05-08-2004, 10:25 PM
The Sonia Club
April 30, 2004
Everybody but (the answer is at the end of this article, don't cheat,
wait till the last line!) wants Sonia Gandhi to become prime minister
of India.
It is true there is nothing wrong with Sonia Gandhi, not even her
white skin, contrary to what the RSS may say. In fact she is probably
a good person, certainly a devoted mother, who educated her children
with dignity and protected them the best way she could, after the
terrible death of her husband (and her mother-in-law before) which
must have shattered them all.
Surely also, she possesses other qualities which endear her to fellow
party workers. She may even like India in her own way. Thus her
Western origin is no bar to her becoming PM of India.
After all, India had a Sister Nivedita, born in Ireland, very white
looking, who was not only the most faithful disciple of Swami
Vivekananda, but also loved her adopted country so much that she -- a
member of her Majesty's empire -- did not hesitate to encourage and
help nationalists such as Sri Aurobindo. In the early 1900s, people
like Sri Aurobindo were advocating throwing the British out, by
force if necessary, when the Congress was only timidly asking for a
few crumbs in the framework of an English India.
Definitely, Nivedita could have been the leader of the Opposition --
and why not -- one day prime minister of India.
Is this why most of the Indian English speaking media is projecting
Sonia and her children in a big way, giving them diplomas,
achievements and an aura which they don't necessarily have?
Look, for instance, how they often portrayed L K Advani's yatra in
unfavourable light, or showed him with a frowning expression, while
The Times of India kept printing such sweet photos of Rahul lovingly
wiping his mother's face, as she was filing her nomination in Rae
Bareli, or how NDTV interviewed Priyanka, with Rajdeep Sardesai
asking her all the right questions, so that she came out as the
loving sister and daughter wanting only to help an India beleaguered
by castes and Hindu militantism?
Rahul has become their darling: nothing can be wrong with him, his
looks, his innocence, his Spanish girlfriend (shows he is open-minded
and not casteist), his diplomas (even though most Indian youth are
much more educated than him). In the US, one would ask about his
religion: can an American president be anything than Christian, as he
has anyway to swear on the Bible when taking office? And what if
Rahul is a Christian? 'We media persons, even though we may be born
Hindus, are against Brahmanic intolerance.'
The BJP should not be complacent here: the Congress has scored quite
a few points, thanks to Sonia's children and the help they get from
the press. India loves nothing more than good children looking after
their widowed mothers. And what the Western press calls dynasty --
with the Indian press promptly aping the word without thinking
twice -
- is nothing more than the innate respect that Hindus have for family
bonding and family values.
The Indian media has redeemed itself, in some manner, by having
printed the damaging article of the Swedish policeman who pointed a
direct finger at Quattrochi and Rajiv Gandhi in the matter of the
Bofors bribe. But then, editors like N Ram of The Hindu, had little
choice, however much they may root for Mrs Gandhi: after all, The
Hindu broke the story!
However, not all newspapers gave space to the new accusations and
some chose to ignore them, or to put them on the seventh page in
small characters, with the result that the story fizzled out and once
more Quattrochi is off the hook.
The Western press loves Sonia even more -- I know, I am a Westerner
myself! I remember one of my ex-colleagues at Le Figaro, one of the
leading French newspapers, once wrote: 'She will bring sanity to
Indian politics.' By sanity he meant probably that she will usher
sound Western good commonsense in the muddy world of Indian politics.
It may be also an unconscious colonial superiority complex that
reincarnates itself in a politically correct manner, as it was
already expressed by industrialised powers when India became
nuclear: 'We can handle this, but not you, you underdeveloped
Brownies!'
There is certainly also an element of secret Christian
prosetylisation in it, although many foreign correspondents preach to
be atheists, [they see] a covert battle between the virtue of the
only true monotheistic faith, Christianity, as symbolised by Sonia,
versus the polytheist pagans, as incarnated by the BJP's
Gods. Many Western embassies are also furtively hoping for her
ascending the Indian throne. Their mouth is watering when they
visualise an Italian as the prime minister of a billion people: it
will all throw them back to the glorious times of the British Raj,
for which many Westerners are nostalgic, without mentioning the fact
that it would make their task much easier ('after all, we
belong to the same White Exclusive Club').
Even many of my friends in Auroville, Pondicherry, are hoping for the
BJP's downfall and Sonia's ascent, not understanding that such a
controversial and spiritualised project as Auroville finds more
sympathy within the BJP than with Sonia Gandhi, who does not care
much about Indian spirituality.
And lastly but not least (it goes without saying that most of India's
Muslims and Christians are going to vote for her), many of the world
Indologists, that is the experts on India, have bet their shirts that
she will win. In fact most of them have been predicting the BJP's
downfall for the last seven years!
Leading India specialists, such as Frenchman Christophe Jaffrelot,
who has devoted entire volumes to Hindu fundamentalism, has been
persistently advising the French government since the first BJP
government in 1997, 'that Hindutva is a passing phenomenon, because
Indian society is basically "secular" and that the Congress, the
truly pro-minority party of India is bound to come back to power.'
In fact there is not an election, an important event in India,
without Mr Jaffrelot and his peers, all belonging to the French
government-sponsored CNRS and his affiliates (which have close ties
with JNU and Romila Thapar), publishing some articles in prestigious
newspapers like Le Monde on the dangers of Hindu nationalism 'which
promotes casteism, untouchability and hatred towards Muslims'
(remember Ayodhya, they have been saying for 12 years).
No wonder the French are only the 11th biggest investor in India,
when after the nuclear test and the World Cup, they were hugely
popular here and could have done anything.
What are then the criterion to become an Indian prime minister, if
colour and origin are no bar?
First, to know the reality of India. This country is so diverse, so
huge, so contradictory sometimes, that unless you physically
experience it, from Cape Comorin to Ladakh, unless you have met its
people freely, shared their joys and problems, suffered form the heat
and the cold, and hunger, you do not know India. The trouble with Mrs
Gandhi, her children -- and most Western correspondents -- is that
they sit in Delhi, an arrogant city which thinks it understands
everything, which wants to decide on everything, whereas it is
totally decentered from the rest of the country.
There, you bathe in the vicious circle of journalists' parties and
embassies' cocktails, where the same ideas, the same small talk is
perpetually floating around. And unfortunately for Sonia, first
because she lived a sheltered life in Delhi with her friends when her
husband was a pilot, and then later because of security which totally
cut her off from the real people of India, except in sanitized bits,
she is hopelessly ignorant of the reality of India, like her
husband was before her and her children will be after her.
In fact, as a fellow Westerner and European (and Latin, as Italy and
France share the same linguistic roots), everytime I pass her
fortress of 10, Janpath, I am shamed by the fact that she lives there
like an empress of medieval times, brazenly surrounded by hundreds of
security guards and sycophants fawning around her, while at the same
time innocent Hindus in the valley of Kashmir are still being
butchered without anyone giving a damn. I don't understand how she
cannot see it herself.
Secondly and most important, you cannot comprehend India unless you
practice, at least in some measure, its spirituality. For the
greatness of India, whatever the foreign correspondents or the
Indologists say, is its dharma, not Hinduism, but beyond Hinduism,
the timeless Vedic spirituality, which has given the world
hatha yoga, meditation, Pranayama, Ayurveda and the concept of the
Avatar which allows for religious tolerance. And you don't have to be
some highhanded guru or yogi meditating in his cave. No, the most
humble villager in India practices spontaneously this spirituality.
He is born with it, it is in his genes. He accepts innately that God
may be Krishna, or Jesus, or Buddha, or even Mohammad, who said right
things for his epoch, but whose words were never adapted to
modern times.
Whereas the Delhiwallah thinks he is tolerant and secular because he
accepts the fact that Sonia Gandhi, an Italian, and a Christian can
become the prime minister of his country where they are 850 millions
Hindus, one of the most tolerant, spiritualised, brilliant people in
the world today. But by this he only shows that he still has a
colonised mentality and that Macaulay did good work. And you don't
even have to be a Hindu: most of India's minorities, had, once upon a
time, soaked a little bit of that tolerant and all inclusive
outlook, so that a Syrian Christian would live in harmony with his
Brahmin brother, or a Sufi saint would quote from the Gita. But then,
the Portuguese Jesuits and the Mughals descended upon India with the
sword in one hand and the Cross and the Koran in the other.
Can Sonia Gandhi, a Christian, understand that? It is doubtful. And
this is why she can never become prime minister of India, it would
set back India a hundred years, because whatever her goodwill and
sincerity -- and nobody should doubt that -- she is totally unaware
of the greatness and genius of India, for she does not embrace her
ideals of dharma and spirituality. Nor her children.
And finally let me repeat my first sentence while filling up the gap:
<b>Everybody -- Indian journalists, foreign correspondents, Indologists,
embassies, Muslims, Christians -- want Sonia Gandhi to become prime
minister of India. But for a larger majority of the people of India -
-
let them triumph.</b>
The author is the correspondent in South Asia for Ouest-France, the
largest circulation French daily (1 million copies).
<b>François Gautier</b>
April 30, 2004
Everybody but (the answer is at the end of this article, don't cheat,
wait till the last line!) wants Sonia Gandhi to become prime minister
of India.
It is true there is nothing wrong with Sonia Gandhi, not even her
white skin, contrary to what the RSS may say. In fact she is probably
a good person, certainly a devoted mother, who educated her children
with dignity and protected them the best way she could, after the
terrible death of her husband (and her mother-in-law before) which
must have shattered them all.
Surely also, she possesses other qualities which endear her to fellow
party workers. She may even like India in her own way. Thus her
Western origin is no bar to her becoming PM of India.
After all, India had a Sister Nivedita, born in Ireland, very white
looking, who was not only the most faithful disciple of Swami
Vivekananda, but also loved her adopted country so much that she -- a
member of her Majesty's empire -- did not hesitate to encourage and
help nationalists such as Sri Aurobindo. In the early 1900s, people
like Sri Aurobindo were advocating throwing the British out, by
force if necessary, when the Congress was only timidly asking for a
few crumbs in the framework of an English India.
Definitely, Nivedita could have been the leader of the Opposition --
and why not -- one day prime minister of India.
Is this why most of the Indian English speaking media is projecting
Sonia and her children in a big way, giving them diplomas,
achievements and an aura which they don't necessarily have?
Look, for instance, how they often portrayed L K Advani's yatra in
unfavourable light, or showed him with a frowning expression, while
The Times of India kept printing such sweet photos of Rahul lovingly
wiping his mother's face, as she was filing her nomination in Rae
Bareli, or how NDTV interviewed Priyanka, with Rajdeep Sardesai
asking her all the right questions, so that she came out as the
loving sister and daughter wanting only to help an India beleaguered
by castes and Hindu militantism?
Rahul has become their darling: nothing can be wrong with him, his
looks, his innocence, his Spanish girlfriend (shows he is open-minded
and not casteist), his diplomas (even though most Indian youth are
much more educated than him). In the US, one would ask about his
religion: can an American president be anything than Christian, as he
has anyway to swear on the Bible when taking office? And what if
Rahul is a Christian? 'We media persons, even though we may be born
Hindus, are against Brahmanic intolerance.'
The BJP should not be complacent here: the Congress has scored quite
a few points, thanks to Sonia's children and the help they get from
the press. India loves nothing more than good children looking after
their widowed mothers. And what the Western press calls dynasty --
with the Indian press promptly aping the word without thinking
twice -
- is nothing more than the innate respect that Hindus have for family
bonding and family values.
The Indian media has redeemed itself, in some manner, by having
printed the damaging article of the Swedish policeman who pointed a
direct finger at Quattrochi and Rajiv Gandhi in the matter of the
Bofors bribe. But then, editors like N Ram of The Hindu, had little
choice, however much they may root for Mrs Gandhi: after all, The
Hindu broke the story!
However, not all newspapers gave space to the new accusations and
some chose to ignore them, or to put them on the seventh page in
small characters, with the result that the story fizzled out and once
more Quattrochi is off the hook.
The Western press loves Sonia even more -- I know, I am a Westerner
myself! I remember one of my ex-colleagues at Le Figaro, one of the
leading French newspapers, once wrote: 'She will bring sanity to
Indian politics.' By sanity he meant probably that she will usher
sound Western good commonsense in the muddy world of Indian politics.
It may be also an unconscious colonial superiority complex that
reincarnates itself in a politically correct manner, as it was
already expressed by industrialised powers when India became
nuclear: 'We can handle this, but not you, you underdeveloped
Brownies!'
There is certainly also an element of secret Christian
prosetylisation in it, although many foreign correspondents preach to
be atheists, [they see] a covert battle between the virtue of the
only true monotheistic faith, Christianity, as symbolised by Sonia,
versus the polytheist pagans, as incarnated by the BJP's
Gods. Many Western embassies are also furtively hoping for her
ascending the Indian throne. Their mouth is watering when they
visualise an Italian as the prime minister of a billion people: it
will all throw them back to the glorious times of the British Raj,
for which many Westerners are nostalgic, without mentioning the fact
that it would make their task much easier ('after all, we
belong to the same White Exclusive Club').
Even many of my friends in Auroville, Pondicherry, are hoping for the
BJP's downfall and Sonia's ascent, not understanding that such a
controversial and spiritualised project as Auroville finds more
sympathy within the BJP than with Sonia Gandhi, who does not care
much about Indian spirituality.
And lastly but not least (it goes without saying that most of India's
Muslims and Christians are going to vote for her), many of the world
Indologists, that is the experts on India, have bet their shirts that
she will win. In fact most of them have been predicting the BJP's
downfall for the last seven years!
Leading India specialists, such as Frenchman Christophe Jaffrelot,
who has devoted entire volumes to Hindu fundamentalism, has been
persistently advising the French government since the first BJP
government in 1997, 'that Hindutva is a passing phenomenon, because
Indian society is basically "secular" and that the Congress, the
truly pro-minority party of India is bound to come back to power.'
In fact there is not an election, an important event in India,
without Mr Jaffrelot and his peers, all belonging to the French
government-sponsored CNRS and his affiliates (which have close ties
with JNU and Romila Thapar), publishing some articles in prestigious
newspapers like Le Monde on the dangers of Hindu nationalism 'which
promotes casteism, untouchability and hatred towards Muslims'
(remember Ayodhya, they have been saying for 12 years).
No wonder the French are only the 11th biggest investor in India,
when after the nuclear test and the World Cup, they were hugely
popular here and could have done anything.
What are then the criterion to become an Indian prime minister, if
colour and origin are no bar?
First, to know the reality of India. This country is so diverse, so
huge, so contradictory sometimes, that unless you physically
experience it, from Cape Comorin to Ladakh, unless you have met its
people freely, shared their joys and problems, suffered form the heat
and the cold, and hunger, you do not know India. The trouble with Mrs
Gandhi, her children -- and most Western correspondents -- is that
they sit in Delhi, an arrogant city which thinks it understands
everything, which wants to decide on everything, whereas it is
totally decentered from the rest of the country.
There, you bathe in the vicious circle of journalists' parties and
embassies' cocktails, where the same ideas, the same small talk is
perpetually floating around. And unfortunately for Sonia, first
because she lived a sheltered life in Delhi with her friends when her
husband was a pilot, and then later because of security which totally
cut her off from the real people of India, except in sanitized bits,
she is hopelessly ignorant of the reality of India, like her
husband was before her and her children will be after her.
In fact, as a fellow Westerner and European (and Latin, as Italy and
France share the same linguistic roots), everytime I pass her
fortress of 10, Janpath, I am shamed by the fact that she lives there
like an empress of medieval times, brazenly surrounded by hundreds of
security guards and sycophants fawning around her, while at the same
time innocent Hindus in the valley of Kashmir are still being
butchered without anyone giving a damn. I don't understand how she
cannot see it herself.
Secondly and most important, you cannot comprehend India unless you
practice, at least in some measure, its spirituality. For the
greatness of India, whatever the foreign correspondents or the
Indologists say, is its dharma, not Hinduism, but beyond Hinduism,
the timeless Vedic spirituality, which has given the world
hatha yoga, meditation, Pranayama, Ayurveda and the concept of the
Avatar which allows for religious tolerance. And you don't have to be
some highhanded guru or yogi meditating in his cave. No, the most
humble villager in India practices spontaneously this spirituality.
He is born with it, it is in his genes. He accepts innately that God
may be Krishna, or Jesus, or Buddha, or even Mohammad, who said right
things for his epoch, but whose words were never adapted to
modern times.
Whereas the Delhiwallah thinks he is tolerant and secular because he
accepts the fact that Sonia Gandhi, an Italian, and a Christian can
become the prime minister of his country where they are 850 millions
Hindus, one of the most tolerant, spiritualised, brilliant people in
the world today. But by this he only shows that he still has a
colonised mentality and that Macaulay did good work. And you don't
even have to be a Hindu: most of India's minorities, had, once upon a
time, soaked a little bit of that tolerant and all inclusive
outlook, so that a Syrian Christian would live in harmony with his
Brahmin brother, or a Sufi saint would quote from the Gita. But then,
the Portuguese Jesuits and the Mughals descended upon India with the
sword in one hand and the Cross and the Koran in the other.
Can Sonia Gandhi, a Christian, understand that? It is doubtful. And
this is why she can never become prime minister of India, it would
set back India a hundred years, because whatever her goodwill and
sincerity -- and nobody should doubt that -- she is totally unaware
of the greatness and genius of India, for she does not embrace her
ideals of dharma and spirituality. Nor her children.
And finally let me repeat my first sentence while filling up the gap:
<b>Everybody -- Indian journalists, foreign correspondents, Indologists,
embassies, Muslims, Christians -- want Sonia Gandhi to become prime
minister of India. But for a larger majority of the people of India -
-
let them triumph.</b>
The author is the correspondent in South Asia for Ouest-France, the
largest circulation French daily (1 million copies).
<b>François Gautier</b>