The Usual Suspects

India Today, November 23, 1998
Nov 23, 1998

THE USUAL SUSPECTS
Voices of Sonia

What she said depends on the ghost-writer at hand.

Swapan Dasgupta

Among the more uncharitable things said about Rajiv Gandhi was the accusation that he was prone to believing the person he spoke to last. No such charge has been levelled against the currrent head of the Congress. A possible reason could be that no one really has the remotest idea what Sonia Gandhi actually stands for or believes. So successfully has the lady of 10 Janpath perfected the medieval art of purdah politics that it has become impossible to identify which is the real gospel and which is the gospel twice removed. Sonia, every Congress loyalist concedes, is a fantastic listener. That is a wonderful attribute, lacking in many politicians. Unfortunately that's where it stops. No Congressman, not even those whose claim to fame lies in their ability to walk into Vincent George's office without an appointment, has resolved this mystery. Some 11 months after she launched her political career, Sonia has not given a single interview, spoken to a TV chat show or intervened spontaneously in a debate. Rajiv at least spoke about "jitenge ya lose-enge". The real Sonia Gandhi has said nothing. She has been ghost-written from A to Z.

It would be surreal, if it wasn't real. India is confronted with a novel situation where the unquestioned leader of the largest opposition party and a possible claimant to the top political job is a complete prisoner of her speechwriters. Without them she epitomises a complete void. Worse, she is a willing captive in the hands of wordsmiths who take a ghoulish delight in getting her to repeat their media columns. No wonder consistency is not the hallmark of this Congress president. If the Pokhran tests were a scientific achievement one day, they become a national disgrace the second. If religious tolerance is declared a sacred duty in one speech, Saraswati Vandana becomes a reprehensible ritual in the subsequent letter. It's not a complex question of timing; it's a simple matter of who wrote the speech of the day.

Blessed with sensitive antennae, Congressmen have not been slow to grasp the meaning of speechwriter raj. Last Tuesday, the party spokesman in Delhi described Mamata Banerjee's Trinamool Congress as the "third youth club in West Bengal after Mohun Bagan and Mohammedan Sporting". The next day, perhaps mindful of the hurt caused to East Bengal club, West Bengal Congress Working President P.R. Dasmunshi invited Mamata to rejoin the parent party. Sonia spoke in Mizoram of Christian "priests and nuns ... subjected to unspeakable atrocities" under BJP rule. She didn't know that the man who gave shelter to the rapists in Jhabua is now the Congress candidate. She appealed last Wednesday to Sikhs to rise above the scars of 1984. Two hours later, as if to rub salt into their wounds, a beaming Sajjan Kumar was on hand to release the party's Delhi manifesto. It's not that Sonia doesn't know. It's just that Congressmen are convinced she is incapable of going beyond the script. Hence the uncontrolled explosion of personal agendas.

Sonia has been praised for her maturity, for steering a pathologically promiscuous party toward brahmacharya. If the Congress wins the assembly elections, the enforced celibacy will end. Jyoti Basu may declare her Nehru's worthy successor and help reinstate her in a Race Course Road house vacated nine years ago. On paper Sonia will reign, but who will rule? The wordsmiths are drooling at the idea. It will be dynasty of course, but it will also be regency. Till she effects her elusive discovery of India.

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