In Mumbai, Himachal and Karnataka, Rahul is subverted by his own people. What's up?

Believe it or not, Rahul Gandhi has begun to lose ground in the Congress Party. Till very recently a mere gesture from him would send shivers down the spine of senior leaders. A public disapproval was enough for the Government to reverse its stand on disqualifying tainted MPs. The hold of the dynasty was so total that it was unthinkable for a Congressman to go against its wishes in word or deed. Implicit loyalty to the family was the first requirement for advancement in the party.

Outwardly that remains a fact of Congress life. But inwardly winds of change seem to be blowing in the inner chambers of the party. Experienced old hands appear to have devised ways to neutralise the inexperienced young scion of the dynasty. The newest twists and turns in the party bear this out as we can see in Mumbai, Himachal Pradesh and Karnataka.

For quite some time the public has known details of the Adarsh Housing scam in Mumbai, including the misuse of authority by a succession of Congress chief ministers. An inquiry commission found substance in the charges against several political leaders and civil servants. Yet the state Government had the gumption to reject the report. Outraged public opinion forced knight-errant Rahul Gandhi to stage another of his interventions and rubbish the Government's decision. Promptly the Government said it would change its position.

It did announce a change, but not as happened with the ordinance on tainted MPs wich was withdrawn. This time the Government stuck to its earlier position on the accused political leaders and declined to take any action. The only concession to the knight-errant was a recommendation to proceed against the bureaucrats. A cure worse than the disease. Unseen hands pulled unseen strings again when the High Command asked Himachal Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh to explain charges of corruption against him. Suddenly reversing gear, the High Command started protecting the accused.

Cutting Rahul Gandhi to size was most noticeable in Karnataka. The Congress had recognised that it won the last Assembly elections only because the BJP Government's freewheeling corruption had spread disgust among the voters. This had led Rahul Gandhi to give two orders to the state Congress: That the chief ministership should go to the relatively clean Siddaramaiah and that tainted leaders should not be appointed ministers. According to Congress insiders, Rahul specifically mentioned that Shiva Kumar and Roshan Baig be kept out because they were not only tainted but seemed proud of it. Both orders were carried out and it gave the Congress Government a promising start.

But suddenly last week the two men Rahul considered harmful to the party were sworn in as cabinet ministers. Some Congress leaders expressed dismay while social workers, writers and respected elders publicly gave vent to their shock. The point was that Rahul Gandhi's order was countermanded by manipulation experts within the party. It was open secret among Congressmen in Karnataka that veterans like Digvijay Singh and Ghulam Nabi Azad could swing things their way even while appearing to promote the dynasty.

By elevating discredited operators to cabinet rank, the Congress not only lost its advantage with Karnataka voters, but made it easy for the BJP to elevate its dishonoured leaders. Yeddyurappa's return will destroy the BJP's right to attack others on corruption. But it will do less harm to the BJP than Shiva Kumar - Roshan Baig's rise will do to the Congress. In the next round of elections it will be a Congress-BJP fight, Deve Gowda's Janata Dal (S) having made itself irrelevant. Yeddyurappa, having suffered jail term and loss of power, may get support from his forgiving community. That will prevent a split in the anti-Congress vote which in turn could translate into three or four seats, to the delight of the BJP. The image of Shiva Kumar - Roshan Baig is too sordid to yield any such dividend to the Congress. That of course is of no concern to Congressmen who put personal interest above the party's. Those whom God wants to destroy, He first turns into politicians.

Time was when we could celebrate with fun; Today even New Year has a price tag

What makes people go wild on the night of December 31? The answer, unbeknown to them, is: Commerce. When Diwali has become a marketing device to sell fireworks and dry fruits, when Christmas is hijacked by cake-bakers, when Akshaya Tritiya is appropriated by the jewellery industry, how can New Year not be another sales gimmick, this time for liquor companies, gift shops, hotels and eateries? They made it a fashion to get drunk on New Year's eve and, like all fashions, it made business boom.

It wasn't always so. In the days of innocence, it was possible to be human without the profit motive. Festivities were then simple fun. Essentially a Western tradition, New Year appealed mostly to the Western-educated classes. Naturally India's English press got involved, as it did in the West's April Fool tradition. The late lamented R.K.Karanjia of Blitz had a field day with April Fool hoaxes. An outrageous one in 1981 shocked Bombay with the announcement that the Indian Express was sold lock stock and barrel to A.R. Antulay, then Chief Minister of Maharashtra. That was when Express was relentlessly exposing Antulay's misdeeds, a campaign that eventually led to his eclipse.

New Year hilarity was innocuous by comparison. The English press in India used the occasion for reviews and reflections while the British press tried to entertain readers with humour as well. Englishmen maintained that tradition wherever they went. In Hongkong December 31 meant nothing to the locals; Chinese New Year (in February) was their biggest festival when everything closed down for three days. Yet the British-owned, British-edited Far Eastern Economic Review ran year-end limericks poking fun at national leaders.

In 1973 they had an easy pick on Indira Gandhi, Leonid Brezhnev and Chairman Mao himself. Samples: "A strong-minded lady named Gandhi/Rode to work in a donkey-drawn bandy./ But Brezhnev arrived / As the petrol stocks dived / And the gas from their talks came in handy". The one on Mao said: "Our past we are using / To get cadres and masses a-fusing./ But make up your mind/ On the sage, for I find / Controversial Confucius confusing".

There are scurrilous limericks and limericks that cannot be recited in polite company. And there are limericks that tickle the imagination. Like: "There was a young lady one fall / Who wore a newspaper dress to a ball. / The dress caught fire / And burned her entire / Front page, sporting section and all".

Way back in 1910, the New York Times celebrated the season by asking readers to complete a limerick by adding the fifth line. The winning entry went: "Good New Year resolves are in style / The bulk of them forces to smile. / Were I making one now / I should certainly vow / I'll only drink once in a while".

Rather tame by today's standards. But the limerick remains a favourite form of humour for those who dare. Its connection to the Irish town named Limerick is unclear. But the 5-line format, rhyming a-a-b-b-a, was popularised by Edward Lear (19th century). A wizard of "nonsense poetry" his Owl and The Pussy Cat remains a masterpiece. Some made nonsense of even the 5-line rule. Example: "A young man from Timbucktoo / Whose limericks stopped at line two."

For the most "glorious nonsense", as Alice (of Wonderland fame) described it, we must go to Lewis Carrol and especially his Jabberwocky. Lines that mean nothing, yet constitute literary classics.

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

Satyajit Ray's father Sukumar Ray is the only known Indian writer/satirist who attempted nonsense poetry. Some English translations are available but we should assume that the Bengali originals were the more flavourful.

Edward Lear and Lewis Carrol and Sukumar Ray all flourished when life was not commercialised, when there was space for creative humour and intellectual pleasure. Today all that is replaced by the sales pitch and pleasure comes at a price. Pay the price and have a Happy New Year.

Indian maids and Indian spies move to US and vanish -- to live happily ever after

In one corner Devyani Khobragade, aglow with disarmingly oversize smiles. In the other, Preet Barrara, collector of celebrity heads as hunting trophies. The unequal match is so smartly manipulated that all we see is an explosion of righteous indignation -- indignation over a diplomat being provocatively humiliated, and indignation over a housemaid being exploited in customary Indian style.

How neat. But this clash of emotive issues defies logic. US-India relations are based on strong economic factors as important to the US as they are to India. Lately the US also began seeing India as a pivotal strategic partner in its new East Asia policy. It defies common sense that America would throw all this away just because an Indian consular official paid below minimum wages to her housemaid.

What then is it really about? Let's look at two known facts: America's consistent hypocrisy and India's continuous servility. The hypocrisy story is well documented. According to the Russell Sage Foundation, an independent research institute, 40 percent of American workers in apparel, textile and repair services are paid less than minimum wages. As much as 41 percent of minimum-wage violations in the US are against maids and housekeepers. Add to this the rampant racial discrimination against Latino workers.

Hypocrisy expands further at the international level. America is the only democracy in the world to not recognise the International Court of Justice at the Hague. This enables the US to do things that are illegal and still not be answerable. The US Government mined Nicaragua's harbours in 1984 in a bid to topple the Government there. The Hague Court found America guilty of violating international law. But America ignored it and blocked the UN Security Council from enforcing the judgment.

India, too, has tasted US duplicity. David Hedley, who played a crucial role in the terrorist attack on Mumbai, was protected by the US from extradition to India. And of course there is Bhopal. The gas-leak victims' voice was heard again last week. "The US is so worried about the rights of one maid, but it turns a blind eye to hundreds of deformed children who have been maimed by [Union Carbide's] greed".

Bhopal also throws light on India's long history of servility to the US. Indian authorities helped Union Carbide's culpable boss, Anderson, to escape from India. Delhi took it lying down when a former President was frisked by a US airline and when its Defence Minister was searched while on an official visit to Washington. Never once did India protest meaningfully against such insults, let alone subjecting an American official to the courtesy of a cavity search. Is it because many of our IFS/IAS officials crave for a posting in the US? And our politicians love American hospitality? Sure, Delhi showed some guts by cancelling airport passes and ID cards given even to US diplomats' families. But why were these given in the first place when America does nothing of the kind? US sees such servility as weakness.

These facts throw a different kind of light on the Devyani/Sangeetha case. The maid had good connections (her husband and mother also worked for US diplomats). She asked for permission to take up other work which would have been illegal and, denied permission, went missing. Perhaps Devyani knew what was going on. On her complaint, a Delhi court issued an arrest warrant for Sangeetha. Sensing trouble, US authorities surreptitiously evacuated Sangeetha's family to the US. Then they humbled Devyani, successfully turning the matter into a maid-exploitation cause celebre.

Very similar was the case of RAW officer Ravindar Singh who was spying for America. As soon as India was about to arrest him, he was smuggled out to the US. Clearly Sangeetha was, like Ravindar Singh, a high-value espionage asset for the US. They and the maid of former Indian Ambassador to the US Meera Shankar who also disappeared and remains untraced must all be safe and enjoying themselves under American auspices. How easily Indians have been fooled into seeing as a human rights issue what is really a spying rights issue.

Two popular Maharajas depart -- and we see that our republic is good for royals

The Constitution makes all citizens equal. But in the hearts of Indians the idea of royalty is entrenched and maharajas remain more equal than all others. It's like we are a genetically loyal people; where genuine royals are not available, we enthrone political families for us to be loyal to. In Karnataka and Kerala, there was grief of the genuine kind over the passing of Sreekanta Datta Wodeyar of Mysore and Uthradom Thirunal Marthanda Varma of Travancore; they were maharajas of the popular kind.

In a republican universe, these gentlemen had to accept power as a matter of sentiment rather than of right. Both faced it stoically, occasionally resisting without losing their dignity and more often yielding to the inevitable. Wodeyar toyed with politics for a while, then abandoned it. Marthanda Varma never went near politics. By avoiding that rambunctious vocation, they spared themselves the humiliations as well as the dubious pleasures of a political career.

Mysore and Travancore were also free of destructive family feuds. Baroda, once a glittering dynasty, was sucked into litigation around 1990 and got out of it only in October this year. That they struck a deal at all was remarkable considering that the quarrel was over a patrimony of palaces, diamonds, gold, exquisite jewellery and priceless paintings. Patiala's Bhupinder Singh was the most famous maharaja of all time who played first-class international cricket on the one hand and, on the other, would take two or three whole chickens for one of his simpler meals. Today the dynasty is reduced to Congressman Amarinder Singh who is no match to Akali tacticians.

Compared to luminaries like Bhupinder Singh, the maharajas of Mysore and Travancore were spartans. Sreekanta Datta's father Jayachama Rajendra Wodeyar was a composer of Carnatic music kritis, a promoter of industry, education and some 200 wrestling clubs. At the same time the mess that enveloped Mysore royal family's properties began in his time, climaxing during his son's "reign". There was a touch of pathos when Sreekanta Datta said one day: " I have vast properties on paper, but I have no money".

The reverse was the case with Marthanda Varma; he had unaccounted wealth on paper, but no property worth talking about. The discovery of several secret underground cells in the revered Padmanabha Swamy Temple in Trivandrum was a worldwide sensation for the cells contained gold and golden artefacts of inestimable value. Marthanda Varma as head of the royal family was the formal custodian in his capacity as Padmanabha Dasa, but it was a presumed right that others questioned. He lived a frugal life, barring the rare cars, watches and cameras he collected in his younger days. His brother Chithira Thirunal, the last maharaja, lived like a hermit in the palace.

By the standards of Indian royalty, the Travancore palace was only a large bungalow, no comparison to Mysore's splenderous Amba Vilas Palace, a sort of Taj Mahal of the south. Baroda's (Vadodara's) Laxmivilas Palace, four times the size of poor Queen Elizabeth's Buckingham Palace, sits on a landscaped garden of 700 acres. But these are white elephants. Entry fees paid by 2.7 million visitors a year were insufficient for the maintenance of the Mysore Palace.

That was perhaps one reason some royals more daring than Wodeyar went into politics where one could become effortlessly rich. But one would have to be ready for risks as well. Maharani Gayatri Devi of Jaipur won a seat in Parliament in 1962 in the largest landslide the world had seen. But she was opposed to the Congress, incurred the wrath of Indira Gandhi and landed up in Tihar jail where she was given inhuman treatment. Things have improved since. A maharani has just been sworn in as Chief Minister of Rajasthan, a true royal who suffers no fools, gets irritated easily, insists on European holidays and retires every day at 8 p.m. after which she is inaccessible to her praja. In Delhi a Crown Prince is getting primmed up for his coronation as prime minister candidate. Long live the Kings -- and the Queens and the Princes.

Dynastic aura no longer impresses voters; and old-style netas have gone irrelevant

A week after the state elections shocked our entrenched parties, where are we? The results puzzled, frustrated and/or humiliated all netas, and scared some. They all said that they would introspect, a fashionable word among dissemblers. However, with all these days behind us, there is no sign of any introspection by anyone in any party. It is politics as before, with A blaming B blaming C blaming A. The reality of India is there for all to see: Today's politicians cannot be reformed, they can only be knocked out.

The incorrigibility of the political class is reflected in almost every pronouncement by every leader in reaction to the election results. Consider two representative examples: Sharad Pawar on one side and Digvijay Singh on the other. Pawar was accurate when he faulted the weak leadership of the Congress. But he showed how irrelevant he had become when he alluded to the victorious Aam Aadmi Party as elements with no connect with reality.

It was precisely the AAP's connect with the reality of young and modern India that helped it make history. It is the old-guard, preoccupied with fattening themselves and their families, that has lost all connect with 21st century reality. Sharad Pawar, for example. What has the country gained from his many decades in power? His Chief Ministership of Maharashtra was linked with the real estate of Maharashtra. His current stint as Agriculture Minister has seen the rise and rise of notorious US seed companies that seek monopoly control of our food supplies. He has also actively promoted the poisonous pesticide, endosulfan. A weak leadership without vision is bad. But worse is a strong leadership without patriotism.

Digvijay Singh is a different piece of cake. His Chief Ministership of Madhya Pradesh was such a flop that he has avoided facing an election in the last ten years. Yet he conducts himself like the authoritative voice of the Congress Party, a sort of Oracle of Del(p)hi. The Greek Oracle was of course the medium through which Apollo the God spoke. The Oracle of Delhi performs like the medium through which his Goddess speaks.

No sooner were the election results out than Digvijay Singh called for Rahul Gandhi to be immediately proclaimed as the official Congress Party candidate for prime ministership. In that one sentence he summed up the tragedy of the Congress and, through it, the tragedy of our country. His theory was that the uncertainty about the Congress's prime ministerial nominee was the reason for the party's electoral disaster. And so, if Rahulji were officially nominated, voters would come in hordes to the party. This is a pathetic mindset but it is what rules the Congress.

Rahul Gandhi is the problem, not the solution. The dynasty is the problem. The people, including the voters of Amethi and Rae Bareli have become disgusted with unqualified and presumptuous individuals automatically becoming high-commanders because of family lineage. Even illiterate voters know by now that this is the antithesis of democracy. Popular rejection of the Congress will continue as long as Congressmen remain prisoners to the dynastic system, subservient to their hereditary overlords.

The Congress seems vaguely aware of this. Hence the floating of alternate names for prime ministerial candidacy. But clearly the names are picked on the basis of allegiance to the dynasty. Two of them, A. K Antony and Sushilkumar Shinde, will serve as Tweedledum to Manmohan Singh's Tweedledee, minus the latter's saving grace of an international profile as an economist. P. Chidambaram, another floated name, will demolish all of Rahul Gandhi's claims of promoting the "clean" in preference to the tainted. And then there is Nandan Nilekani, an outside-the-box name no doubt, but a political babe in the woods who is likely to be devoured whole by the lords of the jungle.

The fact is that the Congress has no one to field under the non-negotiable qualification of closeness to, and trust by, the dynasty. The people of India have progressed beyond that stage. The Congress will survive only if the dynasty retires -- unequivocally and demonstrably. Otherwise, it's kaput.