Gathering Places
Gathering Places
Sonia Gandhi, widow of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi of India and leader of the opposition, is on the warpath. Her target: Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, head of the ruling coalition in India. Sonia Gandhi’s feud
with Vajpayee poses
wider dangersSonia wants Vajpayee to resign because a bribery scandal in the defense department has rocked his government. The crisis was triggered by reporters from a website who secretly filmed politicians, officials and army officers accepting bribes from journalists posing as arms dealers.
As the confrontation heats up, a Harvard professor named Richard Blackwill is preparing to go to New Delhi as the U.S ambassador. In announcing the nomination, President Bush said: "Bob Blackwill understands the important place India holds in my foreign policy agenda."
During the election campaign last fall, George W. Bush said the United States should "work with the Indian government, ensuring it is a force for stability and security in Asia. This should not undermine our longstanding relationship with Pakistan."
While the quarrel between Sonia Gandhi and Prime Minister Vajpayee is an internal affair, it could have wide implications. Any upheaval in India has the potential for conflict between Hindus and Muslims since tension between them simmers, ready to erupt. Any such eruption could draw Muslim Pakistan into the fray, with unforeseeable consequences
In the New Delhi scandal, George Fernandes, the outspoken minister for defense, has resigned and Vajpayee has ordered a judicial inquiry. But Sonia, as nearly everyone in India refers to her, says this is not enough. His government, she contends in words recalling those of now-President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo in the Philippines, has lost moral authority and must go.
Vajpayee, however, seems in no mood to oblige as he has enough support in Parliament to continue as prime minister. Therefore, Sonia has called on her party to take to the streets and not to rest till the government has been brought down. "We will fight every battle, wage every war, to ensure that the country is liberated from the shackles of this corrupt government," she thundered.
What Sonia does not seem to realize, however, is that the extra-constitutional path she is treading is fraught with danger. For the Bhratiya Janata Party (BJP) that Vajpayee heads, controlling India's destiny is not just a matter of politics or power. To understand the BJP psyche, one has to go into the origins of the party.
The RSS, or Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, a militant Hindu organization constitutes the backbone of the BJP and was founded during the British regime by B.K. Headgewar. He believed that India and Hindus had been trampled by Muslim invaders for centuries and should not be allowed to do so again. He founded the RSS, which today has an army of more than one million trained members. To pick a fight with them is asking for trouble.
At the moment, Sonia is acting like Megawati Sukarnoputri, who helped to push President General Suharto of Indonesia out of office. But Sonia is no Megawati, who is a daughter of the soil and learned the ways of Indonesian politics from her father, Sukarno, a hero of Indonesia's struggle for independence.
In contrast, Sonia is an outsider despite being the leader of the party that ruled India for 45 of the 53 years since Indian attained independence. Born in Italy, she went to school in England, where she met Rajiv Gandhi, son of Indira Gandhi, the late prime minister. They fell in love and married.
Sonia has long since become an Indian citizen. She wears a sari, puts a red dot on her forehead, and addresses rallies in heavily accented Hindi. No matter how hard she tries, however, she cannot become something she is not. Sonia claims that she is as much an Indian as any other. Her opponents retort, "She is a foreigner and will remain a foreigner."
Sonia is under pressure from her party not to let this political opportunity pass and to adopt extra-constitutional means to achieve their objective. It is a temptation that Sonia should resist and limit her battles to constitutional means.
Inder Kapur, an Indian journalist who
lives in Honolulu, recently visited
New Delhi for six months.