The conduct of the Congressmen during the National Herald court hearings show that they see themselves as servants of the Gandhi family and friends instead of servants of the nation. It is money over morality.

Watergate to Heraldgate

More than 40 years ago (1970s), I was a student in the United States when the Watergate scandal hit the headlines. There were televised hearings of the bipartisan Senate Watergate Committee conducted the investigation. The issue was misuse of power by President Richard Nixon and his staff. The hearings which were conducted in orderly fashion, with no one rushing into the well of the Senate floor to disrupt the proceedings. (This would get them arrested and expelled by the Senate Sargent at Arms and his security guards.)

Nixon resigned as President when it became clear that he would be impeached and likely to be ruled guilty of “Obstruction of Justice”, the legal term in the U.S. for trying to misuse position to derail investigation. It is worth noting that Nixon’s Vice President Spiro Agnew had been forced to resign earlier for corruption, something like what Rahul and Sonia Gandhi are facing today.

But what is remarkable is that unlike the Congress Party today, no one within the Republican party, the party of Nixon and Agnew supported them. The iconic figure of the Republican party is Abraham Lincoln, like Mahatma Gandhi for the Congress. Some of the strongest critics of Nixon (and Agnew) were Republican leaders like Senators Howard Baker and Lowell Weicker who were quick to dissociate themselves and their party from the misdeeds of Nixon and Agnew. To them it was a moral issue, and not a partisan one.

Their objection was based on the morality or lack of it in the activities of Nixon—that his conduct was unworthy of the party of Abraham Lincoln. Politics was secondary to morality.

The Congress today—money over morality

The situation  following the National Herald case is the exact reverse of this.  Unlike the Republican leaders following Watergate, no one in the Congress party has noted the immorality of Sonia Gandhi and her family misappropriating the assets of Nehru-founded National Herald. They are going to great lengths to ensure that the court hearing the case was pressured into dropping the case. To this end the Congress has resorted to disrupting the Parliament. So the Congress can be charged with disrupting the legislative branch as well as the functioning of the judiciary—all to allow the Gandhi family to keep its loot.

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Let us not forget that some Congress leaders like Renuka Chowdhary defended Robert Vadra also, claiming he was a victim of BJP vendetta.  Even worse was the supposedly honourable and decent Manmohan Singh facilitating the escape of Ottavio Quattrocchi with his loot by defreezing  his bank accounts. In contrast, Indira Gandhi’s then husband, the late Feroze Gandhi risked Nehru’s wrath by exposing the then finance minister T.T. Krishnamachari’s corruption, forcing him to resign.

But today, no one in the party of Mahatma Gandhi seems outraged by the daylight robbery of Nehru’s legacy by these false Gandhis. It is no longer a national party but but a family cult engaged in plundering the country with the support and cooperation of its followers.