Nice to see born-again Congressmen who once broke away from their party to then return to it to then become ministers in Delhi lecture India on what this country could “learn” from  Rishi Sunak becoming prime minister of the United Kingdom, mainly ‘how to accept leaders from non-majority communities for high offices of the country. Case in point: P Chidambaram, whose comments to this effect his own party has now distanced itself from! 

Jairam Ramesh of the Congress, in the middle of the party’s Bharat Jodo Yatra, on being asked about Chidambaram’s tweet, rattles off a list of names of ‘non-majority’ Indians who held high offices in India, from Dr Zakir Hussain to AR Antulay to APJ Abdul Kalam, adding that the only person who should be asked about Chidambaram’s tweet is Chidambaram himself and none else…

Here is how it works, Mr Chidambaram: First of all, if there is a “majoritarian” party in place in Bharat, it is because it has won the vote. So deal with it. (We could, in the same breath, and if the case is as it has been made out to be, however, talk about another ‘majoritarian’ party that was in power for decades, for long refused coalition governments, scripted laughable stories of “unanimous elections” within their party, declared an Emergency, and just about made Article 356 of the Constitution their way of life, if one wishes). We shouldn’t, however, for paucity of patience, and the phenomenon of nationwide repetition going unheard by that party, talk of what that party did during that Emergency based on their version of “nationhood”.

Second of all, the mandate here in Bharat is not about Bharat reacting against “non-majority citizens of their countries”. It is about changing the dispensation, and a statement against the deification of the remnants of a family simply by virtue of the family name, and how that has practically become a party’s religion. Had Rishi too benefited from such a ‘privilege’ in his route to the UK’s high office, wouldn’t someone in the whole wide world have pointed that out by now?  

Third of all, how is it that Chidambaram does not see that what is being celebrated here in Bharat is that Rishi is now prime minister of a country whose ancestors went about hanging, starving, looting and sending to jail the ‘subjects’ of an ’empire’ that Rishi has now gone and won the “Conservative” vote of. Here in the Northeast, there are names such as Maniram Dewan, U Tirot Sing, Piyoli Phukan, and Haipou Jadonang, to name only a few, that Chidambaram could read up on.

And why the Northeast of Bharat? How about this for a reason: that this was a place that had to fight to be with Bharat because it was being given away to Pakistan by that party, and later tortured and maimed because that party and its government intended on crushing a students’ Agitation against illegal migrants from Bangladesh, the later version of East Pakistan? As the government of the day went about attempting to crush the Assam Agitation, Assam saw its first militant activities by hardliners, something that would in the decades to follow lead to thousands of deaths.

There are others on the same boat as Chidambaram, Mehbooba Mufti being one, speaking of how this country, while it celebrates Rishi’s spectacular rise, is “shackled by divisive and discriminatory laws such as NRC and CAA”. While one is still left looking for her comments on how discriminatory the IMDT Act was and what it did to Bharat till it was scrapped by the Supreme Court of the country, the NRC too was implemented by the SC, something she chooses to ignore. As for the CAA, don’t they have the freedom to it? It’s a freedom Bharat, unlike many many other countries, including perceived ones such as Pakistan and Bangladesh, gives us.

In stark contrast to Chidambaram’s tweet on Rishi was the one from Anand Mahindra. Mahindra’s choice of words was spectacular: not prime minister in waiting, he said of Rishi after he was chosen, but that an Indian was on the verge of being “anointed” prime minister of the UK. He referred to Winston Churchill’s “supposed” infamous “all Indian leaders will be of low calibre and men of straw…” statement in 1947, to make his point.

That is  the difference between Independence and dependence, and, more importantly, between being in the business of creating Indian ‘leaders’ by virtue of a family name rather than what it takes to lead India, and being an Indian in business. It’s a difference Bharat knows, while some think the two are the same…