Mr. Arif Mohammad Khan, who till recently was Rajiv Gandhi’s Cabinet colleague, has indirectly blamed him for complicity in the Bofors scandal. Commenting on Rajiv’s statement that there were no middlemen in the deal, Mr. Khan said that “there was no reason to disbelieve the statement as the Prime Minister was himself in it directly”. After all the incriminating disclosures, only the naive or the blind idol worshippers can dismiss as baseless insinuations, the Indian Prime Minister’s neckdeep involvement in the seething corruption that has come to symbolize as the distinctive trademark of his government as well as the chief preoccupation of his close confidants.
His childhood friend and movie superstar, Mr. Amitabh Bachchan, in a typically filmi style, kept on denying that his brother, Ajitabh, owned a luxury Swiss apartment till the Indian Express published a photocopy of the certificate showing ownership of a fabulous 645,000 dollars’ worth of property in Switzerland. The disquieting disclosure instantly brought about Amitabh’s resignation from the Parliament. His resignation was described by the intrepid Supreme Court lawyer, Mr. Ram Jethmalani, as an open admission of the guilt and a clear confirmation of Rajiv’s involvement in the shady deals.
Whereas the story of unfolding corruption has fully vindicated the former Finance Minister, Mr. V.P. Singh, it has at the same time so unnerved “Mr. Clean” that instead of honorably abdicating in his favor, he expelled him from the party. Evidently, Rajiv had anticipated that he won’t be able to keep the cat in the bag for long. He, therefore, started playing cool. He wanted his Presidential candidate to win as his defeat would have totally destroyed him. With the characteristic finesse of his mother, he secured the support of all! The dissidents including Mr. V.P. Singh. The moment his candidate was declared elected, he picked up the axe and heads started rolling. To cover up he had to dispatch some of his close buddies also. He has temporarily sacrificed his friends not to clean up the rot but to refurbish his tarnished image. Their removal is pure drama and so are the tax raids on the offices of the eighteen leading defense contractors in which over five hundred thousand dollars of unaccounted money was recovered. All this is being done as a well thought out design to dupe the ignorant masses of India.
But events have taken their toll. The deceptive mask of Mr. Clean with all the elaborate makeup is all gone and he stands there at the center of the stage as an active accomplice of a band of robbers who have been shamelessly plundering national wealth and depositing it in foreign banks ever since he assumed reigns of power. His whole conduct is symptomatic of the same inbred perversity as made him chant “blood for blood” after his mother’s death. His stubbornness in refusing to prosecute publically indicted instigators like H.K.L. Bhagat and Jagdish Tytler, who were directly responsible for the 1984 anti-Sikh holocaust, now more than ever confirms his own deep involvement in that horrid death dance.
Just as good never go unrewarded, evil also invariably recoils and recoils disastrously. The increasing dissidence in the Congress (1) is the logical corollary of Rajiv’s actions and forebodes a vertical split in the party. To prevent this catastrophe, Rajiv will have no other recourse but to declare a state of emergency. His Soviet friends urgently want him to take this step. Because Soviet’s best card lies in stifling democracy and making India another Afghanistan a mere satellite of the communist giant.
Article extracted from this publication >> July 24, 1987
