March 30, 1998

To revive the Congress, Sonia needs to kill its sycophancy culture

Tavleen Singh

This past week, an imperious missive from the palazzo at 10 Janpath marked Sonia Gandhi's transition from purdah politics to real politics. I am going to reproduce it fully because it is also the first policy statement from the lady who now officially controls India's largest and oldest political party.

Madame says: "The nation is passing through crucial times in which its democratic and secular fabric has been put to test. The decision of the Congress Working Committee to appoint me as president of the Indian National Congress enjoins upon me a duty and a task which has to be carried out with faith and humility. I appeal to all Congress workers to come together with unity and determination to once again forge a Congress party organisation into a powerful tool in the service of the country."

Right, let us begin by analysing the first and most important line of this historic communique from the person who hopes to restore the Congress to its former glory and who, if the endeavour succeeds, could be our first Italian-born prime minister. India's democratic and secular fabric, we are to believe, is being put to the test. How?

We have just been through what we like to boast is the biggest democratic exercise on the planet. So democracy is clearly in fine fettle. As for secularism, we have -- for the first time since Independence -- seen at least five years in which no major communal riot has occurred. Since 1992 and the terrible violence that resulted from the demolition of the Babri Masjid, we have seen an era of quite extraordinary communal harmony.

Sonia is new to politics, so her history is probably on the shaky side. Otherwise she would remember how very fragile our "democratic and secular fabric" became in those supposedly glorious years when her late mother-in-law and husband ruled India. The summer of 1984 is particularly unforgettable. In the first week of June that year, we had Operation Bluestar. Its disastrous consequences nearly tore apart not just the secular fabric but the entire country.

Barely had we recovered from the horror of needing virtual martial law in Punjab, that Indira Gandhi, in the first week of July, toppled Farooq Abdullah's government in Kashmir. Thereby, she destabilised our only Muslim state. Nearly everyone agrees that were it not for this move, we may have had no Kashmir problem now. Punjab took 10 years to recover. Kashmir is still enough of a problem for Pakistan -- the irony of it -- to continue lecturing us on human rights.

The secular fabric continued to tear when "secular" Congress workers roamed the streets of Delhi after Indira Gandhi's assassination, looking for Sikhs to burn alive. The "secular" Delhi administration stood back and watched as the dead piled up on the streets of our capital. By the time Rajiv Gandhi, the new prime minister, decided enough was enough, more than 3,000 Sikhs had been killed in Delhi alone.

By some extraordinary miracle -- considering what we saw in Delhi were pogroms, not riots -- Punjab did not erupt into communal violence. But the current Congress president's late husband then proceeded to justify the killings. When a big tree falls the earth shakes, he said. Correct me if I am wrong but was it not our current "communal" prime minister who replied, "These are children. They don't know that it's when the earth shakes that trees fall"?

Move to the next line of the Congress president's statement. The bit about carrying out her onerous task with "faith and humility". Faith, frankly, she will need a lot of. So we must not grudge her this. But could she explain this humility business? I am no supporter of foreigners ruling India and so I could be prejudiced but humility is the last word I would associate with Sonia. Was it humility or arrogance that made her refuse to give any interviews during the election campaign? Was it humility that made her parade her family from one end of the country to the other, as if she were taking them on a tour of their future kingdom?

I certainly did not notice any humility in the manner in which poor old chacha Kesri was tossed like a cockroach into the trash can of history. He was ready, poor creature, to scuttle off anyway and really just wanted to make a graceful farewell speech. But Madame was not having any of it. So we were forced to witness the pathetic spectacle of an elected Congress president being publicly humiliated, while Sonia's sycophants cheered and clapped.

Which brings me to a final word about turning the Congress "into a powerful tool in the service of the country". May I, with all the humility at my command, offer Madame some advice. In the next few months, as the Congress bides its time to return to power in Delhi, she would do well to make a careful study of the annals of her party.

Even a cursory study would reveal that the Congress began to die when Indira Gandhi decided what she liked best in the men around her was sycophancy and what she definitely did not like was political ability. Every Congress president since has taken the same approach -- so the decline has continued. Judging from those cries of "Sonia lao, desh bachao", the new Congress president too appears not to have noticed that a party can't become a powerful tool as long as its senior leaders are mere sycophants.

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