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Sonia Gandhi – A Blot on the Nation

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(Am not sure about authenticty of this article)

by Mark Tully*

Sir William “Mark” Tully, OBE. He worked for BBC for a period of 30 years before resigning in July 1994. He held the position of Chief of Bureau, BBC, Delhi for 20 years. Padma Shree, KBE, Padma Bhushan, one of the most respected journalists in the world, writes on Indian Politics: An eye opener account, not known to most of the Indians.

“I can say without the shadow of a doubt that when history will be written, the period over which she (Sonia Gandhi) presided, both over the Congress and India, will be seen as an era of darkness, of immense corruption and of a democracy verging towards autocracy, if not disguised dictatorship, in the hands of a single person, a non-Indian   and a Christian like me. Truth will also come out about her being the main recipient for kickbacks from Bofors to 2G, which she uses to buy votes.”

The sun has already set; darkness is just about to start. Do you blame it on bankruptcy/blindness of Congress or country’s misfortune. It is both. Now read the complete analysis, which follows. THE TRUTH & THE HIDDEN FACTS. I was surprised when the Congress party gave me a Padma Shri – I am the   only foreign journalist to ever get it. For, in my forty years of political reporting in India, I have always been a vocal critic of the Nehru dynasty. Someone even called me recently: “a vitriolic British journalist, who in his old age chose to live back in the land he never approved”.

It started with Operation Blue Star. I was one of the few western correspondents who criticized Indira. As I have said since then numerous times, the attack on the Golden Temple and the atrocities that followed the army operations, produced in all sections of the Sikhs a sense of outrage that is hard today to alleviate. I believed then that the large majority of Hindu India, even if politically hostile to Indira Gandhi, openly identified with – and exulted in – her will to overwhelmingly humble a recalcitrant minority.

As everybody knows, Indira Gandhi helped my fame grow even more, by wanting to imprison me during the Emergency she clamped and finally throwing me out of India for a short while. But the result was that the whole of India tuned in, then and thereafter, to my radio’s broadcasts, ‘The Voice of India’, to hear what they thought was ‘accurate’ coverage of events.

When Rajiv Gandhi came to power, I first believed that he was sincerely trying to change the political system, but he quickly gave-up when the old guard would not budge. I criticized him for his foolish adventure in Sri Lanka, although I felt sorry for him when he was blown to pieces by Dhanu, the Tamil Tiger.

It is in Kashmir, though that I fought most viciously against his Govt and subsequent Congress ones for its human right abuses on the Kashmiri Muslims of the Valley. The Congress Governments tried indeed several times to censor me and the army even took prisoner my Kashmiri stringer, whom I had to rescue by the skin of his teeth. I am also proud that I was the first one to point out then, that the Indian Government had at that time no proof of the Pakistani involvement in the freedom movement in Kashmir.

Thus I always made it a point to start my broadcasts by proclaiming that the Indian Government accuses Pakistan of fostering terrorism», or that “elections are being held in Indian-controlled Kashmir”…As I was so popular, all the other foreign journalists used the same parlance to cover Kashmir and they always spoke of the plight of the Muslims, never of the 400.000 Hindus, who after all were chased out of their ancestral land by sheer terror (I also kept mum about it).

As for Sonia Gandhi, I did not mind her, when she was Rajiv Gandhi’s wife, but after his death, I watched with dismay as she started stamping her authority on the Congress, which made me say in a series of broadcasts on the Nehru Dynasty: “It’s sad that the Indian National Congress should be completely dependent on one family; the total surrender of a national party to one person is deplorable. You have to ask the question: what claims does Sonia Gandhi have to justify her candidature for prime-ministership? Running a country is far more complicated than running a company. Apprenticeship is required in any profession — more so in politics”.

I heard that Sonia Gandhi was unhappy about this broadcast. Then, after President APJ Abdul Kalam called her to the Raj Bhavan and told her what some of us already knew, namely that for a long time, she had kept both her Italian and Indian passports, which disqualified her to become the Prime Minister of India, she nevertheless became the Supreme leader of India behind the scenes. It is then that I exclaimed: “the moribund and leaderless Congress party has latched onto Sonia Gandhi, who is Italian by birth and Roman Catholic by baptism”.

She never forgave me for that. Yet, today I can say without the shadow of a doubt that when history will be written, the period over which she presided, both over the Congress and India, will be seen as an era of darkness, of immense corruption and of a democracy verging towards autocracy, if not disguised dictatorship, in the hands of a single   person, a non Indian and a Christian like me. Truth will also come out about her being the main recipient for kickbacks from Bofors to 2G, which she uses to buy votes, as the Wikileaks have just shown.

Finally, I am sometimes flabbergasted at the fact that Indians – Hindus, sorry, as most of this country’s intelligentsia is Hindu – seem to love me so much, considering the fact that in my heydays, I considerably ran down the 850 million Hindus of this country, one billion worldwide. I have repented today: I do profoundly believe that India needs to be able to say with pride, “Yes, our civilization has a Hindu base to it.” The genius of Hinduism, the very reason it has survived so long, is that it does not stand up and fight. It changes and adapts and modernizes and absorbs – that is the scientific and proper way of going about it.

I believe that Hinduism may actually prove to be the religion of this millennium, because it can adapt itself to change. Hindus are still slaves to MUSLIMS and CHRISTIANS On the name of secularism, lots of facilities and cash incentives are given to Muslims and Christians. Haj subsidy is given to Muslims for Haj yatra, wages of Muslim teachers and Imams are given to Muslims are given by looting the Hindu temples. No such subsidy is given to Hindus for going to Hindu religious places or any wages to Hindu religious priests or Hindu teachers. In fact congress secular government creates many obstacles for Hindus for going to Amarnath Yatra.

Even after 65 years of independence reservation is given on religious grounds while it should have been abolished by this time. If at all reservation or subsidy is needed, then it should be purely on economic grounds rather on the grounds of minorities. Such reservations affect the quality of work. Congress party giving various kinds of allurements to minorities to buy their votes with Hindu money. In the government, many people are with Hindu names but in fact many are Muslims and Christians with Hindu names (**) to fool Hindus and to show in the government, majority people are Hindus. Continue Reading…

Kashmir Crisis- the Historical Perspective

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By K.N. Pandit

Unprecedented changes have occurred in the world during past three decades. These are conspicuously visible in international relations, geo- political strategies, economic recession and social churning.

Nevertheless, simultaneously great leaps forward in technological and scientific advancement have abridged distances, shrunk time, and opened exciting opportunities of economic progress. The quality of life has improved considerably. While developing countries had to re-fashion their socio-economic set up to accommodate and even absorb imperatives of rapid development, technologically advanced countries with strong economies thrust much faster innovative options on them.  As a result, developing societies are feeling the pressure of transition to modernism. In such a prospect many irritants are likely to surface. In particular, there is growing demand for social justice and economic parity.  Continue Reading…

Kashmir and its PANDITS

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… to remember the real history …

Letter by Dr. K.N. Pandita, General Secretary of ASIAN-EURASIAN HUMAN RIGHTS FORUM AEHRF, Delhi

to

Mr. L.K. Advani, Hon’ble Deputy Prime Minister & Home Minister of India, New Delhi

Published on Kashmir Herald on the web, Volume 3, No. 6 – November 2003

Sir,

In the first week of September 2003, Observer Research Foundation (ORF), a reputed Delhi-based NGO organized a 2-day seminar in New Delhi on the theme ‘Kashmiri Pandits: Problems and Prospects’. Many senior leaders, public figures and opinion makers were present at its deliberations. It is understood that the NGO in question would be deputing a delegation to apprise you of the shades of opinion that have emerged on the subject of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) from Kashmir. Continue Reading…

Not protests but positive approach

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By K.N. Pandit

Nine Muslim organizations held a protest in the capital recently slamming Congress for victimizing Muslims who they claim are innocent. This protest was evoked by Delhi police investigations into this month’s Delhi bomb blasts. Continue Reading…

What an ignominious exit

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By K.N. Pandita

Congress has its patent antics of making scapegoats and passing the buck on.

Buta Singh has been a Congress activist for the whole of his life. How can one become Mr. non-partisan over night more so when the same party had catapulted him into the seat of the Governor to which he owed allegiance and which was in power at the centre? Continue Reading…

Saddam Hussein

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Found in The National Security’s Archive NSARCHIVE Oct. 18: Saddam’s Iron Grip, Intelligence Reports on Saddam Hussein’s Reign.

Washington D.C. October 18, 2005 – The National Security Archive today posted a series of declassified U.S. intelligence documents and other U.S. agency reports on Saddam Hussein’s human rights abuses, one of which is the subject of the first trial of Saddam which begins tomorrow in Iraq. Continue Reading…

North Korea and the United States

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Found in the National Security Archive, Washington DC, the following article: Declassified Documents from the Bush I and Clinton Administrations, National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 164, Edited by Robert A. Wampler – 202/994-7000. – Washington D.C. August 23, 2005 – Next week, if all goes according to plan, the United States will resume six-party talks with North Korea, South Korea, Japan, Russia and host nation China on the issue of North Korea’s nuclear program. Continue Reading…