Sonia restores Feroze8217;s place in family

NEW DELHI, June 15: For almost 40 years, the man who gave the Congress' first family its famous Gandhi surname lay forgotten in a decrepit A...

NEW DELHI, June 15: For almost 40 years, the man who gave the Congress8217; first family its famous Gandhi surname lay forgotten in a decrepit Allahabad cemetery. Not anymore.

Yesterday, Feroze Gandhi8217;s links with the Nehru-Gandhi family were at last restored when Sonia Gandhi, the Italian-born Congress president, paid homage to her father-in-law whom she never saw alive. In doing so, Sonia reversed an avoidable tradition in the family where nobody visited Feroze8217;s last resting place.

According to Congress veterans, not even Feroze8217;s wife Indira or his sons Rajiv and Sanjay ever travelled to the unkempt place known as the Feroze Gandhi Memorial. In a land where Prime Ministers and even non-premiers are given large tracts of land as samadhis, this was curious.

Apparently, the homage to Feroze wasn8217;t initially part of Sonia8217;s itinerary but she turned the tour around just so that she could make the visit. It came as an important, and poignant, moment of her first mass contact programme after becoming theCongress president.

Though it isn8217;t yet clear whether Sonia8217;s paying homage to Feroze would in any way better the fortunes of his memorial, the Congress chief is due to travel to other parts of the country to meet those who are being termed quot;grassroot peoplequot;. Following on the Uttar Pradesh tour are likely visits to Rajasthan and Andhra Pradesh over the next few weeks.

For three days, Sonia stayed in Swaraj Bhavan 8211; a house originally bought by Motilal Nehru in 1900. Motilal stayed there for two decades and then shifted to Anand Bhavan donating Swaraj Bhavan to the Congress. It was the first party headquarters and Sonia went all the way back to hunt for the way ahead for the troubled party.

For a start she took a leaf out of Indira8217;s book. Solely concentrating on Dalits and Muslims, Sonia spent all her time in the dingy interiors of poverty-stricken people and dirty bylanes of Allahabad8217;s suburbs. In her time, Indira had almost total control of this segment of the society which faithfully voted her topower repeatedly.

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Sonia is seeking a similar fraternity with these important classes of India8217;s society. For the record, she was in Bamroli, Bakshikurd, Naini, Chail, Sadar, Dalapur and Dasoti colonies of Allahabad. All are populated by either Dalits or Muslims.

Interestingly, Sonia is apparently replacing the word Dalit with Harijan in the Congress lexicon. Mahatma Gandhi had first coined the term Harijan which swiftly turned obsolete with the rise of the BSP which preferred the term Dalit to Harijan. But in Sonia8217;s first mass contact tour, the party kept referring to quot;Harijan bastisquot;, never once using the term Dalit.

Over three days ending yesterday, Sonia sat with the poor, visited two hospitals, chatted with victims of polio, malnutrition and TB, strode the lanes of Allahabad and took her first important steps in discovering India. It may not be enough to revive the Congress but more such attempts are in the offing.