PRIME MINISTER NARENDRA MODI’s revelation of how the Indira Gandhi-led Congress Government in 1974 surrendered the strategic Katchatheevu island to Sri Lanka, while new, is unsurprising. There are many more Katchatheevus to be unearthed because it is entirely consistent with the Congress party’s record of harming India’s national interest after independence. And the roots of this awful record are located in the Congress party’s DNA of always looking to please the foreigner by sacrificing Indians.
In this context, we present excerpts from the late Dr. N.S. Rajaram’s brilliant insights on this demonstrated colonial servility of the Congress. He wrote this in 2000, a full twenty-four years ago. And reading it is more crucial today given that India goes to polls in a few weeks, and a single vote to the Congress is a vote for the return of remote-controlled colonialism.
Happy reading!
I BELIEVE THAT there is a simple explanation for this strange behavior on the part of the Congress and its leaders. I hold that this feature of seeking inspiration and help from beyond the borders of India has been the hallmark of the Congress party ever since its inception. What we are witnessing now is only the latest manifestation of a historic trend in the Congress party. When we examine the history of the Congress over the past century without any preconceptions, we find that for at least the past eighty years or so, the leaders of the Congress have always looked beyond the borders of India for their ideas and inspiration. his failure was noted by no less a person than Sri Aurobindo. Writing as far back as 1906, he observed:
But the Congress started from the beginning with a misconception of the most elementary facts of politics, with its eyes turned towards the British Government and away from the people. Ever since the birth of the Congress, those who have been in the leadership of this great National Movement have persistently denied the general public in the country the right of what shall and what shall not be said or done on their behalf and in their name.
After Sardar Patel’s death in 1950, Nehru ran a colonial administration. To begin with, he requested Louis Mountabatten, a close relative of the English royal family, to continue as Governor General of India. Against the advice of Indian commanders General Thimmayya and General L.P. Sen, he accepted Mountbatten’s advice to refer the Kashmir case to United Nations, which really meant Britain and the United States.
The Congress and its leaders suffer from a deep-seated lack of confidence in Indians and Indian heritage. Their own inferiority complex has made them look for solutions abroad. As a result, instead of a national vision rooted in history and tradition, they import ideas and even people from outside to present them as saviors to the nation. This is the message of the Congress party’s sponsorship of the Khilafat, Verrier Elwin, the Soviet model, and Sonia Gandhi. When this also fails, where will the Congress go? Look for another import?
From all this, one is forced to conclude that the Congress party and its followers have no conception of nationalism. They seem to think of the Indian nation as a colonial administration run by Indians rather than Europeans. But now, as the people of India begin to reject this alien imposition, they have sought to bring back a European to do a better job of it than they can.
India has now reached the absurd point of a great national party being unable to find a single leader in the country. So it wants to import one!
There is another extraordinary sight. The people who want to serve as servile courtiers of this foreign woman are products of India’s elite institutions! Just go to 10 Janpath where Smt Sonai Gandhi holds court, and you will see a glut of convent school and Doon School products. Many of them boast degrees from St Stephen’s College and other holdovers from the colonial era, but not one of them seems to have the courage or the character to assume leadership. Their highest aspiration is to serve this foreign woman with barely a high school education! So there must be something wrong with Indian education, at least what passes for elite education that it can produce servants but few leaders. This is not education, it is spiritual emasculation. This is the sign of a decadent elite with a servile mentality. They are in fact a colonial elite. They form the core of support for Smt Sonia Gandhi.
As a result, national interest was often sacrificed for personal dynastic interests. On at least three occasions, Nehru sacrificed India’s interests for the sake of international glory for himself. It is nothing short of tragedy that the two greatest influences on Nehru at this crucial juncture in history were Krishna Menon and K.M. Panikkar, both communists.
This sad string of failures holds an important lesson in history. The Congress has always been a party held together by a personality. First the Mahatma, later Nehru, and now Sonia Gandhi. It is inevitable therefore that force of personality rather than concern of national interest should have influenced major decisions even at crucial points in history.
Take the case of the Kargil war. It is unnecessary to go into the details of this sordid episode, but a basic question needs to be asked. There are complaints all around that Sonia Gandhi is destroying the Congress party because of her inexperience and her style of functioning. But the same Congressmen were willing to bring down the Government through a coup and install her as Prime Minister even as Pakistani soldiers were infiltrating across the LOC in Kashmir. The question is what would have been the fate of Kashmir and India, had the coup attempt succeeded and Sonia had become Prime Minister? Kashmir would have been lost.
This is what India escaped in April 1999 no thanks to the Congress party. Nehru may no longer be on the scene but his legacy of sacrificing national interest for personal gain would have continued unabated. By no stretch of the imagination can the dynasty or its party be called nationalistic. The behavior of the Congress party in mindlessly supporting Sonia Gandhi’s coup attempt at the cost of national interest shows both Nehru and his party in their true colors.
The Congress party and successive governments have been able to get away with all this and more using their stranglehold over institutions at every level. That story will be narrated in the next episode.
To be continued
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