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Made In Italy, But So What?

The wonder is that with so many strikes against her, the BJP and its fans choose to attack her with the feeblest one, the one most easily turned inside out. "The Prime Minister cannot be a person born outside India!" they shout. "Change the Constitution to debar naturalized Indians from becoming PM!" they demand.

These are poor reasons to say no to Sonia Gandhi. Of course, by making that statement, I'm laying myself open to charges of defending her, of secretly wanting foreigners to rule India all over again. I'll have to live with that, because it must be said. There are many reasons that Sonia Gandhi should not be PM. Her birth in Italy is not one of them.

If her foreign birth really means she is out of touch with something called "Indian-ness", if it means she cannot have India's interests in mind, there are immediate questions that need answers. How much of this "Indian-ness" is evident in our other political shakers? Did the Yadavs, Thackerays, Basus, Jayalalithas, Mayawatis, Gandhis, Advanis, Swamys, Raos -- take your pick -- really have India's best interests in mind while building their political fortunes? Why has the entire Indian -- entirely Indian -- political class kept India poor and illiterate, reduced us to the grasping, corrupt nation we are? Why, indeed, have we more ordinary Indians simply watched this happen?

If born-in-India Indians can accumulate such a record of disservice to the nation, birth alone is no disqualification to office. Or qualification, for that matter. Therefore, Sonia Gandhi's Italian birth, by itself, is a flimsy stick to beat her with.

So why the frenzied harping on it? Two reasons. First, it's that quick and easy route to patriotism, to being more Indian than the rest, that the BJP and friends trade so avidly in. At one time the prescription was that to be Indian, we must all "relate to Lord Ram." (I swear I have a letter from an important Bombay BJP functionary saying just this.) Last year, the BJP's Lalji Tandon pronounced that anyone who criticized the nuclear bombs "was in fact a traitor." Today, you show how Indian you are by demanding that we must be ruled only by Indians born in India: the old foreigner bogey again.

Simple formulae all, ideal because the BJP would not want you thinking about them a whole lot.

Second, the BJP has no other ammunition to fire at Sonia. None. The ground they stand on is exactly that flimsy. See for yourself.

Can they claim her party had no mandate to govern the country? No, because by the same standard, they had no mandate either. Can they accuse her of protecting men indicted by inquiry commissions for instigating the 1984 Delhi riots? No, because they are protecting men indicted by inquiries for instigating the 1992-93 Bombay riots. Can they accuse her of buying up MPs? No, because they did just the same to buy confidence in their government. (For example, news reports on April 22 quoted the BJP MP of Uttarahalli, a M Srinivas, saying of Mayawati that "she got money from us and them but ditched us.") Can they accuse her of trying to cobble together an "unholy" coalition of many parties to form a government? No, because they cobbled together just such a coalition, with 18 parties, only a year ago.

And since Jayalalitha precipitated the mid-April rubble in Delhi, can the BJP accuse Sonia of favouring corruption in the form of the lady from Tamil Nadu? No, because they did just the same only a year ago. What's more, they spent the year trying hard to subvert the corruption cases against her. On February 5, Mr Vajpayee's government even issued a notification to transfer the cases away from the special courts the Tamil Nadu government set up to try them; a development that Ram Jethmalani says he submitted his resignation over. Only, he says, the PM asked him "not to press the matter" and to "keep it secret." Besides, now that Jayalalitha has taken her wares elsewhere, there are reports that the BJP has promised, if they return to power, to "withdraw the February 5 notification" about those cases.

On and on it goes. There is not a single bit of mud the BJP can fling at Sonia that is not first scraped off their own face.

Except her birth in Wherever, Italy. That's why that birth is suddenly to be proclaimed at full volume. That's why so many are examining who had what passport when and for how long and what her motives were at the time. That's why Kanchan Gupta nee Gupta has seen his fingers atrophy to the hilarious point where he cannot write the words "Sonia Gandhi" without also writing the words "nee Maino" after them.

Ah, they clamour, but the USA does not allow naturalised Americans to become president! You have to be born in the 50 states if you want to move into the White House! Why can we not be like that advanced country? Yes, but so what? That is the USA. Besides, the USA also has close to universal literacy; water drinkable from the tap; a judiciary that usually decides cases in months, not decades. Where is the clamour for us to be like that advanced country in such things?

No: like so much else, Sonia's birth in Italy is just an enormous red herring.

Yet the truth is that she so eminently should not be PM. The latest strike against her is the trapeze act with Jayalalitha, but that's only the latest. When will we get an accounting of her role in the Bofors scam? What has she ever done to bring to book men in her party who are accused in the 1984 Sikh massacre, men like HKL Bhagat, Jagdish Tytler and Sajjan Kumar? Why does her daughter live in a sprawling government bungalow -- why did Sonia not have the dignity and sense to refuse such sponging? Why is the Congress party so besotted with the Gandhi name that it seems we will never escape the clutches of the dynasty?

Those are some of the things that would weigh in my mind if Sonia asked for my vote. Each one makes the thought of her running my country steadily less palatable. I could hardly be unique in feeling this way: there must be millions who share my disgust over these issues.

But the BJP and its fans stick like glue to the irrelevant detail of her Italian birth.

Right now, I can think of at least three people, born in the West but now Indian citizens to their bones, whom I would gladly trust to do good for India should they run for office. Their Indian-ness, their commitment to India, is many degrees more profound than that of any of our current gang of politicians. In fact, I cannot think of three people in that gang, all born in India, whom I would similarly trust. I dare you to.

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Long Tailpiece

Found some intriguing statements in three columns here last week.

1. In "What Happens Now?" Pritish Nandy advises us: "We must give Vajpayee credit for getting some things right. He bowed before Jayalalitha, true. But he did not cave in. Each and every case against her remains alive..."

Pretty measly crumbs Mr Nandy is in search of, there. As I indicated in the article above, it is Vajpayee's government that issued a February 5 notification to transfer the cases against Big J out of the special courts, back to the sessions courts. India's Attorney General, Soli Sorabjee, has been arguing before the Supreme Court that this notification is valid. Ram Jethmalani claims (The Times of India, April 20) to have sent in his resignation on this "political appeasement" of Jayalalitha by the PM. And as I also indicated above, the BJP has promised (The Times of India, April 22) that if they return to power, they will withdraw that notification.

The cases against the lady are alive today not because of Vajpayee, but in spite of him. No credit due, Mr Nandy.

Mr Nandy also searches for credit for Vajpayee in that "... despite every opportunity, he did not use Bofors to finish off Sonia. He had the proof... [but] he went out of his way to be civil and gracious to her."

No credit again, Mr Nandy. If he had the proof, he should have indeed "finished her off." I don't feel like applauding Vajpayee's civility and grace if it prevents him from bringing to justice people who have evaded it for too long. Civility and grace like this, if it was indeed those things, only tarnish the man. We can do without them, thank you.

2. Arvind Lavakare, in "The Erring Media", seeks to make that frayed case all over again: the media is biased against the BJP. Example? Star TV, "the confirmed anti-BJP network", carried a discussion by a panel of three MPs. One from the Congress, one from the TMC, one from the BJP. There you are, "two against one!" Anti-BJP bias confirmed, yes sir!

Does Mr Lavakare really need to be told that when you have three people discussing two sides of one issue, two of them will necessarily have to be on one side? Star TV cannot be expected to produce a panel that is a statistically accurate sample of the general populace. (And even if it did, given that the BJP came away with less than a third of the vote in the 1998 elections, such a panel would in fact be 2-to-1 against the BJP). The channel picked three MPs, two of whom were in the "No" camp at the vote of confidence. Another time, two will be in the "Yes" camp. That's the way it goes, when you select three people.

You wonder: when will the BJP and supporters ever -- ever -- learn to stop moaning and complaining and feeling so horribly victimised? When will they learn that in the adult world, you take your knocks and give back as good as you get? Whining nonstop, turning every little pebble over to find bias, only undermines your own believability. It's called crying wolf.

3. In "The President Can Halt The Politics of Cynicism", Kanchan Gupta claims that "India witnessed 72,000 riots" during more than four decades of Congress rule. This remarkable figure was challenged by a reader who pointed out that this means nearly four riots a day, every day of those decades.

In reply, Mr Gupta tells us that he got the figure "from Union home ministry reports. It is verifiable from files with the Government of India."

Very authoritative, Mr Gupta. I don't doubt those reports and files at all. But so I can consult them myself, I would be grateful to know exactly which home ministry reports, exactly which files. Names, authors, dates would be helpful.

Also, may I ask a favour? I'll name a few dates at random, can you dig in those files and tell me something about the four-odd riots on each of those dates? I ask this because in my few decades of life in this country, I cannot recall even one day where I have had news about as many as four riots in the country (leaving aside a few days in November 1984, in December 1992 and January 1993). I realise the home ministry is much more thorough in its monitoring of the news than I can ever hope to be, but it is still puzzling that my memory has so blanked out the riots on nearly all the days of my life.

So, here are the dates, quite at random: April 28, 1998. June 14, 1959. December 2, 1967. September 8, 1982. Please do let me know about the approximately 16 riots on those four days that you should find information about in those reports and files. Thank you.

Also, what might your comment be about another report from the Union home ministry? In the April 25, 1999 The Sunday Times, Inder Sawhney quotes the 1998-1999 annual report of the ministry saying that attacks on Christians increased from 30 in 1997 to 84 in 1998. (It also says that in some of these cases, "it was a coincidence that the victims were Christians.") Your reaction, Mr Gupta?

Dilip D'Souza