Quote:The Congress's censorship goes on. After objecting to certain parts of Prakash Jha's movie Rajneeti, the party is now up in arms against Madrid-based writer Javier Moro's novel based on its president Sonia Gandhi's life.

The Spanish book is called El Sari Rojo (The Red Sari, subtitled When Life is the Price of Power), a reference to the red sari Sonia wore on her wedding day, “one that Nehru wove while he was in jail”. First published in October 2008, the book has already been translated into Italian, French and Dutch, and an English translation by Peter Hearn is ready for publication.



And the trouble has begun for The Red Sari.



In an email, Moro, 55, said that Sonia's lawyers, including Congress spokesperson Abhishek Singhvi, “have just written to my Italian and Spanish publishers to demand the withdrawal of the book from the stores. Nobody understands very well why, but that's what they are up to”.



Moro thinks that the Congress leaders “did not like the recreation of her life in Italy as told in my book”.



Singhvi, who said he was handling the legal matter for Sonia and who affirmed that Sonia was aware of the issue, said: “It is time Moro stopped distorting facts and misrepresenting details. He knows well that both he and his publishers have been sent legal notices informing them that the published work is completely unauthorised, defamatory and salacious.”



When pointed out that the book is a novel, not a biography, Singhvi replied, “There is no question of fictionalising a living person.”



The novel which, according to Moro's website, has already sold 2,30,000 copies in Spain and Latin America, opens on May 24, 1991, with Rajiv Gandhi's coffin “lying in the great hall of Teen Murti House”.



“Now it is time to say goodbye,” Moro writes. “Sonia places an offering on the body over the heart. It is made of camphor, cardamom, cloves and sugar and it's supposed to help remove the imperfections of the soul.... Through the television cameras, the world discovers this stoic woman who reminds everyone of Jacqueline Kennedy twenty-eight years before in Arlington.”



Speaking over the telephone from Spain, Moro said, “Sonia's legal counsel even objected to a part in the book where Sonia wonders, after Rajiv's assassination, whether she should return to Italy on her mother's advice. I think they would like to believe that Sonia had been thoroughly Indianised by then and would not even consider going back to Italy.”



He added caustically, “They would much prefer that she had been born in Delhi — and from a Brahmin family, if possible.”



Moro claimed that before the publication of the novel, the manuscript had been sent to Sonia through her sister Nadia, who knows Spanish. “There was no response then,” he said.



The novel mentions Christian von Stieglitz as “the friend who introduced her to Rajiv when they were students”, describes Congressmen persuading a reluctant Sonia to accept the presidency of the party, and then, in flashback, goes to the “village of Lusiana in the Asiago mountains in the foothills of the Alps”.



There, “in accordance with tradition the neighbours tied pink ribbons to the bars on the windows and doors” when Sonia was born in December 1946, a post-war child. Writes Moro, A few days later, she was christened by the Lusiana parish priest and given the name of Edvige Antonia Albina Maino.” But her father Stefano called her Sonia. In this way, he kept the promise he made to himself after getting away from the Russian front with his life.



According to Moro's book, Stefano was part of Mussolini's army that was defeated by the Russians. There were thousands of prisoners, among them Stefano, who managed to escape together with other survivors. They succeeded in taking shelter in a farmhouse on the Russian steppes, where they lived for weeks under the protection of a peasant family.... As a tribute to the family that had saved his life, he decided to given his daughters Russian names.



Moro's book describes Sonia as going to a convent school in Giaveno where she only studied enough to keep out of trouble, but she was always smiling and helpful, played peacemaker between squabbling friends, learnt to ski and developed a love for reading. He says she was the only boarder who slept alone because of her asthma and coughing fits. Later, while studying in Turin, the idea of becoming an Alitalia stewardess, of earning a living while travelling round the world, began to seduce her. But that dream gradually changed into becoming a foreign language teacher or, even better, an interpreter in some international organisation such as the United Nations.



Her dog, Moro says, was called Stalin.



Moro said he travelled to Lusiana village and Orbassano, where the Mainos later moved, where any neighbour would tell you these stories. I havent written anything illegal. And in this day and age, you cannot suppress a book. The Congress, Moro said, thinks it can do to the rest of the world what it does to a local hack. It is actually giving me free publicity.



Meanwhile, Roli Books is holding talks with Moro and his Barcelona-based publishers Seix Barral for bringing out the English translation of El Sari Rojo in India. We will be publishing the book,” said Pramod Kapoor of Roli, but it is too early to say when.” Asked if he would be inviting a legal notice, he said, It is something Mr Singhvi the lawyer can comment on.



Moro said he was absolutely sure that an Indian publisher would be served a legal notice. âAnd when that happens we would know the strength of Indian democracy.



Moro's earlier books too have revolved around India, including Five Past Midnight in Bhopal, which he co-authored with Dominique Lapierre, and Passion India on the flamenco dancer Anita Delgado who married the Maharaja of Kapurthala in the early 20th century.

Quote:[size="5"]An empress of India in new clothes[/size]

John MacLithonFirst Published : 12 Nov 2010 12:23:00 AM ISTLast Updated : 12 Nov 2010 12:54:07 AM IST



Like Sonia Gandhi, I am a Westerner and a brought-up Christian. Like Sonia Gandhi, I have lived in India many years and I have adopted this country as my own.



But the comparison ends there. I did land in India with a certain amount of prejudices, clichés and false ideas, and I did think in the enthusiasm of my youth to become a missionary to bring back Indian ‘pagans’ to the ‘true god’. But the moment I stepped in India I felt that there was nothing much that I could give to India, rather it was India which was bestowing me. In fact in all my years here India has given me so much — professionally, spiritually, sentimentally. Most Westerners, who come here, still think they are here to ‘give’ something to a country, which, unconsciously of course, they think is lesser than theirs. It was true of the British, it was true of Mother Teresa, it is true of Sonia Gandhi.



It is a fact that Sonia brought discipline, order and cohesion into the Indian National Congress. But the amount of power that she, a person of foreign origin, an elected MP like hundreds of others, possesses should frighten her. All the television channels report without a blink that Maharashtra CM rushes to Delhi to meet Sonia Gandhi to plead for his life. But should not Chavan have gone to the prime minister first?



The CBI blatantly and shamelessly quashed all injunctions against Ottavio Quattrocchi and even allowed him to get away with billions of rupees which he had stolen from India. Yet, without batting an eyelid, and with the Indian media turning a blind eye, it goes ruthlessly after the chief minister of the most efficiently run state, the most corruption free. Today the Congress, with Sonia’s overt or silent consent, pays crores of rupees to buy MPs to topple non-Congress governments. Her governors shamelessly hijack democracy by twisting the law.



[size="5"]Are Indians aware that their country has entered a state of semi-autocracy where every important decision comes from a single individual residing in her fortress of 10 Janpath [/size]surrounded by dozens of security men, an empress of India? Do they know that the huge amounts of the scams, whether the 2G, the CWG, or the Adarsh housing society scam, do not go into politicians’ pockets (only a fraction), but to the coffers of the Congress for the next general elections, and more than anything to please Sonia Gandhi? Nobody seems to notice what is happening under the reign of Sonia Gandhi.



That an Arundhati Roy is allowed to preach secession in India, whereas on the other hand the Congress government has been going after the army, the last body in India to uphold the time-honoured values of the Kshatriyas — courage, honour, devotion to the Motherland. They alone today practise true secularism, never differentiating between a Muslim or Hindu soldier and who for a pittance daily give their lives to their country. First it was the attempt of a caste census, a divide-and-rule ploy if there is one; then there are the first signs that the government is thinking about thinning down the presence of the Indian army in the Kashmir valley, which will suit Pakistan perfectly. And now there is the Adarsh housing society scam in which the army officers, at the worst, were innocently dragged into it. We know now that it was the politicians of the Congress who benefited the most out of it.



It would be impossible in France, for example, to have a non-Christian tell a Hindu (who is a non-elected president or PM) to be the absolute ruler of the country behind the scenes, superseding even the PM. There are many capable people in the Congress. Why can’t a billion Indians find one of their own, who will understand the complexity and subtlety of India, to govern themselves? Not only that, but her very presence at the top has unleashed forces, visible and invisible that are detrimental to the country. There is nothing wrong in espousing the best of the values of the West — democracy, technological perfection, higher standards of living — but many of the institutions are crumbling in the West: two out of three marriages end in divorce, kids shoot each other, parents are not cared for in their old age, depression is rampant and Westerners are actually looking for answers elsewhere, in India notably.



One does not understand this craze to Westernise India at all costs, while discarding its ancient values. Sonia Gandhi should do well to remember that there still are 850 million Hindus in India, a billion worldwide and that whatever good inputs were brought by different invasions, it is the ancient values of spirituality behind Hinduism which have made India so special and which gives it today unique qualities making an Indian Christian different from an American Christian, or an Indian Muslim different from a Saudi Muslim. It is an insult to these tolerant Hindus to show United States President Barack Obama as his first input of the Indian capital the tomb of Humayun, a man who slaughtered Hindus in thousands, taking Hindu women and children as captives. He even subjected his elder brother Kamran to brutal torture, gauging his eyes out and pouring lemon into them.



[size="5"]The tragedy of India is that it was colonised for too long. And unlike China, it always looks to the West for a solution to its problems. Sonia Gandhi, whatever her qualities, is just an incarnation of that hangover, an empress of India in new clothes.[/size]

(The writer is the author of Hindutva, sex & adventures)

E-mail: john.maclithon@gmail.com

Quote:Union Minister Salman Khurshid says that Congress chief Sonia Gandhi holds the 'real power' in the UPA coalition though Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was very much in charge of the government. "Of course everybody knows that she (Sonia Gandhi) is the real power, but he (Manmohan Singh) is the real Prime Minister," Corporate and Minority Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid told CNN-IBN on its Devil's Advocate programme.

Khurshid's reponse came when he was asked whether the real power in India was Sonia Gandhi and not Singh.

Quote:[size="5"]Rahul Gandhi, after graduating worked at the Monitor Group[/size], a management consulting firm run by Michael Porter.

Quote:It reads like Libyan government propaganda, extolling the importance of Moammar

Gadhafi, his theories on democracy, and his “core ideas on individual freedom.’’

But the 22-page proposal for a book on Khadafy was written by [color="#FF0000"]Monitor Group[/color], a Cambridge-based consultant firm founded by Harvard professors. The management consulting firm received $250,000 a month from the Libyan government from 2006 to 2008 for a wide range of services, including writing the book proposal, bringing prominent academics to Libya to meet Khadafy “to enhance international appreciation of Libya’’ and trying to generate positive news coverage of the country.

“The really nefarious aspect of this is that it reinforced in Khadafy’s mind that he truly was an international intellectual world figure, and that his ideas of democracy were to be taken seriously,’’ said Dirk Vandewalle, associate professor at Dartmouth College and author of “A History of Modern Libya.’’

Quote:Varun Gandhi on Sunday tied the nuptial knot with Bengali girl Yamini Roy Chowdhury at a temple on the banks of the Ganges in Varanasi. 30-year-old Varun, who was in a silk 'kurta' and 'dhoti' with an orange 'angvastram', got married to Yamini, a graphic designer, at a ceremony in Kamakoti Temple which was presided over by Kanchi Shankaracharya Swami Jayendra Saraswati.

Yamini, an alumni of Shantiniketan in West Bengal and Delhi's St Stephens college, wore a pink saree which had been gifted by Indira Gandhi to her daughter-in-law Maneka, an MP from Aonla in Uttar Pradesh, 40 years ago. Varun, a BJP MP from Pilibhit, is the youngest of the Gandhis.



The ceremony took place between 0730 hrs and 0900 hrs in the presence of a select gathering that besides Maneka included the girl's mother Aruna Vasudev. However,[color="#FF0000"] no one from Sonia Gandhi's family was present.[/color]



The marriage took place as per Sanatan-Hindu customs. "The marriage went off very well. I have blessed the couple," Jayendra Saraswati told reporters in Varanasi.



The reception scheduled for March 8 in Delhi has been cancelled following the death of Amteshwar Anand, mother of Maneka.



The 'haldi' ceremony of Varun had taken place at the Kamakoti temple last evening.

Quote:Anne-Marie Slaughter was considered one of the most influential officials at the State Department until she abruptly departed last month. She served as State's director of policy and planning, where she spearheading major initiatives for Clinton.



WND has learned Slaughter, who continues to advise both Clinton and the State Department, also has been listed as "official talent" for [size="5"]Monitor Group, the Gadhafi-paid organization[/size] that has come under fire in recent days for sending influential U.S. citizens on trips to Libya as part of an imaging effort for the Libyan dictator.



[size="5"]Monitor Group's project for Gadhafi was officially called "The Project to Enhance the Public Image of Libya and Moammar Gadhafi."[/size]



The group's official summary memo of the project, obtained by WND, says [size="5"]Monitor Group has also been in discussion with philanthropist George Soros about ways to "advocate on Libya's behalf."[/size]