Commentary/Varsha Bhosle
Mera Congress Mahaan
On April 22, while Sharad Pawar spoke at tedious length on the occasion
of Prime Minister I K Gujral’s confidence-motion in the Lok Sabha, your
friendly psycho spent the time divining the kinematics of levitating
the chair from under the Speaker and into the source of the speech. It
didn’t work: Regardless of how hard I tried to put mind over matter,
our television-watching nation had to gruel through Mr Pawar’s saga on the
selfless nobility of the Congress party.
There are good days and bad days, and that day was one of the worst.
Try as I did, I couldn’t get over the creepy feeling that we’ve been
had once again. Whether the CPI-M roils the waters or not, it’s plain
that the United Front is no different from what we’ve suffered for half
a century – the Big C (yes, it is a cancer). Not only is the UF
godfathered by an ex-Congressman (V P Singh), the Budget drafted by
another ex-Congressman, but the country, too, is headed by the same
species. I’m tickled pink when writing secularists scorn the state of
administrative affairs, breast-beat over the culture of
institutionalised corruption, bang their heads over the moral
bankruptcy – and then have kittens over the triumph of the architects
of the same. For the option of – and bring on mitthoo miya here –
“divisive-fundamentalist-communalist forces” just can’t be brooked.
I’ve been pondering over trivialities: former communications minister
Sukh Ram of the telecom scam; former surface transport minister Jagdish
Tytler of the Mumbai Port Trust land-allocation fraud case; former
prime minister P V Narasimha Rao and the Lakhubhai Pathak cheating case;
Satish Sharma and his Italian tiles; Kalpnath Rai’s lodging of Dawood
Ibrahim’s murdering henchmen (the same who had arrived in Delhi with
former defence minister Sharad Pawar in an air force jet); Rajiv
Gandhi and Bofors; Jagjivan Ram’s “forgetting” to pay 10 years of
income tax… why is it that no scandal sticks to the Congress for long?
How does it manage to emerge as the second-largest party? How is it
still in a position to snarl a government? I’m beginning to believe
that if there is any “due process of law” in India, it only applies to
those who are not or never were in a government – and government here
means the Congress.
Unlike the CPI and BJP, the modern Congress has no ideology – it’s a
hoary, firmly entrenched institution loafing on the laurels of Gandhiji
and Vallabhbhai Patel. And it’s clear that since after the freedom
struggle, the party hasn’t attracted people who have goals other than a
sure-shot way to make a fast and dirty buck. What exactly does the
Congress espouse? It doesn’t even seek to obey the codicils of our
Constitution – eg, the one mandating the adoption of a uniform civil
code. Instead, it has developed, bred and uses its own brand of
secularism – one that cinches its influence, regardless of the risks to
the spirit of the bulk of the nation. The ends of those who make up
today’s Congress have zero to do with any ism other than self-servism.
There are no exceptions to that rule.
The Congress is like any aristocratic family; when scions stray, the
rest close ranks… teri bhi chup, meri bhi chup. Take V N Gadgil sweetly
asking Sukh Ram for an explanation of the telecom millions… What
“explanation”, for Chrissake? Did the Tooth Fairy leave the money under
his pillow? In any other country, I’d have said the Congress was
finished. But not here. Not where people build temples to starlets.
Indian politicos are not unique in taking kickbacks; the difference is
that in other countries, when politicians are exposed, forget careers,
even their freedom is shorn. But more significantly, even as they fill
their pockets, they do not harm the nation: Rare is the case when a
bribe is taken for, say, substandard arms. Indeed, why would the
manufacturer of a quality product be willing to dole out to secure a
tender?
How is it that these self-righteous secularists who led sustained
attacks on the BJP’s L K Advani in the now-overturned Jain hawala scam,
feel comfortable with a government made up of the secular likes of
Laloo Prasad Yadav, Shahabuddin, Phoolan Devi and Mulayam Singh
Yadav? And isn’t it fitting that this caucus of unscrupulous miscreants
be supported by, what else, the Congress?
But let’s not get fixated on money. In September 1996, a Delhi court
sentenced 89 people to five years RI for their role in the 1984 riots
when 3,000 Sikhs were slaughtered. And what, pray, is the lot of
Congressman H K L Bhagat who led the rioters? He sits safe and pretty,
out on bail. Does the press (which is anyway very busy chasing Bal
Thackeray) remember him at all? Compare that to the fates of the two
former presidents of South Korea, Chun Doo Hwan and Roh Tae Woo, whose
ordering of troops to crush an uprising led to the massacre of 200
civilians. The former was sentenced to death and the latter was given a
22-year imprisonment. I should have advised them to join the Indian
National Congress!
Take housing: Ex-ministers would be acquainted with India’s acute
problems, no? Yet, M/s Buta Singh, Balram Jakhar, Ghulam Nabi Azad,
Rajesh Pilot, Kamal Nath and 230 other prosperous Congressmen continued
to occupy official bungalows – and the UF’s then-prime minister Deve
Gowda let them! What constitutional machinery are we talking about? Did
we get a different government at all?
But let’s get back to mitthoo miya’s mantra which I, your friendly
trishul-carrier, perceive as nothing but the appeasement of minorities.
The term “policy of appeasement” got its derogatory connotations after
the tenure of the British prime minister Neville Chamberlain, whose
major aim was to avoid a European war at all costs. His policy of
placating Adolf Hitler’s Germany culminated in the Munich Pact of
September 1938, after which Chamberlain returned home proclaiming
“peace in our time.” But of course, Germany invaded Poland, Chamberlain
recognised the failure of his policy and led Britain into the war.
After the British debacle in the first months, Chamberlain was forced
to resign, and was succeeded by right-winger Winston Churchill – who
had all along insisted on the need for rearmament and censured the
appeasement of Hitler. The pacific policy had come to naught. It always
does.
Appeasement is the crutch of essentially weak and insecure governments,
and the fountainhead of Hindutva revivalism in India today. Issues like
terrorism (TADA), territorial rights (Kashmir), infiltration by aliens
(illegal immigrants), internal security (ISI-funded organisations), law
and order (roadside namaaz), and defence (the nuclear option) cannot be
left to invertebrates. This nation is in a state of arrested political
development because the only powers great enough to unite its 900
million inhabitants – Indian nationalism and Hinduism – have been
prohibited from playing a role. Too weak to bring about a solidarity
based on true secularism, the Congress has still been strong enough to
prevent any other force from doing so.
Think of our largest and most volatile minority, the Muslims. Even a
mere 12% of India’s population is more than the aggregate of the
populations of Norway, Finland, Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands,
France, Switzerland and Austria, which, together, comprise of roughly
107 million people. Can Hindus wave a wand and have vanish such a
multitude of people? Will the international community let them? Can
scholars like Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Murli Manohar Joshi and a
physicist like Rajendra Singh be so brain-dead to envision it? But, no;
the Congress’s hammering in of the Final Solution incantation
continues… And the O-beat-me-for-I’m-a-Hindu laps it up. SNAFU, as
usual.
In my view, the minorities set *themselves* apart from the mainstream:
Julio Ribeiro, former ambassador to Romania, cited an incident where a
certain, educated Mrs Almeida claimed that the Marathi she spoke at
home was not Marathi at all, but “East Indian”. What does one say to
that? I’m forever foxed by the countless Khans of India, all claiming
Pathan, Baluch or Arab origin. After all these centuries, and with
Quran-sanctioned polygamy, Afghanistan is peopled with less than 19
million people! From where do our Muslims come? If they digested that
their own forefathers once prayed to Ganpati, would they not flinch at
“creating disturbance during a religious procession”? Reconciliation
can only work if practised by both sides – it cannot be rammed down
Hindu throats in the name of Nehruvian secularism.
It’s we who are to blame, we who have empowered the Congress enough for
it to be able to form, support or threaten governments. We who have
been conned by its spurious secularism. But is there an alternative to
what we’ve borne since Independence? How will we know – unless a party
without a hint of the Congress is given a chance? Ask yourself why
India is in such a mess: However hard we work, why does it amount to
nil? Because, good people, most of our money is never raked back to
work for the nation. Ask yourself why Hindus are restless in their own
land. Because, gentle folk, there is no rationale, no parity in the
secularism established by the Congress. To shed the old guard is long
overdue. The next time around, just say “No!”
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