Hum HindustaniWith three dismissals and one run out; the scenes outside 10, Janpath which resemble Eden Garden on a particularly hysterical day; and television networks providing wail-to-wail coverage, Congress politics is beginning to resemble World Cup cricket by the hour.I would even say it is a great substitute for the real thing. Why bother about the labours of Azhar's Boys, such as they are, when there is more thrilling action going on right here - with the added twist that the captain of the team is presently a non-playing one?If it can prolong this innings, I would say the Congress has a good chance of winning the next election, if only because it kept the nation thoroughly entertained during a period when its cricket let it down badly. Of course, I can't think of a single cola company which would pay good money to sponsor Pranab Mukherjee, but this is only a minor consideration.But if the Congress were to win I, for one, would be broken-hearted. The BJP is, after all, no meancontender in the entertainment stakes. It has this unerring knack of spinning yarn out of thin air and then proceeding to get the country tied up in knots while attempting to unravel it.A rare quality this. It requires genius to zero in on a truly empty issue, one that resounds in its irrelevance, one which has the least to do with boring problems like drinking water and literacy, and make it an article of faith for the entire country. So it was bricks, bricks, bricks, temple, temple, temple, kar sewa, kar sewa, kar sewa, Saraswati Vandana, Saraswati Vandana, Saraswati Vandana, conversion, conversion, conversion, foreigner, foreigner, foreigner.Notice the in-built obsolescence in these issues. Today, the bricks are crumbling into dust somewhere; the temple is on the back burner; the kar sewaks have departed; the notes of the Saraswati Vandana have melted into soundlessness; and nobody talks of conversions and The Great International Conspiracy Being Perpetrated on the Nation any more. That is all passe,yesterday's natter. Today, it's all about Sonia Gandhi's Indianness or lack of it. See what I mean, who needs good governance when good slogans work just as well and are certainly more telegenic?I have heard this great debate taking place in drawing rooms and kitchens, in board rooms and bedrooms, at bus stops and cinema theatres. I have carefully considered the arguments and have come to the following conclusion: two sets of people seem to have screamed the most about Sonia Gandhi being a foreigner, and it's time we got up and gave them a hand for their indubitable patriotism. They are the NRIs, or our much esteemed Non Resident Indians, and the Bajrang Dal, which has incidentally plans to issue questions every week to the Congress president on the issue of her extraction.The NRIs, having sworn lifetime allegiance to the Star Spangled Banner, the Dollar on Which We Trust, and the Great Mac Which We All Digest, are now free to expound at great length on what really constitutes Hindustan andHindustaniyat. Technically, they may not be citizens of this country, but they are the next best thing Netizens. In case you don't know this, Netizens vote with their five thousand dollar IBM laptops on crucial questions like: should Sonia Gandhi eat bisibelibhat four times a day to prove her Indianness? (90 per cent say yes, 1 per cent say no, 9 per cent are undecided.)The Bajrang Dalis may not have laptops, but they have the next best thing a trishul and a bandana worn around the head as concrete and visible proof of their citizenship. They are quite clear about what constitutes true patriotism. It could entail breaking into the homes of deviant artists and breaking the light bulbs therein, laying seige to a mosque or two, or swooping down on vulnerable men of God from foreign lands and their children as they sleep in jeeps somewhere, and set them ablaze amidst stirring cries of Bajrang Bali ki jai.Now who was it who said patriotism, or at least the mindless variety of patriotism, is the virtue ofthe vicious?
