DUBAI, 18 July 2007 — Some cynical Indian politicians have defiled the country’s reputation in the international community by turning tomorrow’s presidential elections into a farce.
Sonia Gandhi has hoisted an undeserving candidate on the Indian people against their wishes. Hence, the circus that has unfolded for the removal of the highly respected, intelligent but not pliable President Abdul Kalam. His replacement is a homegrown candidate, Pratibha Patil, who raked up controversies after controversies even before she had filed her nomination papers. The Congress party and India will take a long time to live down the ignominy of depriving Kalam a rightful second term as president.
The Congress party has a history of cynical maneuvering, whenever it is driven to a corner. The august office of the president was buffaloed around first in 1969, when Indira Gandhi first advocated the “vote by conscience” philosophy to maneuver the election of her own candidate V.V. Giri, and dumped the party nominated candidate Dr. Sanjiva Reddy. The erstwhile Congress fractured down the line. The values and principles that governed India were wrecked. For a decade, politics in India became totally unprincipled and the greed for power prefaced all political action.
Indians have always loved and honored Sonia Gandhi. Here is a foreigner, an Italian woman, we said, who loved and married an Indian, Rajiv Gandhi. Then she had no privacy, being the daughter-in-law of the prime minister of India. When her mother-in-law was shot, she ran out of the house in a housecoat, screaming “Mummy, Mummy,” and carried her in an ambulance to hospital. When Rajiv was offered the prime ministership, she pleaded tearfully with him to decline the job. When a bomb slaughtered her husband, Indians wept with her and consoled her.
In an open letter to Sonia Gandhi in The Economic Times of April 6, 1995, this is what I had to say: “We had empathized in the grief you endured in 1984 when your mother-in-law was assassinated. We shared your trauma when your husband was assassinated. But there are some ominous beeps about your ascribed role in New Delhi. Your residence is being projected as a powerhouse of political patronage. You are being increasingly chiseled as the kingmaker. In fact some politicians see you as the potential empress of this country. The issue is, should you enter the political fray? Please ponder. Must you risk this esteem for a chair for yourself or your children? Your family and you have done enough. Your children and you, too, have a right to happiness.”
Yet, when she finally decided to enter politics, we buoyed her and her party. And now, she has let us down. The Congress has struck an ax on its own feet by ignoring the wishes of the nation.
Whether Sonia acted under pressure, or of her own accord, in bypassing President Abdul Kalam, she has made a mistake in ignoring the wishes of India. India is not a bunch of sycophants in New Delhi. The real India is in the fields, factories, offices, streets, and schools. India is also the 50 million NRIs who work abroad, and scrounge to send some money home to their families.
Sonia Gandhi has lost touch with reality and would do well to harken to some of the lessons her mother-in-law, Indira Gandhi, learnt through severe pain. During the height of the emergency, her advisers had convinced her that the entire country adored her and a general election could be called. She anticipated a resounding victory after all the forced sterilizations, clamps on fundamental rights, the political debauchery of Sanjay Gandhi and the traumatization of the valued civil service! The results flummoxed India Gandhi. Her party was pulverized.
Even a beggar, porter, cobbler or a vegetable vendor on the streets of any bazaar in India could have told Indira Gandhi that she was vanquished, even before the first ballot was cast. But, she chose to heed her toadying kitchen Cabinet. She faced years of political isolation. She spent many silent evenings alone in her home at 12 Willington Crescent. She lived in a small house, a kilometer away from the elegant “Teen Murti,” which she had shared with her father, the illustrious Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, the first prime minister of India.
In those lonely dusky evenings, among the Gulmohar trees lining 12 Willington Crescent, she must have realized her mistake. She had stopped listening to the heartbeat of India. Sonia Gandhi should not repeat this mistake.
— Rajendra K. Aneja is senior business executive based in Dubai