National

A Shrunk Manifesto

With Sonia likely to campaign, some in the Congress feel the tearjerker number will be the script that works

Advertisement

A Shrunk Manifesto
info_icon

The penny seems to have finally dropped. Try as they may, Ajit Jogi, Kamal Nath, Ambika Soni et al - the Congress' TV-friendly faces - can't change the mind of the Indian middle class. That it has decided to back the bjp and nothing will change its mind has been obvious for some years now. To tinker with the discredited dialectics of critics, the middle class is reactionary, conservative... and proud of it! Congress functionaries now admit that appeals to 'be fair' won't work when it comes to examining the bjp critically. As the editor of The Indian Express put it, '(They) detest the thought that minorities and illiterate lower-caste types could elect someone they didn't endorse.'

Advertisement

With this realisation has emerged the faint contours of the likely Congress campaign. Of the Wronged Widow. Of the 'nasty men' in the Opposition and the ghar-ke-bhedi (rebels within) making life miserable for India's most famous daughter-in-law. It's already started.

Says Rajasthan Congress president Girija Vyas, 'Gaon mein log bolte hain: 'yeh bhi koi sawaal hai apni bahu se poochne ke liye?' (In the villages, people aver that this is not a question a bahu should be asked)', reacting to Sonia's foreign origins. Why did she wait for 14 years to take Indian citizenship? Girija explained in an interview: 'The moment her husband, whose shadow she is, entered active politics, Soniaji became an Indian citizen.' And damn the satellite TV audience.

Advertisement

Of course, it all revolves around Sonia. 'Whether we persuade her to withdraw her resignation or not, she has to be the main campaigner. There'll be sympathy for her after this,' some pcc chiefs told Outlook outside 10, Janpath. The argument is picked up by a 'thinking' Congressman: 'After 3,000 years of endorsing the line that 'a woman is a like a cow; she belongs to the house to which she goes (marries)', the population at large will reject the foreign-origin campaign.' But he has the honesty to add, 'I hope.' Others in the Congress believe that this is only 'using the inclusive aspects of Indian conservatism'.

'Those who think that the middle class has a premium on nationalism and a revulsion against seeing a foreigner as prime minister have no idea of what the voting classes think,' asserts bjp general secretary K.N. Govindacharya. Perhaps he's right. And anyway, the bjp - not to mention Pawar & Co - are there to crank up the issue among the 'voting classes'. But for a desperate Congress, it now has to be all of this, or nothing.

Tags

    Advertisement

    Advertisement

    Advertisement

    Advertisement

    Advertisement

    Advertisement