The Congress party characterises Modi as a dictator and by
implication, presents Sonia as a democrat. Whether a popular leader is a
dictator or a democrat is tested by conduct. An unpopular dictator is
an oxymoron. A dictator may become unpopular but no unpopular person can
ever become a dictator. How a leader behaves when in position of power —
particularly when his or her position is under threat — offers the most
reliable test. A popular Indira Gandhi was tested twice. Once in 1969
when her senior colleagues dissented her individualistic style. She used
State power, backstabbed the party and defeated the party nominee in
the election for the President of India and captured the party with the
help of the enemies of the party by forging an ideological alliance with
them. This destroyed the democratic Congress party as the nation knew
till then. She put the party under her virtual dictatorship. She changed
the very paradigm of national politics from politics of ethics and
character to politics of power and success. This brought out her
dictatorial mind. The real dictator in her came out when the Allahabad
High Court unseated her from Parliament and the Supreme Court made her a
Prime Minister without voting rights in Parliament. She struck at the
nation, imposed Emergency and, as Nani Palkhiwala said, defaced and
defiled the Constitution, courts, Parliament, Opposition, media, and the
people at large and put the whole nation under total dictatorship. It
is 40 years since and still now, no one in the Congress or from the
family of Indira Gandhi has sincerely regretted the Emergency. On the
contrary, Rajiv Gandhi, after he got four-fifths majority in the Lok
Sabha in 1984, even tried to justify the Emergency. And that Congress
party and Sonia Gandhi, claiming to be the proud daughter-in-law of
Indira Gandhi, are trying to brand Narendra Modi as dictatorial — by
implication, claiming to be democratic. Is it not time then that one
compared the democratic credentials of Sonia and Modi?
Look at how
the ‘dictatorial’ Narendra Modi conducted himself when, just three
years before he became the Prime Minister, he was under tremendous
pressure from the Opposition, media and even the courts. Sonia Gandhi
and her party had accused him of being the merchant of death. The UPA,
which had made the CBI its Alsatian, used the agency to target him in
the Sohrabuddin case. The sordid story was exposed by The New Indian
Express (see articles titled, Fixing Shah, by Fabrication, CBI Betrays
Court, Bails Out Congress and Interrogating The Media — published in
August 2010). The media was applauding every effort to fix and get rid
of him. Yet, there was no FIR against him. No complaint had been filed
in any court against him. No court had issued him summons. No court had
ordered his examination by police. But the Special Investigation Team
(SIT) on Gujarat riots summoned him for examination like police would
summon any one at their discretion. He was as popular in Gujarat as he
is now all over the country. He was a powerful and performing Chief
Minister of Gujarat. Also he was seen as the rising national leader
within the BJP when the SIT summoned him. But he did not use his party
to drum up support for him in the Assembly nor did his party stall
Parliament. The Gujarat Assembly functioned and so did Parliament. He
could have gathered a million people to give him a great ovation when he
went to the SIT office to put pressure on the investigation and on the
instigators of the case against him. He respected the summons and drove
to the SIT office in his car. He walked down the lane leading to the SIT
alone. He was grilled by the SIT for over eight hours. He answered
their questions. Satisfied with his answers, the SIT finally exonerated
him. But his adversaries would not leave him. They charged the SIT with
favouring him. Finally, the Supreme Court had to exonerate him twice —
once, when the UPA was in power and next time, a few months ago. This is
‘dictatorial’ Modi’s behaviour.
Now compare how the ‘democratic’
Sonia behaved after the National Herald case caught up with her, her son
and her family loyalists. Here is the National Herald case in brief. In
November 2012, Dr Subramanian Swamy exposed how Sonia Gandhi and Rahul
Gandhi have grabbed properties of National Herald worth thousands of
crores through a convoluted criminal strategy. After that, this
newspaper carried a detailed article, National Herald Affair: It’s Fraud
All The Way (TNIE, November 8, 2012), explaining the fraud. In January
2013, Dr Swamy filed a criminal complaint against Sonia, her son and
family loyalists, including Motilal Vohra, the Congress party treasurer,
charging them with conspiracy, fraud, cheating, and criminal breach of
trust to rob the shareholders and the public of thousands of crores. All
this happened when the UPA was in power. Rahul Gandhi threatened to
file a defamation suit against Dr Swamy. Swamy challenged him but Rahul
ran away. In June 2014, a Delhi criminal court took cognisance of the
offence and issued summons. Forthwith, Sonia Gandhi and other five
accused, including Rahul, filed petitions in the Delhi High Court to
quash the criminal proceedings. They kept delaying the hearing till they
thought they got the judge they felt comfortable with. One judge
recused himself and so did the next. The matter went to the third judge,
who Sonia and her co-accused did not like, and he too recused himself.
All the accused petitioned to have the matter heard by the second judge
who had recused himself earlier. The case was posted before the very
judge, who Sonia and her co-accused felt comfortable with. It is that
very same judge, who decided on December 7, 2015 that the lower court
has rightly ordered their trial and summoned them, and asked them to
appear before the metropolitan magistrate. Still, hell broke loose. The
very next day the Congress president was seen instigating her MPs to
stall Parliament. When the Speaker asked them why were they disturbing
the House, they shouted they saw in the National Herald case “political
vendetta” and “democracy in danger”. When the Speaker asked them to
spell out what they want and offered to allow them to raise the issue
and speak in the House, they ran away from speaking in the House.
Obviously, they only had instructions to stall the House. The same
theatrics were repeated in the Rajya Sabha. Not that they did not talk
in the House. They couldn’t. Why?
It needs no seer to say that the
prosecution on the National Herald fraud was an act of the judiciary
and the Modi government had had nothing to do with it. There was no CBI
or Income Tax or the Enforcement Directorate in the picture which could
link the prosecution to the government. It was the private complaint of
Dr Subramanian Swamy on which the magistrate held that Sonia, Rahul and
the four family loyalists had created a trust company fully controlled
by them as a cloak or sham of a special purpose vehicle to convert
public money and to acquire control over thousands of crores of assets
of National Herald. The court held that the accused acted as a
consortium to achieve the nefarious purpose and asked them to face
trial. This was the prima facie assessment of the court under the law.
The government had no role in this process at all. It was between Sonia
Gandhi and her co-conspirators on the one hand and Dr Subramanian Swamy
on the other, with the court playing the neutral and judicial role. This
order was passed in June 2014. Did Sonia or Rahul or any of the accused
or the Congress party even hint that the magistrate had acted outside
the law? Stop Parliament? In contrast, they all went to the Delhi High
Court to quash the order and summons of the magistrate. The judge, whom
they were comfortable with, decided on December 7 that they better face
the criminal case as the magistrate had rightly decided.
The very
next day, the ‘democratic Sonia’ ordered her party to stall Parliament.
Even as she was overseeing the closure of Parliament for the day on
December 8 and her son was on a flying visit to Tamil Nadu to offer
relief to the flood-affected people, their lawyers were standing before
the magistrate and pleading that Sonia, Rahul and the other accused were
“keen to appear before the court”. Where is vendetta then, Madam Sonia?
The court has granted them 10 days and directed them to appear on
December 19. It remains to be seen whether the ‘democratic’ Sonia and
Rahul will walk alone and appear before the court like Modi did before
the police or gather a huge crowd for theatrics and disturb the court
like the Gandhis disturbed the Shah Commission.
A caveat:
Obviously stressed by the court notice on charges of swallowing
thousands of crores of properties of National Herald by using the
Congress party, Sonia Gandhi said, “Why should I be scared of anyone? I
am Indira Gandhi’s daughter-in-law.” She said this after personally
directing the Congress party to halt Parliament on Tuesday. This is
‘democratic’ Sonia, the daughter-in-law of Indira Gandhi, the saviour of
democracy in India, charging Modi with ‘dictatorship’. There cannot be a
more cruel joke on democracy.
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