Is it time for regime change in India, for Dr. Manmohan Singh to walk into the sunset? Uncle Sam, ever anxious to rearrange the world with friendly dictators and pliable democrats, seems to have woken up to the grand potential of Mr. Rahul Gandhi, whose scintillating thirty-month-old stint as Amethi MP has set the Potomac on fire.
In the best traditions of American journalism, a leading newsweekly has run an effervescent cover story on the Indian “crown prince” (their phrase, not mine). This certainly suggests Congress ‘queen’ Sonia is planning a major political manoeuvre. It is hardly coincidental that the party suddenly withdrew support from the Mulayam Singh Yadav regime in Uttar Pradesh, setting the ball rolling for Assembly elections, which are bound to impact the Centre.
Sadly for the friendly Americans, the eulogistic write-up which exhorts Indians to look up to Rahul on account of his lineage rather than his ability to lead, has upset the family retainers. Much like the since-denied Tehelka interview of 24 September 2005, the Newsweek story has been deemed embarrassing to the family and party because it refers to Rahul’s qualifications with unflattering matter-of-factness. It speaks volumes for the clout enjoyed by the Gandhi-Maino clan in Washington DC that Newsweek could be made to eat crow.
In a prompt and unprecedented retraction, Newsweek apologized for “several inaccuracies” in the story, mainly the claim that Rahul failed to earn a degree and did not stick to his job with the Monitor Group for long. The magazine now asserts that Rahul has an M.Phil. degree in Development Economics and had worked with the Monitor Group for three years. Crawling where asked to bend, the magazine said it erred in stating that after a year of college in Delhi, Rahul took economic courses at Cambridge and Harvard, but failed to earn a degree. It said Rahul’s father, former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, was assassinated while he was at Harvard in 1991, and that “serious, immediate and life-threatening security concerns” compelled him to transfer to Rollins College, Florida, from where he graduated in 1994. He went on to receive an M.Phil. from Trinity College, Cambridge University, after which he joined the Monitor Group, a leading, global-strategy consulting group in London.
Congress party spokesman, Dr. Abhishek Singhvi, feels “deeply satisfied” with the apology, though personally I feel it raises more issues than it answers about the so-called “crown prince,” because America’s hugely irreverent media does not normally defer so abjectly to even the tallest giants of the First World. Obviously, larger forces are at work to build a mythology around India’s most unremarkable political phenomenon.
It is therefore necessary to look closely at the leader Uncle Sam has so lovingly anointed for us lesser mortals. The irrepressible Dr. Subramanian Swamy, who not long ago forced Ms. Sonia Gandhi to admit that she had not been to the Cambridge University but only to Cambridge town, scoffs the belated claim that Rahul Gandhi dropped out of Harvard undergraduate studies due to “security reasons” after Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination. Dr. Swamy says that hitherto Mr. Gandhi had inspired the Indian media to write that he had a Harvard undergraduate degree. It now transpires that he “graduated” from “some Rock and Rollins College” in Florida. Dr. Swamy adds, with some justice, that the Harvard campus is one of the most protected in America, and as a recipient of Z-security cover for figuring on the LTTE hit-list, he faces no difficulty visiting Harvard every summer.
It is pertinent that regardless of where Mr. Gandhi graduated, there is even today no evidence that he undertook post-graduate studies anywhere. As such, his M.Phil. degree requires credible explanation. Dr. Swamy has demanded that Rahul Gandhi make public the Department from which he secured this degree and disclose the thesis he wrote to qualify for it. The demand is not unreasonable, because in the affidavit submitted to the Election Commission, it appears that Rahul Gandhi did not mention graduation from Rollins College, Florida, USA, but only gave his educational qualifications as High School and then M.Phil. Some Indians have now written to the President of Rollins College to clarify matters, as the Alumni Records and also Alumni & Friends list of 1994 fails to mention Rahul Gandhi, and some persons in the 1994 alumni list could not recall such a prominent personality graduating from there.
It is equally curious that the Monitor Group, where Rahul Gandhi supposedly worked in London, has clamped up about his three-year stint there. It is also not known how the “serious, immediate and life-threatening security concerns” lessened in London. All this suggests careful White Western management of Rahul Gandhi’s academic and professional qualifications and public projection of the same, which does not augur well for Indian democracy. This may therefore be an appropriate occasion for former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee to clarify reports about the mysterious detention of Rahul Gandhi at an American airport during his premiership, and his role in having him released.
Further, given the concerns of many Indians about his mother’s nationality and religious affiliations (which caused her to associate with discredited Western evangelists like Ron Watts), it would be in the fitness of things for Rahul to clarify if he possesses an Italian passport (and nationality) besides his Indian ones, and what faith he practices. I specifically wish to know whether or not he is a Hindu like the late Indira Gandhi, the grandmother in whose house he was born and raised.
Finally, there is a need to explain the spectacular performance of the little known Backops Engineering, which is constructing the International Airport Terminal Building at Mumbai, container freight station for Maersk Sealand, Training Centres for RBI, headquarters of Wochhardt Ltd and Wockhardt Hospital in Mumbai, IPCL township at Nagothane, meditation hall at Osho Commune of Pune, among others (Deccan Herald May 29, 2004). Though based on Arthur Bunder Road opposite Taj Mahal Hotel in south Mumbai, hardly anyone in the construction industry had ever heard of this company, which managed to grab such prestigious projects without creating an overt ripple in the market. Eighty-three percent of the firm’s shares are owned by Rahul Gandhi, according to his election affidavit; the turnover and profits should be impressive.
The Pioneer, 23 January 2007