Was just going through an opinion piece in one of the papers where the writer asks why is Mayawati (of the thousand statutes of herself fame) so fixated on memorializing herself? Good question. But I fail to understand what the fuss is all about? Haven’t we heard of the simple fact of life called progression?
If you start something, good or bad- such is the power endowed on the human race to prefect and better a move- that someone somewhere is bound to move towards making it perfect and better.
Just last week the state government announced the opening of the Bandra Worli Sealink in Mumbai, the city where I stay. The Congress government, both at the Centre and the state, thought it fit to make the much-hyped Mumbai seabridge into one quagmire of political sycophancy and opportunism.
So what do both governments do? To inaugurate what is arguably India’s most visible piece of engineering and architecture in the last fifty years, they get Sonia Gandhi. Now may I ask who is Sonia Gandhi? Is she the Prime Minister of India? Officially she isn’t. Is she the President of India? Positively she would never accept such a titular post.
Then why was she called? Because she is the chairperson of the UPA? How would the same glitterati and journalists fattened on Congress dole outs like Padma Shris have reacted if the BJP-led NDA government had invited the sarsangchalak of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh- the RSS- to inaugurate the seabridge if they were in power?
A massive hue and cry? Logically speaking the RSS chief khakhi shorts-and-black-cap wearer has the same position in the BJP scheme of things as Sonia in the Congress. A disgusting façade of authority without responsibility going under the name of mentorship.
So not only do they go ahead and get Sonia Gandhi to inaugurate the bridge, all sycophants including Maharashtra’s tallest political leader- of course now heading the fighting for survival NCP- go ahead and name it after Rajiv Gandhi.
Now Rajiv Gandhi was India’s most progressive Prime Minister who after five years as Prime Minister of a party that had 410 seats in Parliament lead it on a colossal Lok Sabha campaign in 1989 that ended with the party wiped out in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, West Bengal. Rajasthan, Delhi leaving the Congress with just 140 seats to show. The Raja of Manda had left the scion of India’s first family with the kind of bloody nose that would make Advani’s loss in the 2009 Lok Sabha elections a photo-finish.
Coming back to the point from where I started- about India’s self-styled favourite Dalit daughter.
If one party goes around naming stadiums after the grandfather, educational institutions and sundry indoor swimming pools after the daughter and seabridges and rural development schemes after the grandson, some self=styled daughter is going to come forward and prefect the art of memorializing self.
Mayawati has just gone ahead and done it. She has spent almost half a billion dollars- in dirt poor Uttar Pradesh- to make statues of herself, those of Babasaheb and Kanshi Ram are just to soften the blows that she expected would come her way.
Now if the Congress wants to top it, they would have to somehow get Rahul Gandhi’s mug on the Rs 1000 note. That will take some doing and I am sure Mayawati would come up with something better. The game has begun. Sit back and enjoy it. I have a feeling the Congress government in Maharashtra will name the Rs 1000 crore Shivjai Maharaj memorial in the Arabian Sea after Sonia Gandhi. Fun.
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