An article in the magazine published by the Mumbai Regional Congress Committee that targeted the Nehru-Gandhi family has not only caused embarrassment to the party on its foundation day but has also exposed the bickering in various factions of the city Congress.
While MRCC president Sanjay Nirupam hinted this could be a conspiracy by his adversaries in the party, other leaders have demanded Mr Nirupam’s sacking. On the other hand, while Mr Nirupam claimed to have sacked “executive editor of the magazine” Sudhir Joshi, others have pointed out that Mr Joshi’s name does not appear anywhere in the magazine and no action has been taken against the four members of the magazine’s editorial board. While the leaders are targeting each other, nobody seems to know who wrote the articles that questioned Jawaharlal Nehru’s China and Kashmir policies and called Sonia Gandhi’s father a “fascist”. The article was published without the author’s name.
One of the articles in Congress Darshan, a Hindi magazine published by MRCC, which was supposed to be a tribute to Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, had references to the strained relations between him and Jawaharlal Nehru. The article cited a letter Patel had purportedly written in 1950 to caution Nehru against China’s policy towards Tibet wherein he had described China as “unfaithful” and a future enemy of India.
“Had Patel been heard (by Nehru) then, the problems of Kashmir, China, Tibet and Nepal wouldn’t have existed now. Patel opposed Nehru’s move of taking the Kashmir issue to the UNO,” the article said.
Another piece, which focused on Sonia, described her early life and her “ambition to become an airhostess”. It termed her father a “Fascist soldier” who, the article claimed, was a member of the Italian forces that lost to the Russians in World War II.
Mr Nirupam has apologised for publishing the said articles and also announced the sacking of Mr Joshi who was, according to him, executive editor of the magazine. “I am the de facto editor as being the MRCC president (sic). But I do not oversee the magazine personally. For that we have appointed two persons — one each for a Marathi and Hindi magazine. While there were no problems in the articles published in the Marathi magazine, articles in the Hindi magazine were factually wrong and highly embarrassing for the party. Therefore we have sacked Mr Joshi,” he said.
However, Mr Nirupam’s opponents were not satisfied with his apology. Former minister Naseem Khan demanded his ouster as MRCC president. “The kind of terminology used in compiling the articles was derived from the dictionary of the RSS. I demand senior party leaders take this issue very seriously and conduct a detailed inquiry by relieving (Sanjay) Nirupam from the post,” he said.
Another MRCC functionary pointed out that Mr Joshi has been made a scapegoat as his name does not appear in the print line or in any other place in the magazine. He said, “Mr Joshi must be some confidant of Mr Nirupam. There are four people in the editorial board, but none of them had any role in bringing out the magazine. It was Mr Nirupam who was involved in publishing the magazine.”
Mr Joshi’s mobile phone was switched off ever since Mr Nirupam announced his sacking. Mr Nirupam admitted that Mr Joshi’s name does not appear in the print line but maintained that he was given the responsibility to approve all the articles. He also hinted at a conspiracy against him by his rivals. “Those who have done this should be ashamed. Today was the Congress’ foundation day and we should have been celebrating it. Instead, a huge embarrassment has been caused to the party by this controversy,” he said.
