Mumbai: An article in the magazine published by the Mumbai Regional Congress Committee (MRCC) that targeted the Nehru-Gandhi family has not only caused major 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 has hinted that 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 editorial board of the magazine.
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 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,” he said.
