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Fall of the legends

It's the season, surely, for scales to fall off one's eyes, for cold reality to sweep aside the mist from one's eyes, all the better to perceive reality with...

If the match-fixing report confirmed what most Indians have known about their heroes for a long time, even the cold black words of the CBI's report does not prepare one for the reality. It doesn't matter who has been found guilty, who has not, what evidence has been provided, what has not. After all, like any criminal lawyer worth his salt would admit, lack of evidence alone does not constitute innocence, just as evidence does not constitute guilt.

What is horrendous, however, is not the main theme of the match-fixing report, which is corruption on the maidan. I, for one, fail to understand this maatam Indians indulge in with metronomic frequency. Corruption is a way of life in the country, so why we should become shell-shocked whenever it becomes known that other Indians have been found with their hand in the till is something that never fails to amaze me. Lest this is perceived to be condoning the evil, let me clarify. I back it as much as I do, say, sati or untouchability.

What I found horrendous about the report is the involvement of the underworld, of which one cricketer has been allegedly found to be the conduit. And, in an era of denials, when even the American presidential election's outcome is not free of this malaise, the man who has been accused of being approached by the underworld with the perpetrators of the Mumbai blasts has chosen to play the sphinx.

I am sure Mohammad Azharuddin, the most successful Indian cricket captain ever, the darling of millions, artiste non-pareil when he is at the crease, has his reasons to keep his own counsel. But his silence, so soon after outsinging Lata Mangeshkar before the Central Bureau of Investigation, is damning. Silence is not only consent, it is also admission. And especially for one who wrote in his defence when he finally played the Muslim card, this betrayal has been a particularly bitter pill to swallow...

I wonder if Azza realised when he blurted out that his persecution was because of his faith that it was a double-edged sword? If his contention then was a possibility, so would be the belief that his links with the Dubai mafia, beautifully chronicled in the CBI diaries, came about because the two share a common faith. What that does to the Indian Muslim's image, which has always had shades of grey, did Azharuddin pause to consider when he made that stupid stupid assertion...

Everything else about the man, one can condone... but not playing footsie with the very folk who have wrought havoc on the nation. For that, no amount of punishment can suffice, no amount of mea culpa can be adequate.

If that is Azza's plight, shed a tear for Sonia Gandhi, the apolitical chief of the Congress party who has suddenly found even the prospect of power so addictive that nothing is beneath her. Not even quaking in her shoes when a featherweight candidate contests the election for party presidency. Which begs the question: if this was her and her coterie's reaction faced by Jitendra Prasada's 'challenge', what would she have done had it been Rajesh Pilot, and not Prasada, facing her? Fled the country, is the most obvious answer.

So much for the party's claims to democracy. So much for the perception that Sonia Gandhi will revive, resuscitate, rejuvenate, whatever, the party whose leadership has fallen into her lap not because of any outstanding qualification on her part but thanks solely to her surname. If continuing with the kind of leadership that her predecessors gave the party is her idea of change, then she has misread the Indian voter, and how.

Indira Gandhi, and her son to a lesser extent, could get away with their autocratic behaviour because they faced no opposition, and the electorate, no choice. If Sonia is going to behave as if her elevation as prime minister is a shoo-in whenever elections are next held, then she needs a reality check. Anyway, thanks to her shenanigans, the voter has just had one.

So, I am sure, has the American voter. I mean, imagine the world's most powerful nation, whose political system is the envy of all, and whose democratic credentials are the stuff of daily lectures, not knowing who its next chief executive will be, a week after the votes have been cast. Not even Laloo's Bihar I am sure can match this record!

*Sigh* so much for a system that we hacks believed was the best available. So much for American democracy. After the circus witnessed over the last one week, with concessions of defeat and subsequent retractions, with ballot papers found in the most bizarre of places, with manual counting of votes... give me the Indian system, anarchic and all, any day. It was wonderful to have M S Gill ask for electoral reforms, but this time in the US!

As I said, this has been the time for the scales to fall off one's eyes, but what better way to have it happen than with large dollops of humour to dull the pain! Heard on FM: Where is Azza? Answer: He had been busy fixing Sonia Gandhi's election, and was lately seen in Florida.

Saisuresh Sivaswamy