archive: The bahu's inheritance
The bahu's inheritance
Jaya Jaitly
The Indian Express
June 28, 1999
Title: The bahu's inheritance
Author: Jaya Jaitly
Publication: The Indian Express
Date: June 28, 1999
For a woman who rejected an offer to head the Congress Party in 1991,
Sonia Gandhi has come a long way in revealing her true
colours. In Indian politics, when a political leader from an
illustrious family or a popular figure, bureaucrat or police
officer dies, the custom is to cash in on popular sympathy
and immediately give his widow or daughter a ticket to
fight the next election if no suitable male heirs are
available. Bahus are lower in the order of priority. The
woman concerned might learn to be a good parliamentarian or
legislator only if and after she is elected. The
Italian-born head of India's oldest political party, whose
USP is apparently being the bahu of a family that has
``sacrificed'' for the country is now taking whatever she
can get and even claiming the prime ministership before
having been required to contest any election.
Photo-ops and family connections don't make much of a
bio-data for the job of presiding over the destiny of a
billion people, but consider the number ofcakes Sonia Gandhi
has in her possession. In the early days of her widowhood
Manmohan Singh as finance minister gifted away Rs 100 crore
to her newly set-up Rajiv Gandhi Foundation. An NGO has to
show three years of work before the government grants it
even Rs 10,000. Yet Sonia got this whopping sum without
having to ask, and had to enact a hasty refusal to save
the finance minister embarrassment in Parliament. Since then
the RGF has received facilities and vast amounts of money
from the government. This includes a cheque for Rs 50 lakh
for its own charitable work, which the concerned ministry
was then shocked to see being presented to the Spastics
Society of Calcutta, headed by aunt-in-law Sudha Kaul. Free
tickets from Air India for participants of RGF seminars and
courtesy visits by foreign dignitaries were thoughtfully
facilitated by the MEA. On its governing body are
scam-tainted people on bail. Donors had their contributions
frozen when their scam links became public. Invitations to
Rashtrapati Bhavanand functions in the Central Hall of
Parliament even before being installed as head of the
largest opposition party also ensured photo-ops. A widows'
home in Hardwar, a project initiated and sponsored by the
Ministry of Welfare this year, suddenly found Sonia Gandhi
inaugurating it. A photo-op that was desperately sought by
K. Karunakaran and V. George was a visit to Sonia Gandhi
by disabled children who were part of a Ministry of Welfare
float on Republic Day this year. The concerned agencies
refused, despite repeated calls, including one from the bahu
herself.
The Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts quietly
changed its constitution to make Sonia Gandhi Chief Trustee
for life and removed the provision stipulating that the
President would be its visitor for a 10-year term, even
though it is a fully government-funded institution. This
convenient sleight of hand provides her with an extra
private secretary who is also given government accommodation.
The legacy of copyrights is stranger still.The government's
Publications Division holds the copyright of prime ministerial
speeches, including those of Jawaharlal Nehru. But in the
case of Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi, the copyright vests
with the family and its heirs. Similarly, the Nehru Memorial
Fund has published Letters to the Chief Ministers among the
selected works of Jawaharlal Nehru. The bulk of the writings
are from government files, but have been published by a
private trust headed by Sonia Gandhi. The royalties go to
``the family.''
Teen Murti House is a wholly government-owned property, yet
it houses the Nehru Memorial Fund, the Nehru Cambridge Trust
and the head office of the Kamla Nehru Hospital in
Allahabad, all of which are private trusts, naturally headed
by Sonia Gandhi. The Nehru Planetarium was built by the
Nehru Memorial Fund on government land without formal
permission. Naturally, the bahu is also the President of the
Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, although these are also
wholly government-funded bodies.The Congress was allocated
prime land by the government to build its headquarters on
Akbar Road in New Delhi. The Rs 9 crore building was never
occupied by the party. It is now in the possession of the
RGF.
Sonia Gandhi can hardly belabour the sacrifices of the
family of which she is now the prime beneficiary.
Unfortunately, Indira Gandhi's sacrifice was a result of her
disastrous Punjab policy. Rajiv Gandhi's owed to the Gandhi
family legacy of first training the LTTE and then sending
in the IPKF to destroy it. Disastrous policies cannot result
in sacrifices, no matter how tragic the assassinations were.
Neither the sacrifice of Mahatma Gandhi nor those of
thousands who died in the freedom struggle have encouraged
their descendants to lay claim to so much.
Apart from such material legacies, Sonia has taken over the
Congress presidentship in an ugly coup and obtained the
leadership of the Parliamentary Party through a hasty
amendment in the party's constitution. And in April she told
Jyoti Basu that shewanted to be prime minister.
The supporters of the ``foreigners have been accepted in
India'' theory constantly harp on the examples of Mother
Teresa and Annie Besant, as if Sonia Gandhi belongs to the
same philanthropic tradition. Because the RGF is flush with
government and private funds, photographs regularly appear of
Sonia Gandhi giving ambulances to the sick and wheelchairs
to the handicapped. However, Mother Teresa's life was one of
total self sacrifice. She did not play party politics on
the side or lay claim to the prime ministership. Annie
Besant's remarkable work was done on her own strength and
commitment without any country paying the astronomical costs
of her upkeep. Sonia Gandhi claims the precedent of a
Besant, the service of a Mother Teresa and prime
ministership besides. Quite a claim from a person whose
public interaction consists of 10-minute speeches consisting
of trite cliches written by ghosts. She has neither
demonstrated the intellectual ability of the khandaan's Nehru
norgained the political experience of the saas, Indira. As
for pati Rajiv, there is no harm in remembering that as
prime minister in his only stint in politics, he earned his
party a defeat in the general elections of 1989. Just being
married, producing heirs and being widowed is indeed the
role of most Indian bahus, but they have not yet become
the criteria for any of them to claim such a vast
inheritance, including the prime minister's chair.
The writer is General Secretary, Samata Party
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