How many poor people has Swaraj helped on ‘humanitarian grounds’?
By Sujeet Rajan
NEW YORK: If India’s external affair minister Sushma Swaraj is confronted by an Indian man at Times Square in New York, when she arrives here for the International Day of Yoga on June 21, with this plea: ‘Madam, I’m an illegal immigrant from India, not gone back home in 10 years. I need to urgently attend my wife’s cancer surgery in Gujarat. Please help me get passport, travel documents from the Indian Embassy. I want to return back to New York after I see my wife, continue to work and send money back home to help my family survive. Please tell the US government to give me a visa” – what will she do?
Will Swaraj, like she helped Indian fugitive billionaire Lalit Modi, who ran away from India to escape the Enforcement Directorate and possible jail time to settle in the UK, get travel papers from the British immigration department to travel to Portugal to be with his wife undergoing cancer treatment, help this illegal Indian immigrant too? Will she order the Indian Embassy in Washington to immediately help him with to and fro travel, confer with State Department officials to wrangle a deal for this man to be able to fly back into New York without being arrested and deported?
The answer: 100% no. Not possible.
Anyway, the illegal Indian immigrant in New York is unlikely to get anywhere close to Swaraj with her swath of security, forget him being able to hand over a petition to her or to talk to her in public or private.
The embarrassing part for India and Indian citizens is that there is really no lesson to be learnt from the controversy over Swaraj helping Lalit Modi. The matter is understood simpler than learning alphabets again. It’s ingrained in every Indian’s consciousness, or for that matter, in every individual globally: there’s nothing new here – it’s just how the rich and powerful of the world get what they want with connections in high places.
It’s really not important how virtuous, hardworking and classy a minister Swaraj is at her job. She’s been excellent at it, has done the people of India proud. PM Narendra Modi must be lauded for his choice of India’s most often seen face internationally after him. Swaraj has been the poster woman of India’s pride in womanhood, turned out an asset for the Indian government. Till the Lalit Modi issue surfaced.
Now, Swaraj shouldn’t make India more ashamed and embarrassed on the international stage. She should avoid become a diplomatic pockmark for PM Modi as she accompanies him to carry on business as usual. She shouldn’t become the limelight of an important visit whenever a journalist asks her a question pertaining to the Lalit Modi affair. Leave PM Modi to stand silently beside her, embarrassed.
The glaring truth is also that Sushma Swaraj is not Smriti Irani, India’s minister of human resource development.
When controversy arose over whether Irani had secured a degree or not, most Indians didn’t care, the matter fizzled out quickly. Here was a woman who had come up in life with varied, successful experience, was smart, intelligent and articulate. Who cares if she has a degree or not? What matters is if she can run a domestic ministry or not. And that was that.
But with Swaraj, it’s not confined to being a domestic issue, it’s blossomed to bludgeon not only her internationally but India’s integrity too is at stake. If India’s minister in the central cabinet can flout ethics, rule of the law, surreptitiously help a man who is perhaps a criminal, then how will ordinary citizens of India be viewed? Is this what India’s youth should learn of governance?
The Lalit Modi controversy will no doubt come back to haunt Swaraj and Narendra Modi and India time and again. The opposition in India will keep it alive. The media will continue to hound her as well as PM Modi. It would be hard to fathom how Modi will answer a question standing alongside a world leader, when asked as to why should he have a tainted minister as India’s external affairs minister? Is it to remind the world that Indians are used to nepotism? Make a mockery of the divide between the rich and the poor? What does he say to a question when asked as to why should Lalit Modi be posting photos of the fabulous, extravagant life he leads in the UK, hobnob with celebrities there, and India’s external affairs minister does nothing to extradite him back to India to answer questions on alleged illegal financial operations, but instead help him stay away from India?
Till now, no question of profit for Swaraj has surfaced in the case, unlike what is hounding the Rajasthan chief minister Vasundhara Raje, where financial impropriety is evident too in her helping Lalit Modi.
Maybe, Swaraj felt compelled to help Lalit Modi for the most basic reason why most human beings help another: she knew him personally, her family members, including her husband and daughter worked as lawyers for Modi. She perhaps saw him as a friend in need; perhaps knew his wife well too. Threw caution to the winds.
But really, then the question is, how many others have you helped madam minister? Importantly, how many poor people have you helped in your capacity as India’s external affairs minister, on humanitarian grounds?
The sad part, in a way, is also that Swaraj has tainted the image of the Narendra Modi government. BJP leaders like Rajnath Singh and Arun Jaitley can defend Swaraj stoutly, but the damage has been done. There was no mention of Swaraj from Jaitley, who is in New York; he seemed gung ho about India.
PM Modi has shown India a new side to governance following shameful years of Congress-led rule where one scam after another hit the Indian public in a cascade of bad news. No amount of orchestrated 360 degree blitzes of India, from Kashmir to Kerala, by Rahul Gandhi, bad mouthing Modi and his government, can change that fact. The Congress made it a mockery to even question corruption; it became the norm. India’s image suffered too internationally as tainted politicians continued to rule unfazed. Accountability seemed a word meant in earnest for western democracies. Not for developing countries like India.
The question is, should Modi and his cabinet follow the same path as the Congress, let a tainted minister continue to do a job when everybody knows she is guilty of breaking the law? Or should the BJP-led government be different from the Congress?
Swaraj should do what is right: she must resign. For Narendra Modi’s sake. For India’s sake.
(Sujeet Rajan is the Editor-in-Chief of The American Bazaar)
8 Comments
No one is perfect. Like all mere mortals, she also has committed indiscretions and shown lack of judgement. If they should resign or forced to resign, we will have to revert to the goons and criminals as in the Congress and country would suffer. The voters have elected this govt. and they will tolerate few indiscretions.
Imagination running wild man. What you do for a good friend of yours in distress will not be done for Tom, Dick or Harry who deserted their motherland and fled on forged documents in search of wealth. Please talk sense. You are supposed to be an Editor. Remember
seems editor is a pet of G family
“I’m an illegal
“Please help me get passport, travel documents …..
“US government to give me a visa
What are you doped with Mr. Sujeet?
DUDE! ask him to surrender to homeland security/US department of Justice.
They will send the guy home!!!
I can’t believe this guy got chance to write his opinion. I wonder how many share his views?
Who are u to judge her dumbhead? Its not been proven by any court of law in India that she had done any wrong, presstitute media jumping to conclusions without any solid reasoning or proofs or without any judgement by any court of law……..
Bias and stupid article.
What was wrong with my comment that you chose to delete it?
I feel Sushma Swaraj should resign and help PM Modi who has been boxed into a corner because of her. But given her response to this exposé, don’t think she has either the intention or the integrity to do so.