P N Haksar is said to have advised Sonia Gandhi after her husband's death not to cross the Lakshman Rekha. Now that she has done it by entering the political arena, I hope she realises that she will have to face roughness and vulgarity in the days ahead. I wish she had stayed out. She has enjoyed a position which gave her prestige and sympathy as a widow of the assassinated Prime Minister. Heads of state and visiting dignitaries called on her and, at official functions and banquets, she was seated next to the President or the Prime Minister. She was more than queen mother, respected and treated with circumspection. She wielded over successive central governments the type of influence which is difficult to define in terms of office or authority.It will be a different ball game now. Beginning from her days as an insurance agent during Sanjay Gandhi's extra-constitutional regime to her husband's involvement in the Bofors scandal, every incident will come out in the open. The indiscretions which have been forgotten and forgiven will be re-discussed threadbare. Many things, obscured by the dust of time, will be uncovered again. Dirty linen will be washed in the open and hung out to dry. Whether or not it is wise for political parties to go bare is a moot point, but the situation will leave Sonia Gandhi in a vulnerable position.Probably, she has been conscious of all this and had, therefore, remained distant from politics. But she had no option after the spate of resignations. She was reluctant to join the fray till the last minute. It must be so for otherwise, her close followers like Mani Shankar Aiyar and Mamata Banerjee would not have quit. One report has it that finally, some Congress leaders told her that she was morally responsible for the plight of the party since she was always there without being physically present.Whatever the reasons, she has taken upon herself an onerous responsibility. She will be blamed if the Congress does not do well. And the chances of the party emerging victorious are not many. The main reason is that the party has lost its ethos over the years. It has not evolved, and its presidents have only pulled down the Congress by playing unseemly games. The party has been controlled by men of straw. They were bound to change its very complexion. The spirit of sacrifice and selflessness it once represented is a thing of the past. The party is reduced now to a squabbling crowd of self-seekers jostling with one another for power, position and riches.Except for the fact that Sonia Gandhi will campaign, the party remains the same. The same faces, with the same reputations, with the same scheming minds dominate the Congress. How can voters put their faith in leaders who have failed them repeatedly? They are unclean in their lives and unclean in their functioning. There are few Congress leaders without blemish. Take the last Congress government. Former Prime Minister Narasimha Rao and 16 of his Cabinet colleagues have been found involved in one scam or the other.The degree of corruption and nepotism which came to prevail even in the early years of Congress rule horrified Gandhiji so much that he had said that he would ``go to any length to give the whole Congress organisation a decent burial, rather than put up with the corruption that is rampant.'' Today, the party's record is much worse, and the old guard has practically vanished.The Congress needs to be reformed at every level, but Sonia Gandhi has no time to cleanse the stables. Even those who claim to be ``Sonia's soldiers'' are not above board. People are sick of corruption and expect someone to sweep out the dirt that has accumulated in the party over the years. But she herself is not on a strong wicket. Her husband, once Mr Clean, has left behind a reputation which she has to live down. Sonia Gandhi, in fact, would do well to order a public audit of the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation.Corruption alone is not the Congress Achilles' heel. Communalism has also turned out to be one of its limitations. The alacrity with which some Congress leaders are leaving the party to join the BJP makes one wonder where the party's ideological commitment has gone. How long ago did the communalists start contaminating the party? I recall Rajiv Gandhi amended the Constitution to placate the Muslims over the Shah Bano maintenance judgment on the one hand and opened the locks of the Babri masjid to win over the Hindus on the other. Subsequently, he tried to win over fundamentalist opinion by allowing the shilanyas at the disputed site. When it came to Narasimha Rao, he took no precaution to stop the destruction of the Babri masjid. He even allowed a makeshift temple to come up at the site. Whether it lowered the stock of Rao or not is open to question, but there is no doubting that the Congress lost the Muslim electorate. The party took many years to offer even an apology.Recent developments are still more disconcerting. When people like P.R. Kumaramangalam and Bhagwad Jha Azad joined the BJP, one of its youthful leaders chided me: ``So these are your secularists for whom you called our party communal.'' I retorted: ``They are the pseudo-secularists whom the BJP always attacked.'' At best it was a riposte. But it does not repudiate the allegation that secularism has been a facade for many Congressmen. They wear the mask because they have come to believe that it wins them votes.Sonia Gandhi may also have to explain the excesses committed during the Emergency (1975-77) because she was part of the household where the entire conspiracy for authoritarian rule was hatched and executed. With the Press gagged, arbitrary arrests and detentions went on apace. One lakh people were detained without trial. Effective dissent was smothered, followed by a general erosion of democratic values. High-handed and arbitrary actions were carried out with impunity. Tyrants sprouted at all levels overnight, tyrants whose claim to authority was largely based on their proximity to the seat of power. The attitude of the general run of public functionaries was characterised by a paralysis of the will. The ethical considerations of public behaviour went beyond the mental grasp of people in office.The Congress is not what it was at one time. It has been going downhill relentlessly. Having stayed in power for four decades, the party has ceased to be aware of what is right and how to react to what is wrong. For many partymen the dividing line between right and wrong, moral and immoral has ceased to exist. Sonia Gandhi has a hard job ahead.
