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The Rediff Special/ Virendra Kapoor

Sonia apes Advani's Hindutva

Imitation is the best form of flattery. Home Minister Lal Kishenchand Advani must be chuckling in his sleeves at Congress president Sonia Gandhi's belated discovery of Hinduism and Hindutva. In her quest for wider acceptability across the Hindi heartland, the Congress president seems to have felt constrained to embrace Hindutva and to credit the Hindu religion for being the natural 'guarantor of secularism.'

If those words broadly echo Advani's public discourse on Hindutva, the similarity in all likelihood was purely international and not accidental. For the Congress leadership has convinced itself that the only way to reclaim its lost primacy in the Hindi belt is to adopt the Hindutva ideology. Albeit in its softer and less strident form.

There was something sinister about the timing of the Congress attempt to present itself in soft saffron hues. For at a time when all sensible people across the nation felt nauseated by the widespread incidents of Christian-bashing, Sonia's quiet public identification with the Hindutva credo was an exercise in cynical capitulation to the forces of religious fundamentalism.

Electoral compulsions alone seemed to have dictated the pro-Hindutva lurch by the Congress leadership. Otherwise, instead of making a big issue of the roasting alive of Graham Stewart Staines and his two minor children, Sonia appeared determined to project herself as a devout Hindu keen to pay her obeisance at the Vekateshwara temple in Tirumala.

That Staines was a Christian mattered to his killers. But the reason why it seems to have mattered even more to the leader of the Congress party was not far to see. For in a country which is 85 per cent Hindu, Sonia was at pains to underplay the fact that she was born a Christian.

Otherwise, as an earnest attempt of her desire to punish such lawlessness she would have shown no compunction in dismissing the inept Congress Chief Minister J B Patnaik.

The Staines killings within days of the shameful Anjana Mishra rape should have normally sealed Patnaik's fate. His dismissal would have been fully justified. And, in turn, it would have further helped burnish Sonia's credentials as a leader who suffered no fools, who had to punish incompetent and non-performing state satraps.

But Sonia felt circumscribed by the fact that she was widely known to be a devout Catholic Christian. The fear that sacking Patnaik following the Staines killings would invite the criticism -- that she had risen in defence of a foreign Christian missionary -- in the very quarters who were suspected to be behind the horrendous deed alone seems to have forced her to stay her hand. (Indeed to the extent that Patnaik escaped the flak; the Staines killings helped Patnaik divert the heat from the Anjana Mishra rape case.) Such then is the stuff that Sonia, the leader, is made of. For whether or not her religious faith mattered to Indians, it certainly seems to have distorted her world-view and her responses to situations arising out of events in everyday India.

The fact that she was widely known to be a devout Catholic had begun to prey on her mind. Of course, she had every right to be proud of her religious faith. Of course, the Constitution fully protected her right to practise her religion.

But by undertaking those well-publicised pilgrimages to historic Hindu temples and by singing paens to Hinduism a la Advani she was seeking to hoodwink most Indians. And in the process she exposed her vulnerability on account of her being a foreign-born member of the minority Christian community.

Therefore the lunatic fringe of Hindutva, widely said to be behind the vicious campaign of hatred and calumny against the Christians, couldn't be faulted if it came to believe that not unlike them Sonia too believed that one's religious faith had a bearing on one's politics. For, there is a very genuine fear that the loonies in the Hindutva brigade might construe in her belated discovery of virtues in the Hindu religion, and in her temple-going spree, a sure sign of victory for their ill-conceived campaigns.

Admittedly, an out-of-power Indira Gandhi too had prayed at various shrines and Hindu maths, but her dilemma was never so acute as is now the case with her Italy-born daughter-in-law.

For Indira did not have the foreign tag permanently affixed to her name. She was Nehru's daughter and even though she had married a Parsi, neither her husband nor his religion had ever evoked strong feelings in any quarters. Sonia was born in a devout Catholic family. And an apocryphal story doing the rounds in the capital has it that even the thought of her marrying into India's first family of politics had not, at least initially, enthused her blue-collar parents.

Such was the Maino family's devotion to their Church and their religion that it insisted not only on her continuing to be a Christian but also on her husband -- to embrace the faith. Further, the story goes, at the time of their civil marriage while Sanjay left the column for religion in the form required to be filled up on such solemn occasions blank -- Maneka naturally entered her religion as Sikh -- both Rajiv and Sonia listed themselves as Christians.

As noted earlier the above story was purely apocryphal. But it is a sign of the vitiated times that we live in that there are many people to lap it up as gospel truth.

One is convinced that Ashok Singhal and other elements of his loony ilk would like to lay their hands on that civil marriage certificate of Rajiv and Sonia in order to bolster their woolly theory about the burgeoning Christian conspiracy against this country. The great irony is that Sonia did not have to play the Hindutva card at all. She was sailing along smoothly, power appeared to be in her grasp what with Jayalalitha and Mamata and other odd-body allies who together make the Vajpayee government advancing the Congress cause with remarkable speed.

After the unexpectedly good showing by the party in the recent assembly election, the Sonia-led Congress was widely perceived to be on the comeback trail. Whether or not the Vajpayee government was performing well, there was no denying that it was a great PR disaster. And the resulting popular disenchantment had boosted the chances of the Congress party.

If only a year ago nobody had given Sonia a fighting chance to lead the country, opinion polls now showed her ahead of the prime minister in the popularity stakes. Her policy of wait and watch was yielding her rich political dividends, thanks in the main due to the failure of the BJP's allies to behave responsibly.

And then she goes and queers the pitch for herself by aping her late mother-in-law. And by wilfully refusing to fill the requisite form that was part of the routine drill at the Tirumala temple, Sonia displayed her haughtiness and her unconcern for the rule of law. (That the temple authorities too should believe that some 'devotees' were more equal than others in the abode of god was, of course, highly deplorable.) Admittedly, the filling of the form before being allowed admittance in the temple was an avoidable hassle. But so long as it was the prescribed norm, Sonia in all fairness should have shown no hesitation in abiding by that practice. Instead, she chose to be vague and thus provide further grist to the Ashok Singhal mill.

But Sonia seems determined to press full steam ahead with her Hindutva project. The significance of the Uttar Pradesh Congress unit organising a workers camp, of all the places, in Hardwar cannot be lost on anyone.

Sonia dutifully lip-synced the lines given to her by her backroom minders and then launched herself on the temple tour in one of the most famous pilgrim towns in the Hindu-Hindi heartland. The Rupert Murdoch-owned news channel with its own private agenda would certainly gloss over her effort to Hinduise her public persona. Ditto for the elitist section of the print media which in its present anti-BJP mood would pick up any stone to throw at it.

So what emerges is an incongruous image of a wholly Westernised Sonia consciously choosing to play the role of the devout Hindu with her head draped in a saree bowing before various gods and goddesses. What if the loonies in the Hindutva brigade mistook the demure figure praying before a Hindu god in Haridwar as a sign of the 'conversion' to their cause? Well, wasn't that the objective of her visit to various temples and Hindu shrines in the first place? What about keeping religion out of the public domain? What about the Congress's avowed belief in secularism? What about fighting the BJP's alleged communalism? Hell with those cliches. Power is the objective and Sonia will grab it for self and partymen even if it took a million visits to Tirumala and Hardwar. Didn't her admirers say she is determined and clear-headed? Yes, indeed, she is.

The Rediff Specials

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