Sonia Gandhi8217;s status

While the extent of Yadav8217;s role in these developments is debatable, the point to be noted is that Fernandes and the BJP consider all those 230-odd MPs who gave a written undertaking to support a Congress-led government unpatriotic. In other words, the BJP has made opposition to Sonia Gandhi a touchstone of patriotism. Conversely, Fernandes invests her with patriotism as she herself had refused power when it was presented to her almost on a platter in 1991. Incidentally, in the only instance of its kind, it was a BJP candidate whose nomination papers for the 1998 Lok Sabha elections were rejected because of the doubtful nationality of the candidate concerned.

The hysterical reaction of the BJP MPs, who disrupted a specially convened session of the Lok Sabha to pass the Union Budget, to the possibility of Sonia Gandhi becoming Prime Minister was a giveaway. Taking a cue from the BJP, Telugu Desam chief Chandrababu Naidu has been relentlesslyattacking Sonia Gandhi for her Italian ancestry and suggesting that it is unpatriotic to support her. It is more a sign of desperation than strength that the preeminent political party and its allies should question the Indianness of a leader when the Constitution had settled the issue once and for all.

India is one of the countries with the strictest immigration laws, though there are millions of illegal immigrants in the country. But, once citizenship is granted to a person, he or she is entitled to all the rights and privileges of any other citizen. This is the case in almost all the countries save a few like the United States, whose uniqueness calls for a digression. Unlike India, the US is a nation of immigrants and it was to ward off any threat of a possible takeover that it was incorporated into its Constitution that only a person born in that country can become its president. This was the argument on which a BJP member moved a private member8217;s Bill in Parliament to preclude the possibility of SoniaGandhi becoming the prime minister but the party later chickened out on the issue.

Not to talk of foreigners, in the Protestant ethos that prevailed in the US at that time, even the adherents of the Catholic faith were suspects for they used a foreign language in their worship Latin and was loyal to a foreign prelate Pope. It was during the Second World War, when the Catholics and the Protestants fought shoulder to shoulder, that the mutual fears were removed facilitating the eventual election of a Catholic as President in 1960 8212; John Fitzgerald Kennedy. But all other posts, including membership in the Senate and the House of Representatives, is open to all its naturalised citizens. There are instances when a first-generation immigrant like Henry Kissinger held the second most important job in the USA. Nearer home, a penniless job-seeker from Kerala, Chengaraveettil Raman Nair, went on to become President of Singapore. In Germany, notorious for xenophobia, another Indian is the mayor of a small town inthe state of Brandenburg, whose ambition is to become a member of the Federal legislature.

But the fears that the founding fathers of the American Constitution nursed were unwarranted in India, where one of the first acts of the government after Independence was to ask Lord Mountbatten to stay on. Nowhere else in the world has an independent nation conducted itself in this manner and entirely of its own volition. It is often cited as an instance of India8217;s large-heartedness and tolerance.

India has in its chequered history attracted countless foreigners who found a new home in this country and stayed on to serve its people. One such was Margaret Noble, who earned fame as Sister Nivedita, about whom Swami Vivekananda wrote, 8220;Whenever I think of her, I am reminded of Oscar Wilde8217;s The Nightingale and the Rose8221; and another Mother Teresa. Of course, it is fallacious to compare them to Sonia Gandhi, who is a matrimonial Indian.

Indian tradition has it that the daughter-in-law, whatever hernationality and culture, is accepted in the family without grudge. This follows, perhaps, from Manu8217;s prescription that a woman8217;s husband is her highest god, that apart from him she needs no rites, no vows and no fasts. The tradition has never discouraged transnational marriages: legend has it that for Sita8217;s swayamvar in Videha, the grooms came from far-off nations, including Lord Ram from Ayodhya, who won her hand. In the case of Damayanti of the Kingdom of Berar, the suitors even included Indra and other divine personae, who fell for her charms, though she chose Nala of the Kingdom of Nishada.

It is this acceptance of the daughter-in-law in the Indian family that emboldened Sonia Gandhi and her daughter Priyanka Vadra to enter the famed Tirupati temple a few months ago when nearly 300 years ago Pierre Mauduit, a French Jesuit and pioneering Sanskrit scholar, who was martyred at Karveypondi in Tamil Nadu in 1711, stopped short of entering it though it was one of his great ambitions to do so.

Theincongruity of the BJP questioning Sonia Gandhi8217;s credentials while wooing even third-generation Indians settled in foreign countries with offers of passport-like People of Indian Origin PIO cards at 1,000 each cannot be lost sight of. Sonia Gandhi has in recent weeks proved how unequal she is to the task of providing leadership; she even needs a written text to say yes or no to a straight question from the Press. But, in a democracy, it is for the people to choose her or dump her. There is no patriotism involved in the choice.