Sonia Gandhi - A Blot on the Nation
by Mark Tully
Sir William "Mark" Tully,ÿOBE. He worked for BBC for a period of 30 years before resigning in July 1994. He held the position ofÿChief of Bureau, BBC, Delhi for 20 years Padma Shree, KBE, Padma Bhushan, one of the most respected journalists in the world,ÿwrites on Indian Politics: An eye opener account, not known to most of the Indians.
"I can say without the shadow of a doubt that when history will be written, the period over which she (Sonia Gandhi) presided, both over the Congress and India, will be seen as an era of darkness, of immense corruption and of a democracy verging towards autocracy, if not disguised dictatorship, in the hands of a single person, a non-Indian ÿ and a Christian like me. Truth will also come out about her being the main recipient for kickbacks from Bofors to 2G, which she uses to buy votes."
The sun has already set; darkness is just about to start. Do you blame it on bankruptcy/blindness of Congress or country's misfortune. It is both.ÿNow read the complete analysis, which follows. THE TRUTH THE HIDDEN FACTS. I was surprised when the Congress party gave me aÿPadma Shri ? I am the ÿ only foreign journalist to ever get it. For, in my forty years of political reporting in India, I have always been a vocal critic of the Nehru dynasty. Someone even called me recently: ?a vitriolic British journalist, who in his old age chose to live back in the land he never approved?.
It started withÿOperation Blue Star. I was one of the few western correspondents who criticized Indira. As I have said since then numerous times, the attack on the Golden Temple and the atrocities that followed the army operations, produced in all sections of the Sikhs a sense of outrage that is hard today to alleviate. I believed then that the large majority of Hindu India, even if politically hostile to Indira Gandhi, openly identified with ? and exulted in ? her will to overwhelmingly humble a recalcitrant minority.
As everybody knows,ÿIndira Gandhiÿhelped my fame grow even more, by wanting to imprison me during the Emergencyÿshe clamped and finally throwing me out of India for a short while. But the result was that the whole of India tuned in, then and thereafter, to my radio?s broadcasts, ?The Voice of India?, to hear what they thought was ?accurate? coverage of events.
WhenÿRajiv Gandhiÿcame to power, I first believed that he was sincerely trying to change the political system, but he quickly gave-up when the old guard would not budge. I criticized him for hisÿfoolish adventure in Sri Lanka,ÿalthough I felt sorry for him when he was blown to pieces by Dhanu, the Tamil Tiger.
It is inÿKashmir, though that I fought most viciously against his Govt and subsequent Congress ones for its human right abuses on the Kashmiri Muslims of the Valley. The Congress Governments tried indeed several times to censor me and the army even took prisoner my Kashmiri stringer, whom I had to rescue by the skin of his teeth. I am also proud that I was the first one to point out then, that the Indian Government had at that time no proof of the Pakistani involvement in the freedom movement in Kashmir.ÿ
Thus I always made it a point to start my broadcasts by proclaiming that the Indian Government accuses Pakistan of fostering terrorism¯, or that ?elections are being held in Indian-controlled Kashmir??As I was so popular, all the other foreign journalists used the same parlance to cover Kashmir and they always spoke of the plight of the Muslims,ÿnever of the 400.000 Hindus, who after all were chased out of their ancestral land by sheer terror (I also kept mum about it).
As forÿSonia Gandhi, I did not mind her, when she was Rajiv Gandhi?s wife, but after his death, I watched with dismay as she startedÿstamping her authority on the Congress, which made me say in a series of broadcasts on the Nehru Dynasty:ÿ?It?s sad that the Indian National Congress should be completely dependent on one family;ÿthe total surrender of a national party to one person isÿdeplorable.ÿYou have to ask the question:ÿwhat claims does Sonia Gandhi have to justify her candidature for prime-ministership?ÿRunning a country is far more complicated than running a company. Apprenticeship is required in any profession ? more so in politics?.
I heard that Sonia Gandhi was unhappy about this broadcast. Then, after President APJ Abdul Kalam called her to the Raj Bhavan and told her what some of us already knew, namely thatÿfor a long time, she had kept both her Italian and Indian passports,ÿwhich disqualified her to become the Prime Minister of India,ÿshe nevertheless became the Supreme leader of India behind the scenes. It is then that I exclaimed:ÿ?the moribund and leaderless Congress party has latched onto Sonia Gandhi, who is Italian by birth and Roman Catholic by baptism?.
She never forgave me for that. Yet, today I can say without the shadow of a doubt that when history will be written,ÿthe period over which she presided, both over the Congress and India, will be seen as an era of darkness, of immense corruption and of a democracy verging towards autocracy, if not disguised dictatorship, in the hands of a single ÿ person, a non Indian and a Christian like me.Truth will also come out about her being theÿmain recipient for kickbacks from Bofors to 2G,ÿwhich she uses to buy votes, as the Wikileaks have just shown.
Finally, I am sometimes flabbergasted at the fact that Indians ? Hindus, sorry, as most of this country?s intelligentsia is Hindu ? seem to love me so much, considering the fact that in my heydays, I considerably ran down the 850 million Hindus of this country, one billion worldwide. I have repented today: I do profoundly believe that India needs to be able to say with pride,ÿ?Yes, our civilization has a Hindu base to it.?ÿThe genius of Hinduism, the very reason it has survived so long, is thatÿit does not stand up and fight.ÿIt changes and adapts and modernizes and absorbs ? that is the scientific and proper way of going about it.
I believe that Hinduism may actually prove to be the religion of this millennium, because it can adapt itself to change.ÿHindus are still slaves to MUSLIMS and CHRISTIANS On the name of secularism,ÿlots of facilities and cash incentives are given to Muslims and Christians.ÿHajÿsubsidy is given to Muslims for Haj yatra,wages of Muslim teachers and Imamsÿare given to Muslims are given by looting the Hindu temples.ÿNo such subsidy is given to Hindusÿfor going to Hindu religious places or any wages to Hindu religious priests or Hindu teachers.ÿIn fact congress secular government creates many obstacles for Hindus for going to Amarnath Yatra.
Even after 65 years of independenceÿreservation is given on religious groundsÿwhile it should have been abolished by this time. If at all reservation or subsidy is needed, then itÿshould be purely on economic groundsÿrather on the grounds of minorities. Such reservations affect the quality of work. Congress party giving various kinds ofÿallurements to minorities to buy their votesÿwith Hindu money.ÿIn the government, many people are with Hindu names but in fact many are Muslims and Christians with Hindu names (**) to fool Hindus and to show in the government, majority ÿ people are Hindus.
** The obvious reference is to Digvijay Singh, Ambika Soni etc...
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