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EDITORIAL
Mrs
Gandhi vs JP
Sonia's
overkill on Prasada's challenge is a PR disaster
 For
a party so in love with history, the prospect of a battle between JP and
Mrs Gandhi must bring fond memories, even if the current combatants are
Jitendra Prasada and Sonia Gandhi. At stake this time is not the idea
of India but only the presidency of the Congress. As the old line goes,
when the stakes are low, the politics is at its most vicious. The organisational
elections of India's oldest party bear testimony to this. Sonia's victory
is a foregone conclusion; Prasada can hope for no more than honourable
defeat and perhaps martyrdom. With success guaranteed, the Sonia camp
is ideally placed to project this ludicrous contest as a sign of inner-party
democracy and pluralism. Instead, it has responded with overkill.
Prasada
is being derided as some sort of "traitor". Even small-time
workers who meet him are being beaten up in a show of "loyalty"
to the First Family. In Patna, Prasada was locked out of the Congress
office. In Mumbai, he was reduced to meeting journalists at a restaurant
as no Congress functionary was willing to meet him or allow him into the
local party headquarters. The high command's latest low blow is the delinking
of the presidential race from state-level elections. This is apparently
the Sonia group's plan to ensure that provincial squabbles and other minor
angularities don't tarnish the supreme leader's winning margin. Two lessons
flow from this rather comic drama. First, as was clear in the case of
the Congress Parliamentary Party polls, the party's obsession with minor
factional triumphs is really quite pathetic. To think it was at the commanding
heights of the Indian polity till a decade ago. Second, whatever the party
may say about soul-searching, introspection, collective decision-making,
rebuilding at the grassroots and other such cliches, its instincts are
sycophantic as ever. Somehow nothing has changed since the last time a
JP took on a Mrs Gandhi.
Monumental
Issue
The politics
of worship—and the fate of India's heritage
 On
the first Friday of November, the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI)
encountered a piquant situation when a group of worshippers sought entry
into a mosque in central Delhi. The protesters argued their right to prayer
was being obstructed by an entry fee; the ASI mumbled the structure was
a protected monument and its upkeep was vital but eventually gave way.
On the very day, a similar occurrence was reported from the Taj Mahal
in Agra. Yet again the ease with which religious emotions can be manipulated
and exploited in India became apparent. In a more confident society there
would have been no question of not charging the fee and restrictions on
the nature of worship would have been imposed as well-to ensure it did
not in any way and even inadvertently damage the heritage building. Two
of the most beautiful shrines of the Muslim world, the Sophia Mosque and
the Blue Mosque, are located in Istanbul. Not only does every visitor
have to buy an entry ticket, worship is actively discouraged.
It would
be unfair to see the fee waiver demand through a strictly denominational
prism. This is not a Muslim problem but a peculiarly Indian one. There
is much in the ancient city of Varanasi, for instance, that could do with
planned, methodical preservation but even the beginnings of such a process
will doubtless see tumult. To be fair, the ASI is not blameless. Its record
of tending monuments has been extremely mixed. The decline of the Taj,
with a "marble cancer" eating into its splendour, is there for
all to see. Somehow it would be easier to reason with the devout and make
them see the point of posterity if the ASI actually did what it is meant
to-guard the tangible legacy of India without any scope for complaint.
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