How many medals did Sonia Gandhi get in Beijing?
Jyoti Malhotra -
Monday, August 11, 2008 11:28 AM
Today, at least, belongs to Abhinav Bindra. The President and the PM have already congratulated him for bringing in India's first individual gold. BJP president Rajnath Singh was on the line on Aaj Tak saying "hello, hello," wanting to get a couple of words in, but the channel was already disconnecting, breaking into the montage which heralds the end of the news on the hour. Sonia Gandhi, who went to Beijing with all her children and grand-children in tow, has also just followed on with her best wishes.
Question is, why did Sonia Gandhi go to Beijing? South Block is putting on the bravest face of all, insisting that party matters cannot be discussed by government officials. Even if Sonia was invited by the Communist Party of China, which runs the country, in her capacity as the president of the Congress party -- and therefore, runs the country -- she didnt have to accept. Of course, she didnt want to miss the once-in-a-lifetime spectacle that are the Beijing Games. Nor did her son, who is a party general secretary. As for the children missing school, that's a decision that is entirely up to the discretion of parents Priyanka and Robert.
Still, its a little amusing the way Indian politicians irrespective of party line, carry their brood with them when they are in power. Presumably hospitality is on the house (of the foreign government) and if it isnt, the kids can all be accommodated as part of the pack, anyway. I remember when H D Deve Gowda, the self-proclaimed farmer who announced that he never wanted to get out of Karnataka, was "persuaded" to become prime minister of the United Front government in 1996. On his first visit to the G-15 summit in Harare the same year, journalists on board Air India One stared in disbelief as Gowda's grand-brood was seen walking up the steps of the big Jumbo, with water-bottles slung across their shoulders.
We counted, slowly. There were 15 of them, the sons and daughters of several sons and daughters and in laws. The summit was immediately dubbed (G)owda-15, and the PM never lived it down. On board, we noted, that the kids were trying to play shuttle-*** in the galley, it was that cute. Gowda's media adviser H K Dua was hard put to explain their itinerary to Sun City (that is why the water bottles) and other South African game parks, a short plane ride away from Harare, in between India's trade policy vis-a-vis the developed/developing worlds.
The other brouhaha around children came to the surface when President K R Narayanan travelled to Paris after India's nuclear tests in 1999, and both his daughters, Chitra and Amrita travelled with him. Actually, it was Chitra, an IFS officer who preferred to live in Rashtrapati Bhawan rather than in an government flat, who used to travel with him, while Amrita, who is married to an American, would catch the flight to the city where her father was going, from the US. I remember Narayanan's Paris visit because of the noise around a Parisian newspaper's take on India's Dalit president who had risen to the highest office in the land. Many of us felt the story was actually a compliment, except Narayanan. India's ambassador in Paris at the time, we heard later, was diplomatically ticked off because he hadnt been able to appropriately educate Paris' journalists on the intricacies of India's caste structure.
Anyway, the story about Chitra, Amrita and her husband in Paris was hardly new, although several voices, completely off the record, could be heard grumbling about the TA/DA the government had to pay up ! (Evidently, they got it in full !) The family also accompanied the President to Beijing, the first high-level visit by an Indian to China after the nuclear tests, when Beijing and Delhi had been icy cool towards each other. Apart from the fact that Narayanan was being accompanied by his children, there was the fact of his American son-in-law being part of the President's entourage. But no questions were asked, or answered, in the media.
Sonia Gandhi's large Indian family junket to Beijing is somewhat different of course, because Sonia is not a minister in the government, and presumably she or her family will bear their personal expenses. In her case, its never about the money, but about the nature of power, how it is symbolised in her person, and how she uses it.
First of all, the Chinese never invited prime minister Manmohan Singh to the Games, a diplomatic snub if there was one. All that talk about the PM having been in January already and likely to go in October for the East Asia summit, so why should he go to Beijing in August for the third time, is frankly cowwash. The PM wasnt invited, Sonia Gandhi was. You must tip your metaphorical hat to the Chinese for daring to go right inside the lion's den, especially when talk of China being against India's nuclear deal was pretty much burning up the front pages of many Indian newspapers.
Thousands of years of negotiating with authority have taught the Chinese the utter beauty of politics, of the complete calm associated with both depravity and morality. The Sonia invitation was a perfect tease, loaded with decades of innuendo, and Delhi fell for it. No one, probably, had the courage to tell Sonia Gandhi why she should have refused. After all, she's not the prime minister or the president, both of whom are supported by the advice of countless mandarins. Sonia can perhaps turn to Karan Singh for advice, because he is currently the chair of the Congress foreign affairs cell. (Look, though, at his comments that the Amarnath shrine board should be given the hundred acres of land, exactly the same as the BJP.) Most people in the party dont seem to have the kind of equation with her that would allow them to tell her to do the right thing, without fear or favour.
Since things are hardly likely to change anytime soon, perhaps Sonia should stick to the one rule of thumb that has bailed her out of many a tight corner, all these years : Would Rajiv have done what I am doing?
If she'd asked herself the question on going to Beijing, the answer would have been a quiet No. After all, unlike Abhinav Bindra, how many medals was Sonia going to get for India in Beijing?