The Hindu : A diversionary issue

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Aug 30, 2002

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A diversionary issue

BY RAISING THE issue of Sonia Gandhi's Italian origins, once again, the AIADMK chief, Jayalalithaa, has only found a pretext to settle scores with the Congress' Tamil Nadu unit. After the rhetoric indulged in by the partymen in Madurai (when the TMC finally merged into the Congress) and the endorsement of sorts by Ms. Gandhi of the State unit's project of restoring "Kamaraj" rule, the AIADMK leader seems to have been waiting for the right time to strike. She could not have chosen a better occasion to snipe at the Congress than during her visit to Delhi and the target could not have been anyone other than Ms. Gandhi. The Congress president's foreign origin is indeed a factor that will find resonance as a slogan in the political discourse notwithstanding the fact that her eligibility to occupy positions in the Government has been settled beyond dispute in the legal Constitutional sense. Ms. Jayalalithaa, indeed, cannot be faulted for having raised this issue — as indeed others have done — in the content of a political and campaign discourse. She did not, however, stop with this.

The AIADMK chief went about expressing her intentions to initiate a Bill barring people of foreign origin from holding Constitution posts — an old and discredited idea that found immediate resonance in the BJP. The Constitution guarantees all citizens, born in India or nationalised, the right to contest elections and hold constitutional offices. It is a basic principle of the Indian Constitution that no distinction is made between one type of citizen and another in the manner of, say, the American Constitution. It would be a mockery of the Constitutional scheme to change the rules of the political game at this stage merely to target one person and bar her from office. Even the Constitution Review Commission appointed by the BJP Government thought it wise to refrain from suggesting any change in this position. While one cannot quarrel with a politician raising the issue of Ms. Gandhi's foreign origins, lamenting the state of the Congress party and campaigning among the public as part of the political discourse, any attempt to raise a legal bar on her holding office would be wholly illegitimate.

Ms. Jayalalithaa's diatribe against the Congress president lacks conviction for another reason. After having stated in March 1998 (when she was part of the BJP-led NDA) that Ms. Gandhi would lead the country to disaster, the AIADMK chief entered into a poll alliance with the Congress in the 1999 general elections. Ms. Jayalalithaa did not have had any reservation against Ms. Gandhi's party when she continued with the alliance with the Congress during the May 2001 Assembly elections in Tamil Nadu. It is also a fact that Ms. Jayalalithaa had offered her party MPs to be counted when Ms. Gandhi was engaged in an effort to cobble together a majority in the Lok Sabha after the Atal Behari Vajpayee Government was voted out in March 1999. All these lead to the conclusion that Ms. Jayalalithaa's decision to snipe at the Congress chief is in part a fallout of the developments in Tamil Nadu. The fact that the TNCC president, E.V.K.S. Elangovan, has been attacking her Government has remained an irritant to the ties between the two parties for some time now. The Congress-TMC merger and the statement of objectives made by the Congress president on that occasion — that the Congress will strive to go it alone in the State — was perhaps not something that Ms. Jayalalithaa could countenance. Also, her keenness to move closer to the BJP has been apparent in her recent moves on the elections of the President and the Vice-President. Clearly, political exigencies, rather than any high principle, prompted her to pull out the issue of Ms. Gandhi's foreign origin at this stage.

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