There is so much brouhaha over Congress Minister in the Punjab Government, Navjot Sidhu, hugging the Pakistan Army chief. Entirely needless — the outrage, not the hug — if you ask me. Sidhu looked around for the most impressive man in the crowd at Imran Khan’s oath-taking ceremony — no, Khan was not taking marriage vows yet again, but he was being administered the oath of office as his country’s Prime Minister — and sighted the suited, booted, dressed in military uniform to kill (pun intended), his host nation’s Army chief, and promptly embraced him.
For Sidhu, the occasion was just a change of television sets. Then, he was an honoured guest at supposed comedy shows, where he was paid to laugh his head off at juvenile jokes cracked by the anchor generally, but occasionally by himself. But in Pakistan, he could not laugh off the event, and so he did the next best thing: Embrace a person who shared his ethnicity. The Pakistan General must have cackled from within: Here was a true-plodded Sikh from India hugging him, when his Army and the ISI which it controls had wreaked havoc in Punjab through the Khalistan movement and when that very Army and the ISI is presently engaged in fomenting terrorism in India. You don’t get many Indians of this kind.
Or maybe there are, at least in the Congress’s stable. There is that gem of a person, Mani Shankar Aiyar. In 2015, he visited Pakistan and asked his host for help to oust the Modi Government. What he had in mind cannot be understood by ordinary minds. Given that the people of Pakistan would not be voting in the elections to Lok Sabha, only the mani can tell us what precise assistance he had in mind for the Pakistanis to collaborate on. Was he seeking an escalation of terrorist attacks on India which would lead to as many innocent Indian lives being lost as possible, so that public opinion at home went against Modi and he got defeated?
By the way, Aiyar is back in the Congress, and his return coincided with Sidhu’s visit to Pakistan. For less than a year, he served his suspension from the party. The Congress, suddenly gripped by the virtue of practising ethics in public life, had suspended Aiyar towards the end of last year, because he had called Prime Minister Modi a man of low means. Rahul Gandhi made his displeasure known, and his minions took the cue by appearing on television and slamming the dynasty’s loyal bearer. But that was during the run-up to the Gujarat Assembly election, and the Congress believed that in acting against the motormouth, it would contain the electoral damage. With the electoral compulsion not valid anymore, the party rescinded the suspension order.
One of the first things Aiyar did on his comeback was to announce that India-Pakistan relations would improve once Modi was eased out of power. He ought to have added how wonderful those ties were, when the Congress-led UPA was at the helm — the 26/11 attack on Mumbai happened under his party’s watch. Also, how great the relationship was when Indira Gandhi ruled the country. One admission must be made: Whichever the regime, Aiyar’s lust for Pakistan and his disregard for Indian lives lost due to our neighbour’s policies against India have remained unchanged.
Returning to Sidhu, he may not be the brightest man around, but he realises the anger that his actions have generated back home. And so, the voluble man has gone silent, angrily saying only that he will speak when he desires to do so and not because the media questions him. Earlier on, he had offered lame reasons — which even the producers of the comedy shows he regularly attends, would have rejected as unpalatable — for hugging the Pakistan Army General, and for being seated next to the chief of Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. Accept his clarification that he had no idea that his neighbour was the Pakistan-occupied Kashmir head. If Sidhu had really known of the identity, he would have hugged him too.
The former cricketer may be a pathetic joker, but should he have been so dense as to not understand national sensitivities? The country was in mourning over the demise of Atal Bihari Vajpayee, but this petty politician was having a field day in Pakistan. From August 14, it had become known that Vajpayee’s health was critical; it worsened the following day. Where was the need for Sidhu to have gone ahead with his travel plans— and then remained rooted there even after knowing of Vajpayee’s demise? Two other Indian cricketers had also been invited — both his seniors and arguably having closer bonds with Imran Khan — but they politely cited reasons and backed out.
One Congress leader hugs the Pakistan Army chief, and another Congress leader — Sandeep Dikshit — calls the Indian Army chief a street goon. One Congress leader demands that India take one step forward because his confidence in Pakistan is so high that he is confident that that country will thereafter take two steps ahead towards peace, while another Congress veteran — Digvijaya Singh — endorses that the 26/11 attack was the work of the RSS! Laugh your guts out, but wait for another: A Mumbai-based Congress leader demanded proof of the surgical strikes that our Army personnel had carried out, because Pakistan had denied it ever happened. It was not enough for this politician that our Army had publicly confirmed conducting the successful operation.
The moot question is: Why is Rahul Gandhi so indulgent towards those who sing paeans to Pakistan while that country continues to bleed India with a thousand cuts?
Discussion about this post