HUM HINDUSTANI: Of Bhopal and books —J Sri Raman

Moro is all heart about Sonia and all harsh about her Congress mandarins. This may explain what one hears about their different reactions. Sonia, say insiders, is for a less belligerent stand on the book. It must be hoped that she has her way

Talk of the quirks of fate. Today must have been a time for India to remember him and his book about a tragedy that has just turned more terrible. Instead, he appears before us now as an author facing official fury for another work of his.

Italian writer Javier Moro — and his French and more famous collaborator Dominique Lapierre — had come out in 2001 with Five Past Midnight in Bhopal. Lapierre had made some enemies in 1975 with his City of Joy, a novel about slum-dwellers of Kolkata — then Calcutta — but the book on the world’s worst industrial disaster won him and Javier only friends in India. The media and others must have been quoting the authors’ findings after a court verdict of June 7, 2010, in the case of the Bhopal gas-leak tragedy of December 3, 1984.

The entire country is indignant at the injustice that the verdict represents without being illegal at all. Just two years’ imprisonment for eight Indians — with no word about Warren Anderson, CEO of Union Carbide, when the toxic gas from the US multinational’s plant laid a large area of the central Indian city to waste and took a toll on over 20,000 lives — seems less than a semblance of justice a quarter century after the event.

As a review of the book put it in 2002, Moro and Lapierre “show how Union Carbide ignored advice not to build a pesticides plant handling deadly poisons in the middle of a densely populated city, how its sales miscalculations and subsequent attempts to force its Indian subsidiary to cut costs led directly to the tragedy in which tens of thousands died in the most horrifying circumstances.”

Commentators, making pretty much the same points, are not quoting any of this. Being cited, instead, are bits and pieces from the latest of Moro’s books, which some luminaries of the ruling Congress party have brought into limelight even before its publication in English. The Red Saree: When Life Is the Price of Power is supposedly a fictionalised biography of Sonia Gandhi, the Indian leader of Italian origin. Congress spokespersons, especially legal eagle Abhishek Singhvi not given to frothing at the mouth, are crying foul over Javier’s alleged attempt to defame Sonia and deny her privacy.

Well, one hardly gets this impression from Moro’s official web page. “The adventure of a woman, the saga of a family, the epic story of a nation” is how the page describes the book. The florid blurb, however, barely reveals any ‘fictionalised’ part.

As it sums up the story: “Cambridge, 1965. Sonia Maino, a 19-year old Italian student, meets a young Indian called Rajiv Gandhi. She is the daughter of a humble family from near Turin; he belongs to the most powerful clan in India. This is the beginning of a love story that even death cannot destroy.” Gushingly, it goes on: “The Italian girl leaves her world and her past behind for love, and embraces the culture of her new country, India. A country like no other, where twenty million gods are worshipped, eight hundred different languages are spoken and over five hundred political parties stand for election.”

The statistics in that last sentence may be questionable. But while it may be a flattering description of the odds Sonia faced, it does not quite fictionalise her character. The first 31 pages of the book, freely available — though Moro has accused Singhvi of ‘stealing’ the English version of the book before its release into the market — do read like pulp fiction, but do not appear to defame Sonia. A peek into the book before any possible ban on the book.

The story begins thus: “New Delhi, May 24, 1991. Sonia Gandhi simply cannot believe that the man she loves is dead, and she will no longer feel his caresses or the warmth of his kisses. She will never again see that sweet smile that one day swept her off her feet…”

Then comes the part that Singhvi finds offensive, even outrageous. Sonia, says the book, thinks “of fleeing this country that devours its children”. She talks to her mother in Italy, who asks her to return. Her grief in solitude is broken by the announcement of a visitor — a member of the Congress Working Committee. “Sonia ji,” he says, “I want you to know that the Congress Working Committee, meeting under the presidency of your husband’s old friend, Narasimha Rao, has elected you president of the party. The election was unanimous. Congratulations.”

Writes Moro: “Sonia stands staring at them impassively. Is grief not something pure and sacred? They have not even allowed her to dry her tears for the death of her husband and the politicians are already here…She says: ‘I cannot accept. My world is not politics.’

The committee member insists. ‘Sonia ji, I do not know if you realise what the committee is offering you. It is offering you absolute power over the largest party in the world. And it is doing that on a silver plate. It is offering you the chance to lead this great country. Above all it is offering you the chance to take on the inheritance of your husband so that his death is not in vain.’

“Others join in. ‘Sonia ji, we are making you an unconditional offer,’ says the eldest man, an astute politician known for his skill in manipulation, and who seems about to pull something out of his sleeve. ‘Perhaps the most important thing for you is that you will once again enjoy the highest level of protection, just like when Rajiv was prime minister.’”

Readers may wonder about the identity of this one. Could it be, some will ask, Arjun Singh, coincidentally also the chief minister of the state of Madhya Pradesh with ill-fated Bhopal for its capital in 1984? This, however, is a secondary question. What is more notable is that Moro is all heart about Sonia and all harsh about her Congress mandarins.

This may explain what one hears about their different reactions. Sonia, say insiders, is for a less belligerent stand on the book. It must be hoped that she has her way.

After all, the far-right Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has made a fool of itself over a book — former External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh’s book on Mohammad Ali Jinnah. Must the Congress rush to emulate the example?

Besides, should more important issues than Moro not be engaging the attention of the Congress, its president and the government? Like some long-overdue relief for the surviving victims of Bhopal?

The writer is a journalist based in Chennai, India. A peace activist, he is also the author of a sheaf of poems titled At Gunpoint