Why Sushma Swaraj sounded damaged in Parliament

In defence or attack, there is no better parliamentary debater in India today than Sushma Swaraj. On the adjournment motion on the Lalit Modi issue, she has been aggressive from day one. When the debate began today, she was well-prepared and delivered some killer punches at the Congress, particularly the Gandhi family. Harking back to the escape of Warren Anderson of Union Carbide in the winter of 1984 under the Congress’s watch isn't such a story at this point. But unfreezing of Ottavio Quattrocchi's bank accounts in England was a shame.

The story was broken by Ritu Sarin at the Indian Express under my watch in 2006, and I remember the deep embarrassment it caused the Congress. But they decided to brazen it out with the same arrogance that the BJP has lately shown in the many scandals to hit its leaders. Senior Congress leaders had then tried to explain away the unfreezing of these accounts as routine.

The most touching, and shocking, was the argument some key figures put forward in their attempt to dissociate Sonia Gandhi from that obvious embarrassment.

"Boss, if Soniaji wanted Quattrocchi to have just 28 crores in London, we could have organised it in two hours, where was the need for us to leave such a trail behind us?" was the most brazen of all explanations. There were insinuations that, in fact, a senior, but politically lightweight, Congress minister had deliberately lifted the embargo on the accounts to embarrass the Gandhi family.

That is an indefensible chapter in the Gandhi family's and Congress party's history, Sushma Swaraj is right in saying so.

But it doesn't absolve her of the responsibility of the impropriety she has committed. I will never accept any allegation that she took a bribe from anybody. Nor was she, unlike Vasundhara Raje, a LaMo social buddy or business partner. But she did go out of her way to help him as she wouldn't have helped anybody in the normal course.

How did he manage to reach her directly for help? Is there an email, a letter, a tweet, anything which can be put in the public domain? From all accounts, it would seem it was just a personal phone call. How proper is it for the external affairs minister of a country of India's size to act on phone calls from mere individuals and call the envoy of another nation directly to convey her non-objection, if not endorsement, directly?

In pure debating terms, she had the better of the exchanges in the Lok Sabha today. But the Lalit Modi indiscretion has left her damaged. It is regrettable to see one of our most respected and admired public figures suffer such damage because of association with one of the most controversial persons of our times.

In my view, a word of regret would have been in order. Just admitting to an indiscretion, even an "absent-minded" one driven by humanitarian concerns, would have minimised it. Many of the same senior partymen who are applauding her today are smiling. They think this will blight her future progress in politics and, to that extent, put her out of the reckoning for the top job. This is not the way she would have liked it to end. But she had the opportunity to change the script with just a bit of humility and contrition.

An aside: I was so amused hearing Sushma quote repeatedly from late Arjun Singh's memoir to shame the Gandhi family. Under cover of total chamchagiri, Arjun Singh deeply detested and resented the Gandhi family by the time UPA came to power in 2004. He believed Sonia denied him prime ministership twice, in 1992 (after Babri) and then in 2004.

He was furious that she instead gave the top job to Manmohan Singh who, he never tired of saying, "used to stand outside my door carrying files" when he was a "mere bureaucrat”. Arjun Singh claimed to be a socialist, but was deeply feudal. He and I had a very interesting relationship. He screamed at me often, even threatening to get me fired from my job, but never stopped talking or returning my calls, a fact I duly noted in my #NationalInterest obituary of him.

But he didn't scream at me when I pulled his leg once, saying, "Arjun Singh ki antim ichcha, Sonia-Rahul maangein bhiksha," twisting a familiar heartland slogan. He just looked up, smiled a wee bit. He must be having the last laugh, not just smiling, today.

(This first appeared in the writer's Facebook page.)