SUNDAY SENTIMENT: Modi marriage controversy CONGRESS NEEDS TO PEEP INTO ITS OWN HOUSEHOLD

SUNDAY SENTIMENT

Modi marriage controversy

CONGRESS NEEDS TO PEEP INTO ITS OWN HOUSEHOLD

"Tu kaun (Who are you)?" so goes a Punjab saying, ”Main Khaamkhah"  (I am an unnecessary, unwanted intruder). Same is true about the unnecessary controversy that has been raked up by Congress leaders about Gujarat Chief Minister and BJP's Prime Ministerial candidate Shri Narendra Modi declaring  Mrs. Jashodaben as his spouse. The Congress whose supremo Mrs. Sonia Gandhi refuses to disclose her religion to an RTI query claiming it to be a "personal" matter, appears to think otherwise of an individual's marriage about 50 years back when he was nobody in public. To Congress it is not a matter "personal" between Shri Modi and his spouse but a matter of the great party's grave concern. They are shedding crocodile electoral tears at Mrs. Jashodaben's plight’’ and are fighting for her rights as a spouse — the rights she has never sought.

The Congress also forgets the old saying that jab miaan beewi raazi, to kya karega kaazi?(When both the husband and wife are in agreement, what can kaazi – an official who interprets what is wrong or right according to religious addicts — do?) But the Congress as an organization drowning in the violent anti-current in the ocean of current Lok Sabha elections is desperately trying to catch every straw to save itself. It is usurping the role of akaazi whose help has not been sought by anyone.

The woman is undergoing fasts to pray to God to make her husband the prime minister of the country. She has never spoken a word in remorse. But Congress has assumed the role of a pleader for whom the plaintiff or defendant has not signed its vakalatnama in the party's favour. They are ignorant of the elementary requirement of our law that nobody can plead anybody's case unless he/she has an authorization signed and presented in a court of law.

The National Commission for Women (NCW) seems too eager to prove itself to be an arm of the Congress. It too has suo moto jumped in to take the stand which Congress has, forgetting that there is no petition before it for consideration from any of the parties. In the past NCW has taken a very strict legal and procedural stand in many cases saying that the aggrieved party has not approached it. But it is too kind and condescending in Mrs. Jashodaben's case.

Dr. Deepika Sharma while participating in a discussion on a media channel raised a very pertinent point. She said that Congress and certain sections of media were ignorng the great sacrifice both Shri Modi and Mrs. Jashodaben had made during the last fifty years of their life for the cause of the society and the nation.

This chest beating by a section of political parties and the media raises one more point. If one of the two brothers acquires all the property of their father giving nothing to the other and the latter makes no issue or grievance of it, does anybody have a right to make a brouhaha?

Another point. A number of cases can be quoted of Congress leaders having left their spouses in lurch for other friends or having extra-marital affairs. Can Congress party publicly affirm that it supports the conduct of Congress leaders and that the latter have been very kind and judicious towards their aggrieved spouses? Why have they not created a hullabaloo for their cases? Only because doing so would not fetch them any political dividend? Why does NCW keep its eyes blind to all such happenings of denial of justice to women within the Congress four walls?

How does the Congress Party forget the treatment their leader, the late Prime Minister Mrs. Indira Gandhi meted out to her daughter-in-law Mrs. Maneka Gandhu, widow of late Sanjay Gandhi and threw her out of her house with an infant child in her lap? Mrs. Sonia Gandhi was then a great backroom player in the whole drama. Do Mrs. Maneka and her son Varun not have an equal share and legal rights to the property and legacy of the Nehru-Gandhi family as do Mrs. Sonia and Mr. Rahul Gandhi have? Was the treatment given to Mrs. Maneka Gandhi family right? They owe an explanation to the general public.