The people of India were unreasonable in expecting the Prime Minister to suddenly assert himself and resign after Rahul Gandhi's scathing statements. It is not possible to acquire a backbone overnight
Over the last fortnight, millions of fellow citizens must have wondered why Prime Minister Manmohan Singh swallowed the insult heaped on him by the Congress’s crown prince and meekly withdrew the ordinance to protect criminal-politicians. As Mr Singh announced his continuance in office despite the humiliation, many would have seen this as a basic flaw in his character because by clinging to his chair he had compromised the dignity of the office of Prime Minister.
Those who demand such lofty standards from Mr Singh and others in his Cabinet seem to forget the basic premise on which the Nehru-Gandhis, who have a proprietorial hold over the Congress, conduct their politics and run the party. Since the days of Jawaharlal Nehru, there is a simple rule at work. Whenever a policy or an idea is well implemented by a Congress Government, whether at the Centre or in a State, all credit must be laid at the door of the party’s first family. Axiomatically, when things go wrong, some one in the Government or the party must take the rap.
This principle is at work all the time. Congress president Sonia Gandhi and the core group that oversees political matters cleared the amendments to the election law. The Prime Minister and members of the Union Cabinet were merely to execute the decision. This exercise went on from August 22 until the end of September when the ordinance was sent to the President for his signature. After remaining a silent spectator for five weeks, Mr Rahul Gandhi suddenly surfaced to say that the ordinance was”complete nonsense” and must be thrown away. This late realisation came in the wake of public anger over the Government’s desperate attempts to protect criminal-politicians and President Pranab Mukherjee’s reluctance to mechanically sign on the dotted line.
Following Mr Gandhi’s outburst, the Prime Minister timidly announced withdrawal of the ordinance, allowed his name to be sullied and ensured that Mr Gandhi and the party’s first family came out looking good. By doing so, Mr Singh was reiterating his commitment to the first principle of governance as far as the Nehru-Gandhis are concerned. Only those who understand this principle and completely adhere to it can secure key positions in the party and
the Government.
This started during Jawaharlal Nehru’s time when sycophants in the Congress always insulated him from criticism and blamed others for bad policies or decisions. Take the case of the Mundhra scandal involving the lIC.
Haridas Mundhra was an industrialist who had funded the Congress in the 1957 general election. When he ran into financial problems, a message went out from the top that he must be helped. Mundhra wanted the life Insurance Corporation to buy shares of his company and the Nehru Government agreed to his request. Such was the pressure from the top that senior Government officials including the Principal Finance Secretary and Directors of lIC met Mundhra in a private hotel in Delhi on a Sunday to clinch the deal. Once Mundhra got confirmation that the lIC would buy shares of his companies, he artificially jacked up the prices of his shares in the stock market by 30 per cent to 40 per cent.
The following week, lIC entered the market and bought his shares at inflated prices. When the rotten deal was exposed, the then Union Minister for Finance TT Krishnamachari was sacrificed. Nehru pretended he knew nothing. Congressmen blamed TTK and a whispering campaign was also on to blame the party treasurer, but Nehru was above reproach. Did not Nehru know that Mundhra had funded his party during the electionIJ
This is the running theme in all scandals of the Nehru-era and the tradition continued during Indira Gandhi’s time. Whenever allegations of corruption were made or whenever a policy or programme went haywire, somebody in the Government was made the scapegoat and sycophants in the party ensured that Indira Gandhi was not blamed.
This tradition once again continued in the Rajiv Gandhi era. The Congress unleashed an anti-Sikh pogrom following the assassination of Indira Gandhi. Despite the cruel and barbaric acts of frenzied mobs, Rajiv Gandhi, who took oath as Prime Minister hours after his mother’s assassination, did not call in the Army to quell the riots. Some days later he even justified the killings by saying that “When a big tree falls, even the earth trembles”.
The Ranganath Mishra Commission concluded that 3,874 persons were killed in the riots, of which 2,307 persons were killed in Delhi alone. The mobs led by Congress leaders shouted “Khoon ka badla khoon se lenge”. Apart from lynching thousands of Sikhs, the mobs damaged 131 gurdwaras and 11 schools run by the Sikhs in Delhi alone. Yet, every effort was made by Congress to pin the blame for these horrendous killings on PV Narasimha Rao, who was Union Minister for Home Affairs at that time. Despite his inaction and despite his speech justifying the killing of Sikhs, Rajiv Gandhi is not to blame. Every Government scheme, every new building and every new project is named after him!
The other example of the Rajiv-era relates to Ayodhya. In the run up to the lok Sabha election in 1989, Rajiv Gandhi ordered that the locks to the Ram Janmabhoomi be opened. He even sent his then Home Minister Buta Singh to participate in the ‘Shilanyas’ for the Ram temple, which was organised by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad. Emboldened by Rajiv Gandhi’s gestures, radical Hindus brought down the disputed structure in December, 1992. But the Nehru-Gandhis always try to mutate history so that they appear squeaky clean. So, some years ago, Mr Rahul Gandhi made the extraordinary claim that if a member of his family had been the Prime Minister in December, 1992, the disputed Babri structure would not have been razed to the ground. In other words, he was trying to blame PV Narasimha Rao and trick the Muslims into forgetting Rajiv Gandhi’s role in the affair. But, nobody is fooled by such statements, because even today the Sikhs ask: “Who was Prime Minister during the deadly week beginning October 31, 1984IJ”
So, then, what is the moral of the storyIJ If Mr Singh had the kind of swabhiman that the people think the Prime Minister ought to have, he would never have been nominated for the job by the family in 2004. This being the case, I think the people of India were wholly unreasonable in expecting him to suddenly assert himself and throw in his resignation after Mr Gandhi’s statement a fortnight ago. It is simply not possible to acquire a backbone overnight!