The Case for Sonia Gandhi!

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btw, to get a snapshot of Rajiv Gandhi/Congress`s communal record, someone from Hyderabad might like to talk of the 1990 riots . Mr Owaisi was an ally of Congress at that time, if I am not mistaken.

Also a history of communal riots in Gujarat which shows that the Congress doesnot have a credible communal record there too:
http://www.sabrang.com/tribunal/volI/comvio.html

The point is, providing a genuinely better alternative to the BJP`s horrible communal record appears to a simple matter. However, Sonia Gandhi and other Congress leaders need to accept responsibility for their party`s own problematic communal record if they want to sound credible.

Sonia Gandhi doesnot appear to understand this. IMO, those in the Congress party who might understand this are not being provided proper platform or opportunity to act on it by her.

Ideally we need Congress to come out and say that

1. We aim to revitalise Mahatma Gandhi and Nehru`s vision of a multireligious multi-cultural India and avoid a repeat of past mistakes. We have zero tolerance policy for communal threats to life and property. We apologise for Congress role in Delhi riots and do XYZ to show respect to the memory of those killed.

2.Growth of domestic economy, universal school education and law and order should be depoliticised. (Sonia Gandhi has been cooperative enough with the BJP on certain economic and other issues, I believe, to say this credibly ).

3. Need for rapid growth of domestic economy and development is a higher priority than caste considerations in peoples votes since our population has the largest proportion of young jobseeking people than any other country in the world.

etc(in my dreams).

Can you imagine Ms Sonia having the vision or organisation skill/acumen/personal stature to make a viable political platform out of such items?

The fact that more time is spent debating Sonia than her party`s platform(or lack of platform) proves she is not the right person to be PM, though she may head the Congress party. If Manmohan Singh, AK Anthony(:)) or Narasimha Rao were Prime Ministerial candidate, we would be discussing the party platform and party deeds and misdeeds. Sonia needs to stop being fixated on family legacy and save the party.

Faruk #52
I am interested in the source of those figures. Also, do you have any figures for female literacy among Indian Muslims?

IMO, the state and polity are sorely lacking in their duties because what is urgently needed is a sustained and culture-sensitive campaign focussed on getting the girl child to school and keeping her there, including the Muslim girl child.

IMO, female literacy is a core part of socio-economic change in any community, including Indian Muslim communities. It was pointed out recently by UNICEF ? that even Bangladesh is doing a better job than India wrt enrollment of girls.

``#28 by Urstruly on March 8, 2004 1:18pm PT

I apologize to Dost but the case he has made against BJP and Hindutva is as flimsy as it could get. ``

Truely...

I do not remeber Dost agreeing to finality of prophet. For what and to whom you are apologising. All said and done.. Dost and Ahmedias may not have difference of opinion on this issue.

Shame on you. Be in US of A. And spit on the thali that feeds you. Be a truely.

Yogiraj

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Re : Sadna # 24
The problem is not just poor literacy rates among Indian Muslims. If you exclude Bihar its 75% and nearly 90 % in the 16 to 35 age group. The problem is that Indian Muslims have not used that education as well as their Hindu counterparts.

Regards,


Faruk

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Romair # 8
We had discussed this on another board a few months back. I thought we had come to a common conclusion that West Pakistan’s growth till the 60’s was financed by East Pakistan. The bottom fell out in the 70’s and during the 80’s both India & Pakistan grew at 5 to 6 % and India cut loose during the 90’s and the current decade.

Here are some figures
Foreign Trade Figures (millions of rupees)
5 Year Period East Bengal West Pakistan
Exports Imports Exports Imports
1947-52 4582 2129 3786 4769
1952-57 3969 2159 3440 5105


In financial year 1948-49, the allocation for provincial development expenditure was as the following table indicates:

Province Amount Allocated (millions rps)

East Bengal 40
Punjab 50
Sind 25
NWFP 5


Development Outlay for Pakistan from 1947-48 to 1960-61

Category East Bengal West Pakistan
In millions of Rupees

Government Investment 1720 4300
Government Loans 184 2240
Aid 76 1010


Foreign Trade Figures 1947-67 (In M Rupees)

Position East Bengal West Pakistan
Exports 20,982,391 15,704,714
Imports 15,183,796 34,388,211
Balance 5,798,595 -18,683,497


Regards,


Faruk

Re : Fuzair # 14

I agree completely.

Faruk

dear Aleph:

my issue is only with Sonia foreignness not her leadership --

regarding being Chief without history -- don`t you think the Indians should be the arbiter --

A Chief without the Indians is no Chief -- we on CHowk cannot make and unmake leaders -- as is customary for my Pakistani friends -- who want Benazeer and Nawaz Sharifs to disappear -- and Gun totting Musharraf to stay -- `we` can`t make them disappear we don`t have the Guns -- only the people can -- and apparently the people don`t want to....

I agree with you Congress has become Nehru family business but why the massess don`t mind......that we should ponder about....

as far as I am concerned Ghandi should stay Like the Mahatma Gandhi of Congress in the background in control -- and let Manmohan Singh be the Nehru of Indian Congress....

Nasah #35

Nasah sahib: a quote from the past:

“Nehru and his daughter were political veterans -- had history behind them – u and ur late husband had NONE -- u two had no business being in politics. Period.

now for heavens sake – let go the family business mama – let go the Congress -- and let go the country – for crying out loud –“

Who wrote this cry from the heart?

Hossp #26

{{You agree that BJP rule has not been w/o communal polarization still, you cleverly take a shot at her community or religious affiliations … Now I would think that it is a convoluted argument and probably portrays your own subliminal prejudice then Sonia’s religious affiliation.}}

Hint: my background, and my prejudices, subliminal or otherwise, are not what you most likely guessed at first.

{{There is nothing to prove that the hostility against that particular community was because Sonia belonged to it.}}

It’s not by any means the full story, but it is an important contributory factor – there’s obvious political capital to be made. Certainly the temporal correlation between Sonia’s rise to political prominence and some other events is quite striking.

{{In your post you are just not supporting any thing that helped you reach this conclusion.}}

True … I omitted things that are obvious to most Indians; understandably not to many Pakistanis. So let me dilate:

Sonia Gandhi’s commitment to India has been questioned (whereas her commitment to her family, i.e her late husband and mother-in-law, and her children, most likely can’t be). She was very tardy in acquiring Indian citizenship; it was rumoured that she and Rajiv sought refuge in the Italian embassy immediately after the 1977 Lok Sabha election results. Her connection with India is that of someone who by chance happened to catch the fancy of the son of the then Prime Minister, not someone who chose India first. The foreigner issue just won’t go away.

There is also the issue of her religion, which unfortunately compounds the foreigner issue. It has been exacerbated by her close association with dubious characters like Ajit Jogi and (former?) private secretary Vincent George who happen to be Christians, probably not entirely by chance, and revealing very poor judgment on Sonia Gandhi’s part. The Hindutvavadi crowd made a lot of capital over it.

This is an unwanted headache for 25 million Indians of Christian background, who suddenly find their loyalties called into by question – [not very often, but much more frequently than through the first half century of independence; and mostly by ignorant and stupid troglodytes, but now by a small but still disturbing number of intelligent people] – at least partly because of the sudden prominence of one person who is in no way representative of the overwhelming majority of them. It’s not fair, but that’s the way the world works.

Because of her vulnerability on these ‘identity’ issues, Sonia, or any party or government headed by her, will lack the flexibility to do the right thing whenever any contentious or divisive issue crops up. People like Vajpayee, APJ Abdul Kalam, Manmohan Singh, George Fernandes, whose Indianness is beyond question, are not similarly hampered, though they may fail to do what’s right for other reasons. So the best than one could expect from a Sonia dispensation is a ‘soft Hindutva’ on the part of the government together with a succession of controversies custom-engineered by the opposition.

But over and above these factors, it is completely unclear what Sonia Gandhi stands for, what her real opinions are on issues, whether she even has a mind of her own. Her estranged sister-in-law (Maneka Gandhi) made a catty remark some years back on the lines of “There’s nothing upstairs except cooking.” Sadly, she’s probably completely right. In power Sonia will probably be the wooden puppet that Indira Gandhi never was to the Syndicate’s dismay.

Hossp #26

{{Elections can be won or lost on several issues rather then just one, but Sonia and Congress’s effective push in defending/promoting secularism is effectively pushing the party that championed the religious identity politics to hook up with the same community that BJP effectively shunned in the past.}}

I disagree. I don’t think the BJP is reactive or on the back foot here; it has been systematically looking to expand its base, eating away at groups that used to be reliable Congress ‘vote-banks.’ My reading is that this is happening because more and more people have given up on the ability of the Sonia-Congress combine to provide any kind of effective opposition. Read this interview with Arif Mohammad Khan, for what it’s worth.

{{What you are calling “religious identity politics” is at the present time is just a representative of the Indian Nationalism.

What it was ten years ago or what it was when BJP first rode to power on religious identity has changed as new elements have joined the politics that clearly are not interested in “religious identity politics” but are interested in Indian Nationalism and the revival of it on more or less secular patterns as it was before the BJP launched religious assault on a non ideological leadership of congress in the 90s.}}

I don’t think matters are quite so simple.

Democratic politicians the world over are faced with a common generic syndrome. Namely, deep-seated structural problems take many years or decades to ameliorate; they do not have quick fixes. At best wise decisions made today pay off many years and governments later; immediate visible progress will be slight.

In the meantime elections have to be fought and won, public concerns have to be addressed, etc. So if a politician is fortunate enough to get elected during good times, he loses no opportunity to claim as his own handiwork all the good things that happened during his watch, even if the groundwork was laid during someone else’s tenure.

If on the other hand a politician serves during periods of trouble or stagnation, he needs other means to divert public attention. Hence the ready recourse to identity politics and divisive issues when nothing much can be done immediately about substantive issues.

The above is a general pattern observed in industrialized democracies as much as in developing nations. India additionally faces and may continue to encounter another kind of phenomenon peculiar to countries that are developing rapidly. The rising tide eventually lifts all boats, but not everyone manages to break free of the muck at the same time. The first signs of progress may be greatly increased inequity. Tremendous resentments can develop among groups of people who feel or fear that they are being left behind, even if their own objective situation has improved somewhat, because change isn’t coming quickly enough for them. Finally, there is also the cultural dislocation caused by industrialization, urbanization, and exposure to global mass culture. Politicians are always quick to feed on the anger and insecurity these factors engender and to blame it on an identifiable other. So there is no shortage of raw material for divisive politics.

It’s extremely significant in this connection that Gujarat has been developing much faster than India as a whole for a fairly long period. The naïve guess would be that the electorate in Gujarat would be completely focused on substantive issues. Yet Narendra Modi apparently didn’t see any political imperative for stopping post-Godhra riots dead, and it didn’t hurt him politically. The existing strong religious polarization of society in Gujarat was a vital ingredient. There is no real reason it can’t happen elsewhere in India, irrespective of which party is in power, for at least twenty years, until with the best outcome a fully mature polity develops.

Ref Romair #8

[The West Pakstanis got wealthy, while the East Pakistanis got poorer, or remained in the same state. The Indian Hindus are getting rich, while the Indian Muslims are sidelined. I did a statistical comparison once, between the percentage of Bengalis in Pakistani govt. positions, in the 60s, and the percentage of Indian Muslims in Indian govt. positions now (info from www.muslimgazette.com). The ratios are strikingly similar, and completely disproportionate to their respective populations.

Even now, the South Asian Muslims one sees in the US IT industry, are nearly all from Pakistan. One rarely sees any from Bangladesh, perhaps indicating that Bangladesh has still to recover from the pre-70s situation. But what is even more strking is that that, while one sees hundreds of Indians in the US IT industry, barely 1-2% of them are Indian Muslims. I must have come across three to five hundred or more Indias here in IT. I can count on my fingertips the number that were Muslims. Perhaps five to eight.]

Here is an unscientific sample of one.

Yesterday, my niece`s friend Rasheeda was here and talk turned to what she planned to do after college. We also asked about her brother who has finished his B.Com degree. He flatly refuses to go for a master`s degree. Her father ran a business and the brother, who was slated to go to Australia for his MBA, now plans to be in business. The explanation is that in 10 years he can make Rs. 1 crore in business, a lifetime of earning if one has to work for others. Nobody in the family can change his mind.

Another story: a girl joined a software firm in Chennai. She enrolled in the MCA program (distance education) paid for by the company. After 3 years of studying full-time while working full-time, she managed to graduate at the top of her class from her place of work. Her parents were concerned how they were going to find her a suitable husband because, according to them, Muslim boys rarely set store by education.

Some six months later, the girl ``found religion`` and wanted to wear a burqa while at work. Permission was denied because it is an American company and they didn`t want the customers seeing a woman in a burqa just a few months after 9/11. So she started wearing the burqa to and from her office, putting it aside while she was inside. She did not have particularly religious parents; in fact, they were aghast at the thought of her choosing to wear the burqa.

Make what you will of these two anecdotes.

`Having made the decision, she has done everything to adopt the language, food, dress and culture of the land of her choice and to serve what she believes to be her family legacy.``

Here is the final test for sonia as an indian, she beleives that leadership of congress is her family legacy. Well that view is endorsed by dost mitter, a true decendent of the conqured indian mind set, finds cultural identity with the pakistanis, and would vote for sonia, a true doyen of the colonial mind, would still long to be ruled by a white. That reminds me, pakistanis are so proud of their complexion, ask YLH about it.

In any case thanks dost mitter, keep writing about india, pl do spare us the exciting stories of common bond with pakistanis following your pak visit.