Puppets of Faith: Theory of Communal Strife (An appraisal of Islam 'n India)

Italian Interregnum

When fate wedded an Italian, Antonia Maino, to Rajiv Gandhi, and ensconced her as Sonia Gandhi in his mother's 1, Safdarjung Road bungalow, Lutyens' Delhi, as badi bahu, it's as if history woke up to the amusing fact that even though it granted the tiny Portugal a 'Goan' foothold in India under the British Raj, when it came to enslaving its ancient people, by oversight, it overlooked the mighty medieval Italy. So, it set things in motion, so it seems.

BY then, however, Indira had her dynastic grip on the democratic India firmly clasped by the Congress party; to achieve which, she castrated the party men into enervation as family eunuchs. So when she anointed Sanjay Gandhi, her second son, as her heir apparent, albeit bypassing Rajiv the elder, for lack of aptitude, it's no wonder that congressmen to one man began prostrating before him. But fate, seemingly at history's behest, dragged the reckless ruffian to death in a plane crash, thereby paving the way for his pilot brother to step into his princely shoes.

It's thus, when upon her assassination, the credulous Rajiv, whom her sycophantic party men thrust upon the nation, a la Gandhi, as its 'credulous' head, he only tried to copy from her political text book, which by then became the Congress Bible. So, naively following the Islamapologic sermons enshrined therein, he allowed himself to be caught between two emotive stools - that of Shah Bano's sharia and Ayodhya's Ram Lalla – which heralded his political downfall. That's not all, as if to follow the Italian script of 'history' he ventured into the vicious web of the Tamil Elam in the neighbouring Sri Lanka on the 'to its own hurt ant grows wings' line. It was thus his IPKF misadventure, meant to tame the ruthless Velupillai Prabhakaran, the overlord of the Tamil Tigers, which eventually exploded in his face at Sriperumbudur.

Even though 'history' beckoned Sonia to take the reins of the Congress mantle, thereby the prime ministerial handle, her decency as just widowed made her pass on the scepter into the skilful hands of PV Narasimha Rao. So, as 'history' was made to wait, the intellectuality of that veteran polyglot began scripting his own history to be remembered as the 'architect of economic reforms'. Having seen the imperative need for reforming the style and structure of the Indian economy that Nehru thought it fit to mould in the socialistic pattern, he started breaking its Licence-Permit model with his de-licence hammer. But, as the Sangh Parivar's, Ram Janma Bhōmi Mandir Āndolan with 'saugandh rām ki khāte hai, mandir wahi banāyenge' (swear by Ram to build it there) chants and the Babri Masjid Action Committee's 'banāne nahi daenge' (won't let that happen) counter were diverting the national political focus and the public attention from his 'reforms agenda', he might have wished that Allah Ta'ala would somehow shift the dilapidated masjid to Pakistan for renovation. However, his wish to see the back of the vexatious issue to fulfill his destiny was fulfilled, not by divine means but by the temporal tools of the Kar Sevaks, who pulled down the contentious structure that 6th December 1992.

Whatever, he not only removed many a Nehruvian hurdle in India's policy track that put its economy on a galloping course, from which it never looked back, but also managed to run his minority government with finesse for a full five-year term. Equally significantly, having seen the democratic need to free the grand old party of India from its constraining dynastic clutches, once and for all, he, slowly but steadily, began working in that direction to Sonia's chagrin that she eventually vented in an abominable manner that deservedly earned her an eternal infamy. What is more, he sought to usher in a new political culture by not protecting his party men accused of graft in those Jain Hawala Dairies that contained the names of 'who's who' of Indian politics.

However, all that was of no avail as instead of giving him a second term to further fillip the economy and rid the Congress party of its baneful Nehru-Gandhi dynasty, and thereby India, its ignoramus masses, egged on by the antique socialists and caste crusaders, ousted the 'architect of change' from the gaddi, rather unceremoniously. What's worse as his 'cleansing' move earned him enemies across the political spectrum, not excluding within his party, he was embroiled in corruption cases indicating that his end was near the end. Maybe underscoring the Hindu adage satyameva jayate (truth triumphs), he was exonerated of every change by the country's judiciary enabling him to die clean though sad. However, as poetic justice would have it, that catapulted Deve Gowda, somebody, with the backing of the regional satraps like Chandra Babu Naidu of Andhra Pradesh, into the Dilli Kursi.