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Web-only Exclusives November 30, 2000 From Our Correspondent: Hirohito and the War A conversation with biographer Herbert Bix From Our Correspondent: A Rough Road Ahead Bad news for the Philippines - and some others From Our Correspondent: Making Enemies Indonesia needs friends. So why is it picking fights? |
OCTOBER 1, 1999 VOL. 25 NO. 39
Slander Rules
Having failed to capitalize on "Kargil," the BJP is once again targeting the Italian-born Sonia Gandhi in a foul "presidential-style" campaign
By AJAY SINGH Ranchi
ALSO IN ASIAWEEK
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In a sense, the contrast between the two hospitals is reflected in the political landscape of India today. The "Indian" Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, 74, is pitted against the Italian-born leader of the Congress party, Sonia Gandhi, 52, in an unprecedented no-holds-barred presidential-style campaign that seem almost alien in a parliamentary democracy. Vajpayee visited Ranchi recently to campaign for his Bharatiya Janata Party, which has been doing its utmost to denigrate Sonia in an attempt to turn the question of her ethnicity into the central issue of the polls. Early in September, Information Minister Pramod Mahajan compared Sonia to Monica Lewinsky, saying that if Indians wanted to make a foreigner PM, they might as well choose the former White House intern. Recently in Bihar, Mahajan gave a new twist to the theme. If people did not object to having an Italian-born ruler who had married an Indian, he said, how would they feel if Pakistan Premier Nawaz Sharif's daughter were to marry an Indian and contend for the PM's office?
Many Indians are shocked that personal insults have replaced the old issues of ideology and development in the campaigns of most parties. (The respected communist chief minister of West Bengal, Jyoti Basu, recently referred to one of the most influential female politicians in India, Mamta Banerjee, as a "cheat." A colleague of Basu's called her "insane.") At the core of the BJP's gripe against Sonia is the fact that she hesitated to become an Indian citizen until 1983 and that she changed her nationality only after her husband, the late premier Rajiv Gandhi, entered politics. Sonia defends her 15-year delay in obtaining Indian citizenship by pointing to another barometer of her patriotism: The fact that she has spent nearly two-thirds of her life in India, with which, she says, she has a deep emotional attachment. As for her loyalty to the nation, Sonia has said it lies not in her passport but "in my heart."
Dineshwar Prasad, a former principal of Ranchi University, thinks Sonia will make a capable PM - her political inexperience notwithstanding - because "she will be under a lot of pressure to perform." There is no dearth of Indians who agree that the question of Sonia's foreign origin is irrelevant from just about every standpoint. In Indian tradition, daughters-in-law are always part of the family - it's the actual daughters who are "foreign" as they belong to the clan they marry into.
So why is the BJP targeting Sonia? Because its main campaign issue - the government's successful handling of the recent war with Pakistani intruders in Kargil - has run out of steam. Though polls suggest the BJP and its allies will come to power, it probably won't be because of the Kargil issue, which doesn't seem to have been a big hit with voters. Nowhere is Kargil more a "non-issue" than in the most populous and politically crucial state of Uttar Pradesh, where both Vajpayee and Sonia are contesting parliamentary seats. The BJP's woes derive from a caste-based intra-party feud involving a faction led by the "backward" state chief minister, Kalyan Singh, and a rival group representing "forward" high-caste leaders, including Vajpayee. So bitter is the infighting that Singh has refused to campaign for his own party in certain areas where his Lodha community forms a sizeable chunk of the population. The disunity in the BJP is a boon for Congress, which failed to win a single seat from Uttar Pradesh in the previous elections.
The fact that the current elections are the third in as many years has contributed to much voter apathy and disgust with politicians. In parts of Bihar, Maoist groups have ordered their low-caste supporters to shoot at anyone who solicits their votes. During the first phase of polling in the state on Sept. 18, 38 people, including policemen, election workers and two magistrates, were killed when landmines exploded under vehicles carrying them to polling stations.
Despite the turmoil and low voter turnout, campaigning for the last phase of the polls, scheduled for Oct. 3 is continuing in full swing. One test of the public's enthusiasm will be how many voters and party workers turn up at the "European" asylum in Ranchi. In the aftermath of every election, says Dr. Sanjib Baruah, a psychiatrist at the hospital, roughly half of patients who come for treatment suffer from delusions of grandeur, that is, they think they are netas, or politicians. So far, just one or two such people have shown up. As election fever subsides, many more are expected.
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