Marigolds, Aircraft Carriers To Liquor Cartons: How Congress Assaulted Bharat Mata
- By : Anirban Ganguly
- Category : In News
Bharat Mata was assaulted when Indira Gandhi clamped Emergency, allowing Sanjay Gandhi to man and run a dictatorship
If a new complex for the Prime Minister’s Office had been constructed and inaugurated during the Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi era, it would have invariably been named after Jawaharlal Nehru. Sonia Gandhi inaugurating a new complex would have named it after Rajiv Gandhi, a Rajiv Complex, or a Rajiv Secretariat.
Those born to rule don’t indulge in “Seva.” They have no use for Sri Ramakrishna Paramhamsa’s profound uttering of serving humanity, in the spirit of serving Shiva. Thus, PM Modi’s referring to Sri Ramakrishna’s utterances must have sounded incongruous to the Congress’s first family, used to, as they are, making the system bend to their whims and needs.
For decades after independence, besides conferring on themselves India’s highest civilian honour, “Bharat Ratna”, the Congress first family named nearly every culvert, every alley and almost every drain cover in the name of its members. Educational institutions, health and cultural complexes, sports complexes, airports and parks, across the country, were named after the Nehru-Gandhis, in an attempt to erase from public memory the contributions and legacies of other personalities.
Thus, when Prime Minister Modi announced the start of “Rajaji Utsav”, commemorating the iconic statesman C. Rajagopalachari’s legacy in the Rashtrapati Bhavan, it was another indication that India’s icons will be feted and commemorated; their legacies, long suffocated by the Congress first family’s narcissism, will finally see light and life.
In an acerbic letter, Rajaji rued the obsession with Nehru and the short shrift that he had to face. Writing to Mountbatten, in October 1951, Rajaji lamented, “You and Edwina are so intensely interested in Jawaharlal Nehru that, I may say, you have no eyes to see or mind to think about any others. Rajaji is just a match-stick to light the cigarette…You throw the match-stick into the ash-tray without a thought after it had served the purpose…My career is truly remarkable in its zigzag. Cabinet Minister, Governor without power, Governor-General when the constitution was to be wound up, Minister without Portfolio, Home Minister and parliamentary work, and now the proposition is Acting High Commissioner in the U.K.! Finally, I must one day cheerfully accept a senior clerk’s place somewhere and raise that job to its proper importance.” Nehru and his Congress reduced “Gandhi’s Conscience” Rajaji to such a pathetic state, repeatedly meting out insults, both subtle and brazen.
Nehru had ordered the Indian frigate INS Trishul to shower marigolds as a final personal tribute to Edwina Mountbatten when she died in 1960. Edwina died in Borneo and her body was given a burial at sea in the English Channel. The best use Nehru could find for the INS Trishul was to order it to chug all the way and make it shower marigolds on Edwina’s bier as a final farewell to a lady for whom he had and displayed unabashed public and private affection.
Nehru’s blind spot for the communist Krishna Menon is now the stuff of legend. Nehru presided over free India’s first defence purchase scandal in 1948, when Menon chose an obscure UK-based firm, “Anti-Mistantes”, to supply to India 2000 refitted jeeps at the price of new ones. The Congress first family’s obsession with defence deals and commission would continue for the next four decades, with Bofors in 1986 and Augusta-Westland in
What is less known is that the first liquor scandal took place during Nehru’s tenure with comrade Krishna Menon in the lead. As India’s High Commissioner in London, comrade Menon had bought “4275 cases of Scotch whisky for the Indian Armed Forces at a price much higher than could be justified,” writes Valmiki Faleiro, Goanese writer and journalist. Nehru, of course, looked the other way. A Frigate showering marigolds, overpriced jeeps and whisky did not matter to him; these were necessary to bolster his international image and to satisfy his personal fancies.
The best use that Nehru’s grandson could make of the Indian Navy decades later, in 1987, was to use the INS Viraat for a private family holiday in Lakshadweep. Rajiv Gandhi, his family, entourage and his foreign friends rode the INS Viraat as a “private taxi” to a barren island in Lakshadweep, to spend an entire week, following Christmas.
An English daily reported how “almost everything except coconut and fish” had to be flown in over 200 to 400 km to cater to Rajiv’s family, relatives and guests. Cooks, water, generators and attendants had to be flown in to look after the entitled entourage, in Bangaram islands. Bangaram, it is said, is the only island in the archipelago where liquor consumption was permitted.
The preparation for Rajiv and Sonia’s private holiday began four months before D-day. The entire area was cordoned off till January 15, ship tickets cancelled and ordinary people prevented from going about their daily chores, because Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, Nehru’s grandson, was taking a private holiday with his family and foreign friends. Cartons of “some of the choicest brand of liquor”, reports the English daily, were sent to Bangaram to cater to the VVIP guests, while chicken, meat and fresh vegetables were airlifted from Cochin to satisfy Rajiv’s, his family’s and his foreign guests’ palate and gastronomical choices.
The English daily’s report records that “Large quantities of ambalapazha palpayasam, one of the choicest puddings of Keralites, have been airlifted to Lakshadweep to treat the visiting dignitaries…” Though, we are not told whether Rajiv, his children, his foreign wife and their foreign friends partook of this desi dessert! Scuba diving, tuna fishing, yachting and, of course, binging on various delicacies was the daily routine, at least the one that became public. A battery of Navy personnel was pressed into service to facilitate the private holiday, keeping a twenty-four-hour vigil, while Rajiv, his family and their foreign friends frolicked and pranced. Indian Navy vessels, aircraft carrier INS Viraat, frigates INS Vindhyagiri, INS Taragiri and 39 INS Magar, were there to serve Rajiv and his foreign entourage.
Bharat Mata was assaulted when Indira Gandhi clamped Emergency, allowing Sanjay Gandhi to man and run a dictatorship. The Shah Commission report, which Indira and the Congress tried to desperately liquidate, notes how Sanjay Gandhi “who wielded enormous power during the emergency did not confine his activities only to operation of demolition houses, shops and industrial buildings” but “took a hand even in getting some persons whom either he did not like or who had thwarted him, arrested and detained…”
An entire ecosystem, Congress’s first family’s slaves, have worked overtime, for decades, justifying their nepotism, their stinkingly entitled acts and their repeated assault on India’s constitutional and democratic essence. For decades they behaved as if this was normal. No questions raised, no demands made for accountability. Anyone who questioned this sense of entitlement, this assault on India’s democratic fabric, was hounded and sidelined.
Each time the Nehru-Gandhi family sold India, exploited India, compromised India and assaulted India, these intellectual hyenas with a price tag, would come out in packs to cluck and howl, justifying the Nehru-Gandhi clan’s barter and trade of India’s image and national interest.
The Congress, wallowing in ideological bankruptcy for decades, has now outsourced its hit-jobs to these. They run the Congress’s toolkits. These well-fed hyenas now call for “digging Modi’s grave,” because Modi has broken their apparently impregnable rampart of entitlement with a sledgehammer, for good, forever. They realise that India will not be the same anymore.
