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Ridiculous comparisons

Visions of medieval France danced before my eyes as I watched the AICC session. Centuries ago, when a new man came to the throne, faithful courtiers would yell, "The king is dead! Long live the king!" Having seen Sonia Gandhi's antics, I feel like screaming, "The farce is over! Long live the farce!"

"I am yielding to the spontaneous desires of the party workers," Sonia Gandhi proclaimed to wild cheers. Does anyone believe the ridiculous scenes outside 10, Janpath were remotely spontaneous? If you drove past those high iron gates before the television crews arrived, you would have seen that there wasn't a soul around but for the bored policemen.

"This country became my motherland thirty-one years ago!" Well, Sonia Gandhi is getting better speech-writers. Because she definitely cannot claim that she became a citizen before 1983. Nor did she explain why she waited fifteen years to give up Italian citizenship (assuming she has).

However, it isn't just her writers who have improved, so has Sonia Gandhi's reaction timing. Where she waited fifteen years to take up citizenship, she waited a mere ten days to hastily reassume the presidency of the Congress. Perhaps it was because she knew that there was no rush to take up citizenship while there was a possibility of someone else taking over the Congress throne.

But what really got my goat was Sonia Gandhi's moronic description of Indira Gandhi as "India's greatest daughter," something only someone totally ignorant of India's rich history would say. Greater than the Rani of Jhansi, greater than Mirabai, greater than Avvaiyar? The very thought is ridiculous!

But not as ridiculous as those hired hands in the AICC sessions who applauded wildly whenever Sonia Gandhi paused for breath. And once it was all over, those same tired comparisons to Annie Besant came pouring out.

Which raises a question: forget about Sonia Gandhi, does the average Congressman know anything about his own party's history when he mentions Sonia Gandhi in the same league as Annie Besant? In fact, how does Sonia Gandhi actually measure up?

Nobody had heard of Sonia Maino before she caught Rajiv Gandhi's eye; Annie Besant was world-famous long before setting foot in India at 46. She was a founder of the Fabian Society, an advocate for birth-control, the founder of the first trade union for women, and the person who introduced free education for the poor as a member of the London School Board. George Bernard Shaw, a future Nobel laureate, considered her the finest orator, man or woman, of the age.

Will someone please tell me anything comparable in the life of Sonia Maino? It was a genuine sacrifice for Annie Besant to give up the comforts of life in Britain and come to India. In marrying the son of India's prime minister, Sonia Maino gained access to comforts she could only dream about earlier.

What of their careers after they settled down in India? Besant's home was an ashram, where she devoted herself to social and religious work for twenty years. That included things like raising funds for Pandit Madan Mohan Malviya's proposed Benaras Hindu University and encouraging education for girls. Is there any comparable social service performed by Sonia Gandhi?

But the truest test of loyalty is war. Besant, a great lady in Victorian society and the daughter of a British admiral, was anything but supportive to the British war effort in World War I. In fact, she chose the time to launch the Home Rule movement. For her pains, the British put her -- at the venerable age of seventy -- behind bars. And it was only then that the Congress, finally persuaded of her bonds to India, made her its president.

Sonia Gandhi? Well, the Bangladesh War was a much smaller affair than World War I, but the faintest sniff of danger was enough to make her pack her bags and flee to Italy. (She was accompanied by Rajiv Gandhi, the only Indian Airlines pilot who did not have his leave revoked during the war!)

At the end of the day, it isn't just Sonia Gandhi's nationality that bothers me. It is the fact that she is trying to become prime minister without demonstrating either experience or aptitude. And the more her sycophants speak of her as a second Annie Besant, the more her deficiencies show up.

"You can't just make any A, B, C, the prime minister!" said Purno A Sangma. Congressmen, however, believe that they can -- if that A, or B, or C has the magic surname, nothing else matters!

T V R Shenoy