However, before more of Sonia Gandhi's critics jump at her for her seemingly perverse revelation, let us examine her statement with equanimity and patience. Many straight away assume that she was referring to her greatest political adversaries, including those indefatigable old timers, who, with irksome defiance that is so uncharacteristic of the normally submissive and cooperative native, constantly sound off in some off-beat press on her national policies (or lack of it), her social, political, economic and defense views (or lack of it), her standoffish attitudes toward Indians, her link to various corruption scandals, and her relentless pursuit to promote her dynasty. These old thorns in her political career, checkered as the career might have been, have given her nothing but grief. With the tenacity characteristic of the Leech of the Annelid phylum, they obstructed her repeated attempts to foist one family member or another on to the PM seat. Who else could they be but the RSS, BJP and VHP! Every Indian knows that, right from the 10 year old standing swinging a cricket bat carelessly in the middle of the street to that centenarian on the brink of bidding farewell to the world. It is a trivia question that never fails to score.
But wait, let us pause for a minute here, and reflect. Deeply. Was she really referring to her well-known political adversaries as the biggest threat to India. Or was she merely pointing out the obvious. Let us for a minute go down another path of rumination, just for mental exercise, and see where it leads.
There are two other possibilities as to whom Sonia Gandhi was referring when she spoke on internal threats.
First, she could have meant that the threat was not from the Muslims from across the border, as many naive Indians would continue to believe, but from within India. The Indian Muslims! Of course! Isn't this what the BJP, VHP and RSS, and defense analysts have maintained all along. Especially in the last six years, when terrorism escalated throughout the country. And even more so when the Muslim terrorists from Pakistan seized the city of Mumbai in November 2008 and went on a killing rampage that left more than 100 civilians dead. Even those national English dailies that are normally preoccupied with canvassing on behalf of the dynasty were willing to consider the angle that the Pakistani terrorists in the November 2008 attacks had inside help.
Despite the obvious, after every terrorist attack, the Congress party had insisted that the perpetrators were all foreigners. And now, after years of being a mute spectator to the blasts that shook the nation from time to time, and after her protege Prime Minister Singh went on record for stating that Indian Muslims will have the first stake on India's resources, is Sonia Gandhi finally admitting, on the eve of the Indian elections in 2009, that the greatest threat to India is not from Pakistanis and Bangladeshi crossing the borders into India daily by the dozens, but from the Indians (Muslims) themselves?
If this indeed was the point she was making, so many of her critics have tragically misjudged her. Why throw eggs at the lady for telling it like it is? She has finally come around to openly admitting in public what her political adversaries and defense experts have suggested all along . With this admission, she has possibly successfully managed to bridge the gap between her own political party and the rest n the issue of national defense and security. Instead of attacking her candidness, all political parties should commend her for her new found honesty and openness. She is truly on her way to becoming an Indian, after all.
There is the second possibility that she might have be referring to the Hindus that revolt against the christian missionaries from the west, who filter through the porous borders daily with the ease of circular migrants. In her view, these missionaries are clearly the do-gooders who are intent on showing the light to the natives living in darkness. They come all the way from those faraway lands of surpluses, to feed and clothe the hungry and deprived, and educate them on the Bible. Yet, how do these natives repay them? By throwing the Bible back at them, and claiming that they, not the missionaries, will help their own kind, thank you very much! The ingrates! These rebellious natives maintain that they want their temples, and not churches. To understand the soul, they want to read the Vedas and the Gita, and not the Bible. They insist on holding on to the rituals and customs grounded in their Vedic past, and drawing inspiration from the stories invested in the Puranas, instead of the New Testament, and imbibing a sense of history from the Mahabharata and Ramayana instead of the Roman empire. They refuse to appreciate the historical contributions of the Roman crusaders in altering the religio-political map of the world; they refuse to admire the Christian's views on justice and morality; they refuse to submit to the Pope's authority; and they simply will not recognize the significance of the church's grand plans for altering the world's religious, political and economic structures.
Are these unyielding natives not the greatest threat to the martyrs from the west? These martyrs who readily sacrifice their time and physical comforts to fly down to the semi-dark continent to shine their light on it. These ingrates who resolutely refuse to sell their land, their religion, their culture, and their soul to the foreigners. These stubborn natives that refuse to adopt and adapt! Are these regid natives not the greater threat to India than foreigners!
To add insult to injury, if it had not been for these willful Indians, Sonia Gandhi knows she would have become the PM first time around, without the need of appointing an interim Marionette and manipulating his every move. But for these defying Indians, there would have been virtually no resistance to her becoming the PM - absolutely no fight. These implacable Indians are, without question, the greatest threat to India!
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