AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

        A Satyagrahi who wants to serve will not waste a thought upon his own comforts, which he leaves to be attended to or neglected by his Master on high. He will not, therefore, encumber himself with everything that comes his way; he will take only what he strictly needs and leave the rest. He will be calm, free from anger and unruffled in mind even if he finds himself inconvenienced. His service, like virtue, will be its own reward, and he will rest content with it. That was the stand of Mahatma Gandhi. Regardless of the tone, tenor and timbre of the statements issued from time to time, no one has any doubt about the stand of Sonia Gandhi today.

The Congress Party organized a Conference on 29-30 January in New Delhi to commemorate the Centenary of 'Satyagraha' launched by Mahatma Gandhi as a young lawyer in Africa at the Empire Theatre in Johannesburg on 11 September 1906. The White Government in South Africa proposed to bring in a new legislation in 1906 imposing restrictive pass / permit laws on the Indian community in South Africa. Mahatma Gandhi and his colleagues in the Natal Congress movement mobilised the community to oppose this Bill founded on the principle of racial discrimination. Accordingly a mass meeting was convened at the Empire Theatre in Johannesburg on 11 September 1906. Gandhiji described the event in these words:

Passionate inaction of aSatyagraha!!

               'The old Empire Theatre was packed from floor to ceiling. I could read in every face the expectation of something strange to be done or happen. Mr Abdul Gani, Chairman of the Transvaal British Indian Association, presided. He was one of the oldest Indian residents of the Transvaal and partner and manager of the Johannesburg branch of the well-known firm of Mamad Kasam Kamrudin. The most important among the resolutions passed by the meeting was the famous Fourth Resolution by which the Indians solemnly determined not to submit to the Ordinance in the event of its becoming law in the teeth of their opposition, and to suffer all the penalties attaching to such non-submission'. The resolution was duly proposed and seconded and supported by several speakers one of whom was Sheth Haji Habib.

        Truth waited like a vigilant spy on Gandhiji and his inner voice always spoke to him in sure though soft tones. Gandhiji lived and worked on no man's sufferance. He suffered the world but he himself was free, entirely free. He returned to India from Africa in 1915; started his 'no tax movement' at Champaran in Bihar in 1917; organized Satyagraha and hartal against the Jalianwalabag massacre in 1919; and by 1920 he was the unchallenged supreme leader of the Congress party.

        I don't have to elaborate on the sordid, sinister, soul-destroying, shameful, sinful and sunken state of the present Congress party under its supremo Sonia Gandhi who is a known spiritual mercenary among known material mercenaries. Mahatma Gandhi said that 'a bad self-Government on any day will be better than any good alien Government'. The Congress Party of today has buried Mahatma Gandhi fathom's deep. If only the Congress party and the Congressmen can truly respect the spirit of Mahatma Gandhi at least in the Centenary Year of Satyagraha, they should all combine and cry out in unison: 'The Congress Party under the leadership of the most inefficient and listless native Indian on any day will be better than under the supreme control of any person of foreign origin'. Every Congressman must realize that its supremo has had nothing to do with Mahatma Gandhi or his ideals ever since her birth outside India. She has only obtained the title of Gandhi in a convolutional way through her marriage. I am using the adjective 'convolutional' in a correct and factual manner because even Rajiv Gandhi or for that matter his mother or father had nothing to do with Mahatma Gandhi in terms of their filial or blood relationships.

        Against this background, the meeting to celebrate the Centenary of Gandhiji's Satyagraha which was organized in New Delhi on 29 - 30 January can only be viewed as a sham meeting to market the carcass of Mahatma Gandhi, completely ignoring his spirit and the great ideals for which Gandhiji lived and died. The fact of the matter is that Nathuram Godse only liquidated the body of Mahatma Gandhi at Birla House in New Delhi on 30 January, 1948 through his bullets. The Congress party has liquidated the spirit and soul of Mahatma Gandhi in an organized manner year after year after independence reaching its climax with the substitution of Sonia Gandhi for Mahatma Gandhi in the late 1990s.

        Sonia Gandhi has called for the formation of a 'coalition of conscience' based on a Gandhian ideal of Satyagraha. Seeing this bizarre, spineless and supine tamasha organized by the Congress party in New Delhi, I am only reminded of what Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) wrote in his great book 'The Present Age' in the middle of the 19th century:

        'The present age is - devoid of passion, an age which flies into enthusiasm for a moment only to decline back into indolence. Just as one might say about Revolutionary Ages that they run out of control, one can say about the Present Age that it doesn't run at all. 'From a flood of indications one might think that either something extraordinary happened or something extraordinary was just about to happen. But one will have thought wrong, for indications are the only thing the present age achieves, and its skill and virtuosity entirely consist in building magical illusions; its momentary enthusiasms which use some projected change in the forms of things as an escape for actually changing the forms of things, are the highest in the scale of cleverness and the negative use of that strength which is the passionate and creating energy during Revolutionary Ages. Eventually, this present age tires of its chimerical attempts until it declines back into indolence. Its condition is like one who has just fallen asleep in the morning: first, great dreams, then laziness, and then a witty or clever reason for staying in bed. The foundation of the tergiversation of the times is that every passionless person congratulates himself for being the first to discover it' and becomes, therefore, more clever.'

        A Revolutionary Age is an age of action; the present age is an age of advertisement, or an age of publicity: nothing happens, but there is instant publicity about it. A revolt in the present age is the most unthinkable act of all; such a display of strength would confuse the calculating cleverness of the times.'Action and passion is as absent in the present age as peril is absent from swimming in shallow waters. . . . The most skilled skaters would go out the furthest and venture most dangerously, in order to make the crowds gasp and say: 'Gods! He is insane, he will kill himself!' But you will see that his skill is so perfected that he will at the right moment swing around while the ice is still safe and his life is not endangered. . . 'This pseudo-secular technology has been perfected by the Congress party under its supremo Sonia Gandhi today.

        I can do poetic justice as a journalist to the lurid drama in New Delhi only through a poem called 'What is in a Name?':

        What is in a name said Shakespeare

        A rose will always be a rose no matter what you call it!

        Aha, aha say our Congressmen

        There never was such a fool born!

        How was Shakespeare to know about a new breed of men

        About to take over the fair, beautiful and ancient land of India

        In the far distant future

        Who would add a new meaning and power

        To a mere name

        For this breed would cry out

        There is nothing so wonderful as a NAME

        Though it covers multitudinous faults

        Any name that sways crowds silly

        Is worth a million votes willy-nilly

        Oh what is this NAME cry the crowd

        Why it is the name of GANDHI

        The Father of our nation the Congressmen exclaim

        For like changing clothes

        You only have to usurp the name of Gandhi minus the MAHATMA

        To become a craze and a crowd puller!

        Oh poor Shakespeare

        I shudder to think what he would have to say to this

        We discovered the power of the name Gandhi says the Congress

        It matters not what qualities you have, or how depraved you are

        All it requires for you to get over your sins

        Is not a visit to the Confessional

        But just change your name to GANDHI

        For have we not proved it

        We have had the magnificent Indira Gandhi

        The charismatic Sanjay Gandhi

        The great Rajiv Gandhi

        Our own Bahu Sonia Gandhi

        The ever charming Rahul Gandhi

        And more and more Gandhis galore

        In interminable succession

        For future monarchic accession

        For the wonder that is India

        Why has nobody asked

        What and where is the connection between

        The real Mahatma and the self-seeking politico Gandhis

        We strongly believe not only in names says the Congress

        But also in Chiranjeevis (Immortals), like Gandhi, Nehru, Kamaraj etc.

        Think of our Aswathama cry out the Old Guard

        But the Young Turks are not impressed

        Who is this guy with the most unpronounceable name they exclaim!

        Oh you want a Chiranjeevi with a modern name say the Old Guard

        Why you have one right amongst you

        The one and only Rahul Gandhi

        The new Pole star (Dhruv) in the Indian political sky

        Yes, yes cry the Young Turks,

        We are enamoured with

        Anybody who is not saffronized and communal

        Be he Rahul or Raoul,

        For after all what is in a name said Shakespeare!!