped them doing so. And, of course, the voters slapped them when their time came.


(Please also note how the catastrophe of the 1980`s in Indian Punjab, which was caused by the arrogance and overbearing nature of neo-Mughal Congress rule, ie: Indira rule, happened at the same time as the terrible violence that gripped Karachi during that period which was partially caused by similar tactics of the centre propagating extremists to divide the opposition...there is a certian contiguity here...this is the leadership declaring war on its own people)

Amit, not only Kashmir and Punjab, but Ayodhya happened under the watch of Congress too.

(Your point about Manmohan Singh rescuing India is well taken...he is an example of the senseless waste of Congress...what an excellent Prime Minister he would have made...but look at Congress and all you see is waste waste waste...all must bow before the family...no leader is cultivated and what we have is a stunted mangled political organisation that has stunted India too...It is shameful to think of the good men passed over to feed the power lust of the gangster family...and yes, I sometimes wonder if this craveness is not linked somehow to India`s subjugation over 800 years and her tendency to be exploited by thugs...a trait of its supine ``elite``)

Kaurasch, I share your sentiments.

Arjun, you are right, the paradigm change in India has been affected by the South. Thank God for the south. The south has shown the way for India.

jang...some good points about where the grassroots opposition to the clan will come from.


Everybody who has replied and everybody who has read the article...thanks for taking the time to read my thoughts.

regards

re: Ashish Sharma

Congress and BJP are not the only alternatives in India. There are a lot of ``third`` options as well such as Janata Dal, DMK, AIMDK, TDP, Samajwadi, BSP, etc. At one point, BJP too was a small party with very few seats in parliament. Who knows one of these parties may grow into national movements in another 10 years!!

Outstanding article. The only way out is the development of a deeper democracy which will throw up more sheila dikshits, chandrababu naidus, CM of Goa, Budhadeb of Bengal etc.

This tradional model of ``great leader by birth`` is long gone. If UP weren`t such a backward hell-hole Priyanka would have been welcomed only with laughter and derision.

HE: The others you mention are regional parties. The BJP, even when it had two seats after 1984 elections (out of approx 540) always considered itself a national party. It never a regional outlook to begin with. What we need is a revamped congress.

“My sarcasm is strong and my polemic is bitter because I am suspicious of the BJP and my natural home should be with a genuinely secular minded party.”

Bashing is easy but a cool headed analysis different. I see Indian friends posting on Pakistan issues with such sensible and cool reasoning that sometime I am surprised at their knowledge and understanding of the issues. Sometimes, I give them benefit of the doubt also as often they are not familiar with the dynamics of Pakistani politics. You learn something from Newspapers but you never know from the Papers as to which turn the street would take in Islamabad. Still, I know my friends are trying and it is whole lot better than Pakistanis, who never even bother to learn more about India, more than Indian cricket team and Indian Movies.

I don’t claim to read Newspapers neither Pakistani nor Indian. I just look at headlines at Daily times and I know what is going on in Pakistan as I am more familiar with the scene in Pakistan.

It appears to me that either my Indian friends only read Pakistani papers or they base their politics on the negative. Pakistanis hate BJP, so All Indian on this board support BJP. It also appears that our friends are not even familiar with Indian politics at the street level. Believe me; I don’t claim that I know Indian politics. Not a bit, not at all. I don’t read Indian papers but I do go to some boards where lots of Indians talk about problems in India without Pakistan reference. None of them is surprisingly a congress supporter all appear to be independent thinkers, they write about things as they are without hesitation and without putting Pakistan in perspective. I am probably the only Pakistani-born on those boards. Indian issues are Indian issues, nobody can hide those issues because you are on a board where Pakistani visit too. If you can’t talk about your own country with honesty than I am afraid you cannot be objective in talking about Pakistani issues.

My sarcasm is strong and my polemics is bitter too because I am totally disappointed in my friends.

My friends are bashing Congress for every reason in the world. My friends are bashing Sonia Gandhi for even more reasons in the world. My question is: are you like Pakistanis who are politically so immature that they think army would bring democracy or you are like Indian who grew up in a country where democracy, freedom of press and many other things were at hand without worrying about them. The way congress is being bashed here sounds like more emotional opposition than political opposition. With political awareness that Indians supposed to have, Indian should be able to discuss Congress vs. BJP issue in much more reasonable way than what I see here. If this is the quality of discussion about Indian internal politics than I am afraid you guys are not an iota better than what we have in Pakistan, especially in Lahore. Even the leader of liberals in Lahore, Dr. Mubashar Hassan is from Lucknow.

I am not a congress supporter I think it is the party of the past. But I wanna discuss India with my friends on this board. Can we discuss that without my being bashed by Indians?

Stuka posted that Ahamdzai thinks I am an Indian already, if Indians bash me too I will end up being … I don’t know what…

Here is a post from an Indian friend on another board. Can we discuss this instead of Sonia?

“I see this slave labor conditions in T.Nadu. Go to tirupur or vellore or erode and you will find it. Now the units in these places have understood the game - game of outsourcing. Instead of constructing sheds/factories and getting people to work, they are sending work home. Now families work from home and fulfill production targets. These targets keep growing and rates keep falling. So to earn the same amount they have to work double or triple times the previous. It is the `law of diminishing returns ` working with a vengeance. The entire families including children are roped in to fulfill the targets. Further because it is now family driven they do not have any social security - what ever little they would have been entitled if they had gone to work to a factory. No medical, no pension no pf. get 1 Re per shirt or 50 paise per banian. That is all.
Misguided and foolish people in these countries think this is development and are pushing themselves and their countrymen into it.
Further he goes...
The developed world is being subsidized by the underdeveloped world - subsidized because they live at near subsistence levels and produce goods at much below viable costs. It affects their life style - most of them die by the time they reach 50. The state of their health is so poor that you have to see to believe. This is the salve labor mentality I am talking about.”
This poster and I know it well, is not a congress supporter nor a socialist, not by any means.
Here is some more that I wanna discuss

www.Foreignpolicy.com
Some clerics and theologians argue that globalization is tantamount to an assault on religious faith, because it undermines traditional morals and supplants local values with a culture of materialism and excess common in the West.
As the chart indicates, several of the countries clustered near the bottom of the Globalization Index exhibit high levels of religious participation.
India was ranked 61 out of 62. Only country under India was Iran a fundamentalist country with closed economy.
In women`s well being India was ranked in the same percentile as Pakistan and Bangladesh. Same was the case with life expectancies at birth.

Aren’t these the real issues????
Sir, you wanna bash Sonia for not having answers to these. Sir you wanna bash BJP for letting India in to Slave labor. Why don’t you do your bashing on issues? You are supposed to be more politically mature unlike us poor Pakistanis.

They are many more issues we will discuss, as we move along unless you wanna bash me first. Go right ahead!!!