This is racism, friends

The fundamental principle of our democracy is that it does not discriminate between citizens on any grounds at all and certainly not on grounds of place of birth. You wish to undermine this principle. Why? To stop one individual in her tracts — or because some larger issue relating to an entire class of citizens is involved? If theformer, no change in our basic law is required: you have only to persuade your party colleagues that someone else should be projected as prime minister. If the latter, the present context is the worst possible one in which to bring such a proposal.

What kind of jurisprudence would it be to amend a basic law only to debar one individual?

You dress up your desire to see her out of the running by saying the “prime minister (should) have some track record in public life”. Rajiv Gandhi had virtually no track record in public life when the entire party begged him to take the oath over the tearful protests of his wife. All three of you had a longer track record in public life. None of you protested then. Indeed, one of you — I refer to Sharad Pawar — who had walked out of the Congress in protest against Indira Gandhi, a Congress leader with a long track record, sought readmission to the Congress when its leadership was taken over by a leader of far less experience than himself.

Your letter says, “Afterthe demise of Rajiv the party felt orphaned”. It certainly did not feel orphaned when Sharad Pawar walked out. It felt orphaned because in losing Rajiv Gandhi, a leader who came to high office with a brief track record of public life as Sonia Gandhi holds today, the party was rejuvenated and united as it could not have been under any other successor to Indira Gandhi.

You yourselves point out that after Rajiv Gandhi, “like most orphans its condition deteriorated”. Why? After all, in P.V. Narasimha Rao and Si-taram Kesri the party had at its head two of the most venerable leaders it has ever had — Narasimha Rao’s track record stretched back half a century to the struggle against the Nizam and Kesri’s even longer, right back to his enrolling into the party, as he delights in telling, at the age of twelve. If a long record is all it takes to recover from being orphaned, how is it that, according to your own admission, the party’s condition deteriorated? From 1991 to 1998, seven long years, Sonia Gandhikept herself determinedly out of public life. Why then, to quote you, did you and that includes each one of the three of you “request” her “to take over the reins of the party”?

And what has been the inexperienced Sonia Gandhi’s track record in the past year? According to you, her “presence in the party gave it new life. The disintegrati-on stopped.” You have commended her “maturity and dignity” in office. Sonia Ga-ndhi, you say, has “kept the fold together, consulted with senior colleagues and motivated the youth.” It is you, not I, who have contrasted her one year with all the years of her post-Rajiv predecessors: “With the slow decline of the Congress party, the for-ces of communalism, violence and fundamentalism grew from strength to strength … The poor, the underprivileged, the minorities, and the youth were disillusioned with the party”. Quite. That is the condition to which the earlier leadership, notwithstanding its age, experience and venerability, had reduced the party and thecountry.

No wonder, as you say, “right thinking people were leaving the Congress”. I was among those right thinking people. None of you were. I am delighted to have returned. The party, thanks to Sonia Gandhi, is bouncing back. Under her leadership, and with her as our star-campaigner, we have wrested back Delhi and Rajasthan not by a whisker but with massive three-quarter majorities and, against the conventional wisdom, comfortably retained Madhya Pradesh. In a mere one year, the country has placed more confidence in the Congress under Sonia Gandhi than it did for seven long, bitter years under an indubitably Indian-born, long-experienced and ancient alternative leadership.

That is nakedly clear in your letter. Your objection is to what you “hope is only a temporary aberration. We believe that this is the work of a few self-seeking individuals. We pray that you disengage yourself from such minds”. And, presumably, substitute these minds with minds like your own.

Faction fighting of this order hasnothing to do with the civic rights of Sonia Gandhi or any other naturalised citizen of this country. In order to oust one set of advisers and install yourselves in their place, you want to change the Constitution of India? Have you thought for a moment whether your mugshot on a poster — any one of yours — will get the party a tithe of the votes that Sonia Gandhi’s has done — and will do? Do you really believe your track record of public life — some of which is extremely dubious — will be more acceptable to the public? Or do you think people will vote for you because of the colour of your skin?

Not all the many years you have spent in politics has apparently taught you that it is not the people of India who elect the prime minister but the parliamentary party which wins at the polls that elects its leader, who is then invited by the President to form the government. When the time comes, you are welcome to attempt to become leader of the Congress Parliamentary Party, as at least one of you tried twicebefore to do — and failed. Your aim is to pre-empt the CPP’s decision by forcing the one person who can beat each and all of you hands down to withdraw in advance from the race by denying to her, and all other naturalised Indians, the civic rights that stand guaranteed to them under the Constitution. This is racism. And, therefore, unacceptable.

Yours,Aiyar is a Congress party official but these views are his own