|
|
 |
 |
 |
| Monday, 1 March 2004 |
 |
|
 |
World | |
| News Business Features Editorial Security Politics World Letters Sports Obituaries
|
India's low caste poor claim Sonia as their own NEW DELHI, Sunday (AFP) She may have been born in the shadow of the Alps, not the Himalayas, but for Delhi's low caste poor Sonia Gandhi is an Indian and an accident of birth should not stop her from becoming the next prime minister. With weeks to run before the world's largest democracy goes to the polls, the leader of the main opposition Congress party has been hitting the campaign trail to be showered in adulation from supporters shrugging off her lineage. "She is our own. We know her as our own. Her foreign origin is not an issue for us," says Ram Jeet, a one-time railway employee out of work since 1981. The widow of assassinated prime minister Rajiv Gandhi and the inheritor of a political dynasty that has towered above Indian politics since partition, Italian-born Sonia has been targeted by rivals for not being born in India. But that seems to mean little to many voters. "If we had not liked her leadership we would not have come on empty stomachs and thirsty all the way from Gorakhpur," Jeet says, happy to have made the 800 kilometre (500 mile) trek to New Delhi to join a campaign rally on Friday. About 7,000 lower caste men and women gathered at a sprawling football stadium here to listen to Gandhi spell out her platform ahead of the marathon four-phase parliamentary elections expected to kick off in April. The ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which called the early poll to exploit a buoyant mood caused by bountiful harvests after a heavy monsoon season, sees the 57-year-old's Italian roots as her Achilles heel. Its message in the run-up to the poll is that Gandhi cannot be prime minister because she was not born in India. Carrying the legacy of the family, Sonia has refused to be distracted by criticism and has tackled the BJP head on what she calls the "real issues". "It is a known fact that reservation for dalits (low caste people) was first proposed and implemented by the Congress," Gandhi said at Friday's rally to rapturous applause. In India's hugely caste-driven politics, the "dalits", once the mainstay of Congress, form a crucial vote-bank for any political party. "Look at what the government is doing today. I can understand if you are not able to give jobs to people but I fail to understand why you have to take away their jobs. "Is this social justice?" Gandhi said, to a further roar of applause. Congress has repeatedly accused the government in power since 1998 of selling profit-making companies at throwaway prices as part of its privatisation bid, and says the policy is leading to large scale job losses. |
|
News | Business | Features
| Editorial | Security
Produced by Lake House |
