[sacw] Article on Sonia Gandhi (The Telegraph)

[aiindex@mnet.fr]

July 5, 1999
FYI
(South Asia Citizens Web)
====================

[Appeared in The Telegraph on July 1, 1999]

ANSWER TO A LEADING QUESTION
By Achin Vanaik

The controversy about Sonia Gandhi and her fitness for the highest public
political office in India raises fundamental questions about the character
of Indian political democracy and of Indian nationalism today, and more
importantly about the kind of democracy and nationalism that we are seeking
to consolidate in the future. For both, especially nationalism, are ongoing
processes and projects and at this very juncture (indeed ever since the
rise of the BJP) the meaning and shape that Indian democracy and Indian
nationalism should have are being crucially contested by opposing
ideological values and forces. The stakes then are rather higher than just
the mere question of Sonia Gandhi's suitability or otherwise for prime
ministership.

To begin with let us clearly define the relationships to be investigated
and not confuse the debate unnecessarily. Mrs. Gandhi's Italian birth and
early upbringing is a matter that is relevant to the issue of Indian
nationalism -- how we understand it, how we wish to define it, how we wish
our political leaders to embody it. It is not relevant to the issue of
Indian political democracy. The fact that Sonia Gandhi is also a member of
India's most `royal' political family, indeed its principal representative
today is a matter that is relevant to the issue of Indian democracy but not
to that of its nationalism. Matters get confused when her Italian origin is
portrayed as an affront or problem not just for some `ideal' of Indian
nationalism that is sought to be defended but also for our democratic system.

However, another problem arises because whereas the essential contours of
the Indian political system are well established, the defining contours of
Indian nationalism are not. Indeed, there is a serious and ongoing struggle
for what can be called the `soul of Indian nationalism' with an
anti-democratic, Hindutva version being pitted against more democratic
versions which to be democratic in some meaningful sense also would have to
be firmly secular. The Indian Constitution is a founding document for the
character of India's polity and therefore of its distinctive democratic
character. It cannot in anywhere near the same way be a codification of the
basic character of Indian nationalism.

Precisely because the Indian Constitution is a product of the mid-twentieth
century and (at least for sustained and enduring democratic countries) is
one of the youngest, it is also in its codified provisions among the most
advanced, progressive and democratic when compared to the Constitutions of
other stable democracies. In short, it could stand on, learn from, and
advance upon what preceded it in regard to the lessons of the global
democratic experience. The fact that the Indian Constitution unlike most
others does not distinguish between natural born and naturalised citizens
as a criterion regarding suitability for public office, even the highest,
testifies to both its more modern and to its greater democratic character
than other Constitutions. This is something to be applauded, praised and
defended not lamented. Most certainly the demand of those including former
Prime ministers Chandrasekhar and V.P. Singh, that the Indian Constitution
should be amended in this regard should be firmly rejected because the
issue goes beyond Sonia Gandhi and touches the question of the democratic
ideal itself -- of how we adjust our institutions, structures and laws in a
direction that deepens and does not diminish that ideal and practice.

There is, of course, the real problem of dynastic rule and the need to
discourage the power and significance of what amounts to something like a
`royal family' in young democracies. The existence of such `royal families'
testifies to the practical weaknesses of the democracies concerned. But
this is not something that can be legislated against. Even in a relatively
stable democracy like India, weaknesses in the functioning and
institutionalisation of various democratic structures, norms and practices
provides a space where the importance of a figure head from such royal
political families (whose founding figure is usually seen as the intiator
of some major and welcome political transformation e.g. leading the country
to independence) gets highlighted. There has been Mrs. Bandaranaike in Sri
Lanka, there is Megawati Sukarnopoutri in Indonesia, Aung Suu Kyi in
Myanmar, Sheik Hasina Wajed in Bangladesh, and so on.

But matters do not stop simply at a defence of Sonia Gandhi's formal right
to be prime minister of India or at lamenting the continuing power of the
Nehru-Gandhi dynasty. Nationalism is always both a political and cultural
entity. The ways in which the political and the cultural combine, the
relative strength of either component are determined by the specific
historical circumstances in which different countries become nations and
nation-states, and by the ways in which the nationalist ideal is constantly
shaped and reshaped over time in response to new pressures and
circumstances. There is no nationalist essence. This is always a myth. Or
to put it more precisely, the political essence of nationalism is
citizenship which should always be understood in the most democratic and
inclusivist manner. This kind of essentialism is not a problem. But in
principle nationalism need not and should not have any cultural essence,
although many (but far from all) actual nationalisms to their detriment
have often enshrined some such notion. Nationalist imaginings and
nation-states are all modern phenomenon of the last few hundred years at
the most. But most feel the need to give themselves, culturally speaking, a
much longer, even immemorial past.

What matters is when these redefinitions or re-imaginings or collective
longings lead in the direction of anti-democratic and exclusivist
understandings of how nationalism should be constructed, interpreted,
understood and propagated today and in the future. To insist that the prime
minister of India must be a natural born Indian is to connect Indianness if
not quite to notions of race or colour, then certainly to the accident of
birth, and to hoary ideas of `blood' and `soil'. Such understandings of
nationalism belong to a genre of cultural exclusivisms whose defining
element is always an `essentialism' of some sort or the other. It will not
do even to say that a second generation immigrant to India can qualify for
being a PM but not a first generation one. This still gives too much
obeisance to culturally essentialist notions of nationalism. By such a
light, a first generation wealthy NRI emigrant to the US whose `commitment'
to India was shown by his or her willingness to vote with their feet can
theoretically on return, qualify for holding such high office but not a
`foreigner' by birth who commits himself or herself to this country for
most of their productive life. This latter message is what Sonia Gandhi has
sought to publicly convey in her own defence but with vote-aiming maudlin
add-ons about being the tearful widow and daughter-in-law of the
assassinated 'martyrs" of Rajiv Gandhi and Mrs. Indira Gandhi.

Finally, to distinguish between the larger principles at stake and Mrs.
Gandhi herself, let me state my own preferences clearly. The fact that the
Congress has her as its premier leader testifies to its own political
plight. She has no serious qualifications or skills (though like Indira
Gandhi she may develop them) except the family name. A healthier Congress
would have no need of her, nor incidentally of the kind of unprincipled,
corrupt politician represented by most other Congress leaders including the
likes of Sharad Pawar (who was undemocratically expelled from the Congress
for questioning Sonia Gandhi's suitability forprime ministership so as to
make his own bid) for whom `grassroots political activity' is merely
adeptness at factional manoeuvring, patronage-dispensing, balancing between
favours to rural elites and promises to the rural oppressed, with some
oratory thrown in. However, a Sonia Gandhi is preferable any day to the
likes of such leaders like current prime minister Mr. A.B. Vajpayee or
current home minister Mr. L.K. Advani (of the BJP) who in their thought and
practice embody an evil utterly antithetical to everything Indian democracy
and nationalism can and should stand for.

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