A Letter to Mr Gandhi

Dear Mr Gandhi

I saw the news today and felt immensely overwhelmed at your proclamation. Speaking to the farmers affected by the land acquisition of the UP government, you commented that you felt ‘ashamed to be an Indian’. I fully understand your anguish. In fact, I stand next to you in sharing your shame and embarrassment of our nationality. As we are standing together in the sweltering Delhi heat, and not knowing what else to do but to wait for the police to arrive for the token arrest, I thought I’ll share a few more historic nuggets. Actually, there are several instances in the past that made us – you, me and other Indians – feel astoundingly shameful.

Those historic instances are far too many to note in one blog post so I shall only narrate a few significant ones.

Not long ago, India ventured to conduct one of the prestigious international sport events called Common Wealth Games. We all felt proud of our achievement in winning the bid. Very soon, somebody scratched the surface and out came huge sacks of ugly muck. News of corruption, mismanagement, unprecedented expenses and appalling infrastructure adorned the headlines across the world. Seeing those dirty toilets in the front pages of the UK newspapers, I hung my head in shame. Did you?

Bofors, the first major corruption scam to ever surface in the history of Indian politics took its toll a government and cost several hundred crores in fighting the case in our courts. This scam involved an Italian broker who apparently acted on the behest of a person very close to the then Prime Minister. Soon after investigations began, the Italian broker began playing cat and mouse with our agencies. This went on for a while and then the agency gave up. They released his frozen bank accounts and when he was arrested in Brazil they went all the way there to get him released. They fought hard in the court to close all the cases on him and for that received recrimination from the Supreme Court. Seeing the deplorable condition of our anti-corruption drive and how a foreigner could collude with powers-that-be to make a mockery of our legal system, I hung my head in shame. Did you?

There was a lady from abroad who married a Prime Minister’s son and came to India. She loved her husband but not his country. Perhaps she foresaw the farmers’ agitation so she already felt ashamed of India long before you and I did. Then after a lot of pressure, from the courts and her mother-in-law, she reluctantly became our citizen. When her turn came to become a PM, our then President pointed out the seedy circumstances of her citizenship and nudged her to withdraw her claim. Guess what she did? Apart from going onto become a ‘saint who renounced her throne’, she took her revenge by denying a second term for that illustrious person and demeaned the post by making an unknown Rajasthani lady as the President, whose only claim to fame was forging bank loan documents. I hung my head in shame. Did you?

I see the dust kicking up in the distance, so I'll go quickly. Did Emergency embarrass you? Did Shah Bano episode embarrass you? What about the historic 2G scam? The money-for-votes scheme in Tamil Nadu? Farmers suicide, the largest being from the Congress-ruled Maharashtra?

Oh, the police have arrived. You are being apprehended, but we both know that you’re going to be let off within half-hour and there will be heated debates about your ‘arrest’ in CNN IBN, NDTV, etc. There’s no point in me being there because my arrest will be the real one and the police may take all their anger on me. So I’ll quietly sneak out.

We’ll meet again. Talk. Perhaps I can reminisce on some more history.

With best regards
Another Shameful Citizen