05/18/2004                   India under Sonia: Ponderings and Prophecies

 

Communists have taken over India! Mafia to hit India in a big way! India colonized again! All reforms to be reversed! Italians to monopolize contracts! Ashamed Indian businessman commits suicide! Protesters begin fast until death! Stock market loses one third of its value in two weeks!

 

If the makers of “The Russians are coming!” need an idea for a sequel, they can find it in the headlines screaming out of India today. The only factual headline is the last, but my prize for the most dramatic goes to “Democracy wins, India loses”. There hove been some nice ones too like “It can happen only in India!’ and “World lauds India’s democracy”.

 

It is perhaps paradoxical that while the world looks on in some admiration at India, Indians are looking at themselves anew, with intense embarrassment and a lot of surprise, and at their own future with sudden apprehension.

 

Some of the shame is genuine, but much of it is also affected and pretentious, a hypocritical parroting of a popular prejudice. After all, one half of India’s population is engaged in applying for citizenship in every country in both hemispheres and the other half will happily exchange its right arm for a visa to any of these places to begin the same process. If the mandatory surrender of Indian citizenship is so noble, I don’t see why the election of an Italian as India’s Prime Minister should become a matter of national dishonor. Think of it. After everything is said and done, if you are so fond of being ruled by a foreign ruler in a foreign country, why is it so unpalatable in your own country? At least you can sack her when you want. Try that in your new country. Come on, if Italian citizenship was being offered right now, you’d find most of your friends, relatives and nodding acquaintances already queued outside the Italian embassy in New Delhi before you reach there - at 3 am! So let’s can the pious crap and put our sense of shame in perspective.

 

Would I like to be ruled by a Laloo Prasad or a Mulayam Singh Yadav instead? Was I more ashamed of Uma Bharati or Narendra Modi and the other fire-breathing fundamentalists that threatened to take my country back to the horror of partition? Am I more ashamed of the gun-toting criminals proudly brandishing record sheets as long as electoral rolls that have infested our political system? Am I ashamed that they get elected? Well, put that way, it’s not much of a choice.

 

We are obssessed with all things foreign, culture, cars, clothes, education, music and even hair color. We watch proudly as tourists gush over our children’s American accent. Anything foreign becomes a status symbol, an emblem of one’s moral superiority to our less fortunate Indian brethren and a reason to look down upon him. Even a visit abroad becomes a badge of preeminence in our social system. And yet, when it comes to the election of a foreigner as a Prime Minister, we go ballistic and hemorrhage apoplectically. Like I said, perspective is everything.

 

To be honest, I too have been one of those who abhorred the thought of a foreigner becoming the Prime Minister of India. For some reason, I had always held Sonia Gandhi to be responsible for the sorry state that the Congress party was supposedly in before the elections. Though never a BJP supporter, I never thought the Congress could make a comeback as long as she was there. I have some egg to wipe off my face, but I concede that grudgingly. I am still not so sure that the Congress has been given the mandate - on a one to one basis, it leads the BJP by only seven seats. The Congress has come to power because it had winning allies and as such, that may be political acumen at play, but not innate merit.

 

It’s not as if the Congress has done anything earthshaking in the last eight years for the upliftment of the country it has been unwittingly asked to govern now. By and large, the Congress leadership has been missing (and not even in action!), except for the Gandhi family. And now that the booty box of India has opened like a surprise present, they have come swarming out of the woodwork of political oblivion. Be that as it may, we have to hand it to Sonia. Not only has she won, she had ensured that a political nobody like Rahul, her son, has romped home spectacularly. And had Priyanka, her daughter, contested, she too would have taken some hapless BJP soul to the cleaners. Sonia seems to have learned her politics as well as she has her Hindi, or rather Hindustani, which she speaks with all the aplomb of a UPite. But Indian politics not Hindi; it is more like a bunch of coyotes jostling for the meatiest part of the carcass. It will be interesting to see how she survives when they start lunging for cabinet positions - and her throat, when disappointed.

 

It’s all euphoria and goodwill now. While political survival is an art, governance is an exacting science, demanding in its solutions for disparate, immediate and often conflicting interests. There has been no demonstrable act of administration that Sonia can lay claim to. Sure, she hasn’t had a chance, but she can be sure she won’t have the luxury of five years to hastily pluck some feathers for her cap. The BJP is a wily learner and a scarred veteran of many a political battle and while it may have been stung, it is not vanquished. The constitutional waters are already being muddied and the Congress may plunge in to join issue only to find that the sharks have already begun to circle. The BJP will perhaps not completely sink her boat too soon. India cannot afford another election for some time and the BJP will not risk the unpopularity of foisting that on the country. But neither will they let her sail too far and too fast. They will keep her afloat but drifting without purpose and without port till she jettisons her friends or they jump ship. I, for one, do not think Sonia will last out for more than a year or two. Though I am a vegetarian, I don’t mind eating crow sometimes.

 

Personally, I think India is more shaken than stirred. In fact, you can see the shock on the faces of Sonia and Rahul. I am sure even the guys of Amethi and Rae Bareilly are surprised. I think they voted for mother and son just to take a well-deserved swipe at the BJP, but never really thought of the consequences. Now reality is staring at them from every poster in the country.

 

I wonder how they are going to feel about handing over India’s security secrets to a foreigner. Left to me, this factor alone disqualifies Sonia summarily, jointly and severally. Attachment born of mere naturalization is a perishable product and waxes and wanes with every fulfilled expectation, and every frustrated whim. Loyalty by birth is an enduring bondage, which is why most countries allow only their natural citizens to aspire for the ultimate post. Most importantly, people are going to think of the day when she is defeated, as every politician eventually will be. Will bitterness at rejection by her adopted country’s people turn her against it? Will she return to her home country once she starts losing, like I will, if I lose my job here? Where, then, will her loyalties lie? Does her loyalty come like my H1 – with an expiry date?

 

To be fair to Sonia, most of my trepidation about India’s future comes less from her, and more from those she associates with. The Communist Party of India has already signaled its intention to oppose any effort at privatization and other reforms initiated by the BJP. The entire world may have discarded communism, but our good friends wear it like a cloak of honor. They will not join the government, fearful of direct responsibility, unwilling to be tarnished by its possible failures. Besides, its always safer and more pleasurable to stand at the fringes of a government which exists at your mercy, looking over its shoulder, sniping at its heels, threatening to withdraw support at every turn, blocking every reform, perennially wanting to drag the rich down to the level of the poor instead of lifting the poor to prosperity. Their very first statements have sent the bourses cart-wheeling. With both the CPIs in such a powerful position, they can become the millstone around the Congress neck politically and the ultimate poison for the country economically.

 

In a country like India, it may be debatable whether globalization and disinvestment hove benefited its vast rural population as much as it seems to have its urban elite. The BJP marched to the drumbeat of a climbing index and corporate glitz, and forgot that the true heart of India beats in the villages, where poverty is stark and unforgiving, where people still walk miles for a pot of water, where two meals are a luxury, where electricity is still a miracle, where only famine and drought are as freely available as air. That is where India needed to shine and where the “feel good factor” was sorely, desperately needed. BJP paid the penalty for missing the real shine for the glitter.

 

For a person like me who has not been home for quite a few years, the news coming from BJP’s “India Shining” was like music. Magazines ran stories, upbeat, cheerful articles about the changes India is undergoing. They spoke happily about ‘a new breed of consumer’ – a highly paid, Dominos-dining, Baskin-Robbins-desserting, air-conditioned mall-shopping, cineplex-visiting, Reebok-wearing executive, holding a call-center job in a glamorous US-based company, Honda-driving his way through an easy, successful life, Coke in one hand, cell phone in the other. “The future is very rosy in India”, an interviewee says. India is booming, these articles aver, painting a vision of a bubbly, vibrant and pink future for India’s billion inhabitants, proclaiming India’s arrival on the international scene, especially after the outsourcing boom has made its noise felt.

 

Today, after the common man has rubbished BJP’s claims to achievement, after he has mauled and humbled them at the hustings, those stories look shallow, like paintings hung on the wall to hide the cracks in it. I feel betrayed and let down and cheated. Was it all that just hype? Was it all just confined to the privileged few? Were these paintings deliberately etched in the colors of debauchery and greed? My country continues to suffer - a virgin raped repeatedly, her bloody body wrapped in bridal attire and her bruised, battered soul hidden behind shining slogans, her virtues lauded, her praises sung to every unsuspecting suitor. It will take me a long time to forgive the BJP.

 

The RSS and VHP are off on their frenzied orbits, bleating that the NDA lost because they forgot Hindutva. I completely agree – but for an entirely different reason. So confident was the NDA of victory that they did not push Hindutva. The great Hindu citizen finally got up and said “Look, I feel wonderfully Hinduistic now, but please tell me: where is my electricity, where is my water, where is my prosperity?” If anything, this election has proved that Hindutva is an empty strategy that can win a battle or two, but never the war. It also shows how much the BJP achieved by way of performance for, when they took away Hindutva, the common man had nothing to put his stamp on. I for one prefer a BJP defeat on the platform of performance, rather than a victory founded on Hindutva. Narendra Modi embodies exactly what happened to the BJP.

 

The RSS and VHP have decided to hire a few Mahatma Gandhi look-alikes to go around the parts of the country protesting the appointment of Sonia Gandhi. Remember Nathuram Godse? More recently, remember somebody accusing Vajpayee of being Gandhi II because he wanted peace with Pakistan? When it comes to power, no level is too low to stoop. When belligerent ideology becomes obsessive-compulsive, the Nathurams of the world stand ready to be brainwashed and programmed. When their misguided conspiracies fructify like they did in 1948, we can all hide our faces – and give a new meaning to national shame.

 

But all this is not what breaks my heart. It is the group photo of the victorious Congress party leaders that has burnt itself into my mind. Is this the party that fought for India’s independence and led it to freedom? Somewhere up there, the Mahatma must be saying “He Ram!” all over again.