New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi avoids eye contact with Sonia Gandhi whenever they meet, the Chairperson of the Congress Parliamentary Party writes in her memoir, Belonging: A journey of love, saying she has had “practically no real contact” with him.
However, Gandhi says they have briefly exchanged wishes on New Year’s and birthdays, and their ideological worlds are far different from each other.
“To this day, I’ve had practically no real contact with him,” Gandhi writes.
“This is different from the past, when leaders across party divides would treat one another with cordiality. He tends to look away, avoiding eye contact,” she writes, recalling meetings at semi-official gatherings, including at the end of Parliament sessions when leaders of major political parties assemble in the Speaker’s chamber.
PM Modi has occasionally asked about her health when she returned from hospital visits, says Gandhi.
“On occasions when I’d returned from a stint in the hospital, he’d asked, ‘Theek hain, aap?’ (‘Are you all right?’) and I replied, ‘Jee, ab main theek hoon, shukriya’ (‘Yes, thank you, I’m fine now’),” she writes.
“Apart from such brief exchanges, we have never really conversed, though we’ve exchanged formal birthday and New Year greetings over the years,” she adds.
“We come from different ideological worlds; his idea of this country is vastly different from mine,” she writes.
“Narendra Modi’s idea of India was constructed by the ideologies of the RSS and the experience of his own growing up. It affirmed a fundamentalism in which his faith and culture superseded all others. In that India, hierarchy, order, and control are central,” she writes, contrasting this with her idea of India.
“He was fighting for his vision of India, and I for mine: an India against hegemony, an India that stands for inclusiveness, secularism, and social justice,” she adds.
Gandhi also writes that PM Modi’s antipathy towards her is rooted in his association with the RSS.
“I tend to believe that this antipathy stems from the conditioning of the Prime Minister by the RSS. It has inculcated in its cadre a commitment to an exclusionary, hardened version of Hinduism that has been crafted into a political agenda,” she writes.
“The core ideal of inclusiveness within Hinduism is summed up in the Vedic mantra ‘Ekam Sat Vipra Bahuda Vadanti,’ which in translation means ‘The truth is one, the paths to it are many’,” she writes, contrasting this with the faith she learnt from her mother-in-law.
On Modi’s first swearing-in ceremony as Prime Minister, Gandhi recalls that the scale of the event indicated it would be a very different kind of government. She described the ceremony at Rashtrapati Bhavan’s central court as an ostentatious event attended by prime ministers of neighbouring countries, ambassadors, corporate chiefs and celebrities, and a row of sadhus and priests seated prominently in the front row.
Gandhi also criticised Modi’s language in Parliament, saying he uses the same coarse language as he does at public rallies and frequently targets the Opposition.
“When speaking in Parliament, he at times uses the same coarse language he employs in addressing a public rally. Much of the time he derides the opposition in what can only be termed a tirade. Jawaharlal Nehru, our first prime minister, is a particular target of his party’s hostility, for having set our country on a democratic and secular course. The Sangh Parivar internet sites are full of malicious abuse and falsehoods against him. The BJP’s stated aim is what they call a ‘Congress-free India, its policies, and its ideology,” she writes.
(Edited by Anupama Yadav)