Also decides, 2-1, to seek information on Order of Leopold from External Affairs Ministry

If there is one person in India who is above the Law of the Constitution and who has been endowed and empowered to treat the Criminal Procedure Code, the Indian Penal Code and a Civil Procedure Code with  cavalier contempt it is Sonia Gandhi, the de-facto Prime Minister of India.   

She has a stranglehold on the flabby and fledgling apparatus of the crumbling Indian State. Not only the Hindus of Gujarat, Punjab, Uttaranjal and Himachal Pradesh but all the Hindus of India have come to realize that she owes her allegiance not to the Indian Constitution (either in letter or in spirit!) but to the Pope in Rome. 

This dictatorial de-facto Prime Minister covered herself with everlasting secular Congress  glory (instead of non-secular communal disgrace!) when she filed a false affidavit to the effect that she had studied in Cambridge University in England before the Returning Officer of Rae Barellie Parliamentary Constituency in UP. She had deliberately concealed the fact that she had studied only in a Teaching Shop connected with teaching Language Courses When Dr Subramanian Swamy moved the Supreme Court of India through a Special Leave Petition in May 2007 to get her disqualified on this solid fact of her having filed a false Affidavit, the Supreme Court dismissed her Petition.  A three Judge Bench comprising Chief Justice K G Balakrishnan and Justices B P Singh and G P Mathur acted like an Oriental Potentate when it asked Dr Subramanian Swamy: “Should the Supreme Court go into all the Affidavits to find out whether they are false or not?  Further investigation is not possible into a stale issue and it should be dropped”.  As a Gentleman, Dr Swamy replied ‘if you take such a large-hearted view then the matter should be dropped.  I have nothing more to say’. 

 In these columns I had written two articles in May 2007, under the title ‘The Darkest Day in our Legal History’ and ‘Cavalier Dethronement of the Rule of Law’ I had clearly stated how the Supreme Court of India functioned as a fountain head of planned and calculated injustice in giving the above ‘not so stale verdict’ in favour of Sonia Gandhi in gross violation of the letter and spirit of the Indian Constitution.  I had clearly stated that the common people of India would continue to express such feelings of anger and despair indefinitely till the end of time or till the Supreme Court of India functions as a partisan body at the highest level by dismissing all the vital issues affecting our national integrity and national survival as STALE matters.

 Now it has come to light that after giving a false Affidavit in a disgraceful manner about her own educational qualifications in 2004, Sonia Gandhi went all the way to Belgium for accepting the ORDER OF LEOPOLD from the King of Belgium in November 2006.  By accepting this ‘Order’, Sonia Gandhi has shown that she not only owes her allegiance to the Pope in Rome, but also to the King of Belgium. The Election Commission by a majority of 2:1 has decided to issue notice to the Congress President andde-facto Prime Minister Sonia Gandhi asking her as to why she should not be disqualified from acting as a Member of Parliament under Article 102 (1) of the Constitution for her having  accepted the  Order of Leopold from the King of Belgium.

 Rajan, a public spirited lawyer from Kochi, being fully aware of the fact that a Member of Parliament in India cannot accept a foreign title that compromises with his or her allegiance or loyalty to India, investigated deeper to find out whether the Order of Leopold was an innocuous gilt-edged paper like the many innocuous Awards which many Social Clubs give to different categories of people. He found to his shock dismay that the Order of Leopold was no ordinary paper but a special title that demanded‘devotion’ and ‘loyalty’ to the King and the State of Belgium in return from the person honoured with the title. 

Agitated by this shocking discovery, Rajan sent a complaint to the President of India in May 2007 pleading that Sonia Gandhi be removed as Member of Parliament for having acknowledged her allegiance to Belgian King and State by accepting the Order of Leopold. Fortunately for our country, the incumbent of the Rashtrapati Bhavan then was Dr APJ Abdul Kalam, a man of great integrity imbued with a sense of high nationalism founded on his lofty patriotism, in stark contrast with his Sonia-servile successor in that high office with dubious if not criminal credentials, and Dr Kalam promptly sent the complaint of Rajan to the Election Commission for careful consideration. 

When the Election Commission functions as the informal political Agent of Sonia Gandhi on the eve of recent Gujarat Elections, I had written in these columns an article describing our disgraceful Election Commission as a ‘Politically Partisan Election Commission’.  When the politically partisan Navin Chawla, a known and celebrated page boy of Sonia Gandhi to-day and Sanjay Gandhi and Indira Gandhi of yesterday (during Emergency in 1975-77), was appointed as Election Commissioner in April 2007, I had written an Article in these columns under the title ‘For God’s sake, go! Navin Chawla!’ I had clearly stated that as Secretary to the Lt. Governor of Delhi during Emergency in 1975-77, he was guilty of Emergency Excesses when he participated along with Sanjay Gandhi with gusto in the criminal process of subverting the constitution of India with impunity. His several deeds of misconduct were adversely commented upon by the Shaw Commission appointed by the Janatha Government after its sweeping victory in the Elections held in 1977.    Now recently on 31 January, 2008, 180 MPs of the National Democratic alliance have signed a petition addressed to the Chief Election Commissioner of India (CEC) asking him to recommend the “Removal of Navin Chawla as Election Commissioner” 

It is a well-known public fact that both Navin Chawla and S Y Quraishi owe their positions as Election Commissioners to Sonia Gandhi and the Congress Party.  Both of them take special pride in functioning as ‘political agents’ of Sonia Gandhi within the Election Commission.  Though the Former President of India Dr. Abdul Kalam forwarded the petition of Rajan to the Election Commission as early as in June 2007, yet the Chief Election Commissioner could do nothing because Navin Chawla and S Y Quraishi, owing their total allegiance to Sonia Gandhi and her family, checkmated Chief Election Commissioner Gopal Swamy for nearly 7 months. Navin Chawla seems to be under the mistaken impression that he can cleverly mislead the country by standing alongside Gopal Swamy in the matter of issue of notice to Sonia Gandhi on the Order of Leopold issue and alongside S Y Quraishi on the other aspect of reference to the Ministry of External Affairs. Navin Chawla  knows full well that if he does not support Gopal Swamy on this aspect of the issue, then by his own abstention he would be forfeiting his claim to succeed Gopal Swamy as Chief Election Commissioner.  On the other aspect of referral to the Ministry of External Affairs, both Navin Chawla and S Y Quraishi are colluding as greyhounds together to hunt down Gopal Swamy.  Both these political hunters know that the Ministry of External Affairs under its ever-effeminate Minister Pranab Mukherjee will be waiting in combat-readiness to give a clean chit to Sonia Gandhi.

 I fully endorse the view of N S Rajaram on the issue of Sonia’s acceptance of the Order of Leopold Award: Beyond the legalities and technicalities of accepting an award demanding allegiance and loyalty to a foreign sovereign, there is a moral dimension to it. King Leopold of Belgium was one of the worst mass murderers in history. His rule was the inspiration for Joseph conrad’s Heart of Darkness and the movie Apocalypse Now.  The stark immorality of Sonia’s acceptance of this monstrous order— synonymous with slavery and genocide -  should be highlighted, and not just the technical and legal aspects.  Sonia Gandhi’s acceptance of an award instituted in his name brings dishonor not only to India but also the illustrious name that she uses. Can you imagine a greater contrast between Mahatma Gandhi and King Leopold? It defiles a great name.  This should give an idea of Sonia’s level of culture and education. what next? A Hitler order?” 

Sonia Gandhi is guilty of political treason for having accepted the ‘Order of Leopold’ from the King of Belgium.  She is a known and established subverter of the Law of the Constitution.  She is a known and sworn enemy of the Hindus of India.  Dr Subramanian Swamy, former Union Minister and President of the Janata Party has given the right verdict on behalf of the people of India. I welcome the decision of the Election Commission to issue a notice to Ms Sonia Gandhi to show cause why she should not be disqualified under Article 102(1) of the Constitution to be a Member of Parliament. There should be no doubt in anybody’s mind that Ms Gandhi is indeed disqualified to remain an MP if one goes by the precedent settled by a judgment of the Full Bench of the Madras High Court in 1985 {see AIR 1985 Mad 855} wherein it was held  that an Indian citizen Mr K S Haja Sharief who was an MLC in the then Madras Legislative Council, stood disqualified for his receiving a title of Honorary Consul from a small European country. In Ms Sonia Gandhi’s case, she attended in person in the investiture ceremony in Belgium and signed the register of the Association of the Order of Leopold that clearly meant a voluntary declaration of allegiance to a foreign sovereign King of Leopold of Belgium.  Hence she stands similarly disqualified and unfit to be an MP of a de-colonised India.  Moreover, this award for a MP of a Third World country like India is shameful and degrading because King Leopold reigned over  butchery, plunder and murder of the people of Belgium Congo, an African country, now called Zaire.”

Written by
S

Ms. Sonia Gandhi should be removed from Parliament, despite judicial staleness doctrine
V. Sundaram is a Dharma Yodhaa, a warrior for the nation, for public cause, and for probity in public service. He invites reference, in his column, to the unique, what may be called 'Balakrishnan judicial staleness doctrine' (an absolutely fresh and novel culinary metaphor of staleness, unheard of in the annals of jurisprudence) enunciated by Hon'ble Supreme Court of India and hopes that this doctrine will not be cited while deciding upon the immorality of Sonia, MP accepting the Order of Leopold which evokes the gruesome memories of Leopold's mass murders and genocide in Zaire (erstwhile Belgian Congo).
Read his full article at http://newstodaynet.com/col.php?section=20"catid=33 Is this a 'stale' or not so 'stale' case, please! (News Today, 15 Feb. 2008) I am also appending the razor-sharp views of B.R. Haran on this issue.
Hopefully, the case will end up in the SC for a non-stale, fresh decision on Sonia's removal from Parliament. After all, the Constitution of India which disqualifies an MP for obtaining an award from a foreign country should be enforced by the justice system which should grind fast (culinary metaphor intended) to make the fresh, novel chutney of Rule of Law in Bharatam. This ain't no stale issue, my lords, since this particular MP happens to be the empress of the Republic, at 10 Janpath.
The observations of Dr. NS Rajaram (cited hereunder) are stunning. The stark immorality of Antonia Maino accepting the Order of Leopald should put anyone to shame, particularly anyone from the land of sanatana dharma. As Gurumurthy asks: to whom does Antonia aka Sonia owe allegiance or devotion?
The word for devotion in Bharatiya languages is 'bhakti'. With the bhakti of MEA for just having been awarded the Padma Vibhushan, what sort of reply can be expected from the MEA? Bhakti to a European monarch from an empress of 10 janpath. What a shame! Any constitutional expert will know that acceptance of the Order requiring bhakti to the monarch is an affront to the Republic and the Constitution of India. Lawyers and judicial system may quibble about titles or orders or meritorious awards, what pray is the merit of Antonia that she should receive the Order of Leopold with all the baggage that goes with it (as detailed in Gurumurthy's article)?

After all, Constitution is being treated like a scrap of paper with transgressions of the Constitutional provisions day in and day out. The very fact that Antonia was chosen and not the Prime Minister shows who is the extra-constitutional authority running the nation like a colonial running a colony? Shame on the UPA who have led the nation to such a pass. Was this the nation for which many sacrificed their lives for a mythya of swarajyam?

The Minister for External Affairs has already been honoured with the Padma Vibhushan birudu. So, his devotion to the empress for bestowing this honour on him will be duly acknowledged. What type of response can one expect from MEA? Can MEA reinterpret the rules of the Order of Leopold?

If Pranab has bhakti for the empress and if the empress has bhakti for the King of Belgium, what allegiance is needed for being an MP?
Aha, in this globalised world, is it a signal honour to be honoured by a European monarch of a colonial, imperialist regime? It is a pity that Antonia was not born into monarchy, is only a naturalised monarch like her naturalized citizenship of Bharat, that is India.

kalyanaraman

Observations of Dr. NS Rajaram on Gurumurthy's article (appended):

February 15, 2008

Dear Sri Gurumurthy:

I appreciated your column in The New Indian Express. Beyond the legalities and technicalities of accepting an award demanding allegiance and loyalty to a foreign sovereign, there is a moral dimension to it. King Leopold of Belgium was one of the worst mass murderers in history. His rule was the inspiration for Joseph conrad's Heart of Darkness and the movie Apocalypse Now.

The review below should give you an idea.

The stark immorality of Sonia's acceptance of this monstrous order— synonymous with slavery and genocide—should be highlighted, and not just the technical and legal aspects.

Sonia Gandhi's acceptance of an award instituted in his name brings dishonor not only to India but also the illustrious name that she uses. Can you imagine a greater contrast between Mahatma Gandhi and King Leopold? It defiles a great name.

This should give an idea of Sonia's level of culture and education. what next? A Hitler order?

Best wishes,

Rajaram
http://www.wsws.org/articles/1999/sep1999/king-s06_prn.shtml
Belgium's imperialist rape of Africa
King Leopold's Ghost—A story of greed, terror and heroism in colonial Africa by Adam Hochschild, Macmillan, 1998, £22.50, ISBN: 0333661265
Book review by Stuart Nolan
6 September 1999

Back to screen version

Adam Hochschild's study of King Leopold II of Belgium's creation of the Congo Free State goes to the essence of the economic and political systems established in colonial Africa.

Between 1885 and 1908, there were between five and eight million victims of Leopold's personal rule, under a barbarous system of forced labour and systematic terror. When reading a reference by Mark Twain to these deaths, and the world-wide campaign against slavery in the Congo of which he was a part, Hochschild was surprised at his own ignorance. "Why were these deaths not mentioned in the standard litany of our century's horrors? And why had I not heard of them?" Pursuing his inquiries he uncovered a "vast supply of raw material".

His book has ruffled quite a few feathers, particularly in Belgium. The British Independent newspaper's review calls Hochschild's comparisons to contemporary imperialism "unhelpful." But it is such contemporary resonances that place King Leopold's Ghost above a routine historical work.

One example from the introduction: "...unlike other great predators of history, from Genghis Khan to the Spanish conquistadors, King Leopold II never saw a drop of blood spilt in anger. He never set foot in the Congo. There is something very modern about that, too, as there is about the bomber pilot in the stratosphere, above the clouds, who never hears screams or sees shattered homes or torn flesh." (p4)

Hochschild examines how, in the nineteenth century European drive for possessions in Africa, the moral rationalisation of the "civilising" mission was used to justify colonialism. An example was the founding of Leopold's International African Association (IAA) in 1876, at a conference of famous explorers in Brussels. As its first secretary, King Leopold opened the conference thus: "To open to civilisation the only part of our globe which it has not yet penetrated, to pierce the darkness which hangs over entire peoples, is, I dare say, a crusade worthy of this century of progress...." (p44)

The aim of the conference was proclaimed to be "abolishing the [Arab] slave trade, establishing peace among the chiefs, and procuring them just and impartial arbitration."

Contrast this with remarks Leopold made to his London minister on the explorer Henry Morton Stanley, hired by the IAA to explore the interior of the Congo: "I'm sure if I quite openly charged Stanley with the task of taking possession in my name of some part of Africa, the English will stop me... So I think I'll just give Stanley some job of exploration which would offend no one, and will give us the bases and headquarters which we can take over later on." (p58)

Leopold felt squeezed out by the British and French Empires, and the rising power of Germany. He studied forms of colonialism from the Dutch East Indies, to the British possessions in India and Africa. Java or How to Manage a Colony, by English lawyer JWB Money, appealed to him because it showed how a small country like Holland had perfected the technique of exploiting vast colonies. Money concluded that the huge profits made from Java depended on forced labour. Leopold agreed, commenting that forced labour was "the only way to civilise and uplift these indolent and corrupt peoples of the Far East." (p37)

Opposing the prevailing desire of Belgian parliamentarians to avoid the expense of colonies, he argued, "Belgium doesn't exploit the world... It's a taste we have got to make her learn." (p38)

Leopold's land grab

Stanley's murderous descent into the Congo is documented in his own diaries. The King sent instructions to Stanley to "purchase as much land as you will be able to obtain, and that you should place successively under... suzerainty... as soon as possible and without losing one minute, all the chiefs from the mouth of the Congo to the Stanley falls..." (p70)

He was to purchase all the available ivory and establish barriers and tolls on the roads he opened up. Land rights treaties should be as "brief as possible and in a couple of articles must grant us everything." (p71) Stanley secured 450 such agreements.

Leopold developed a military dictatorship over a country 76 times the size of Belgium, with only a small number of white officials. Initially, he paid mercenaries, but in 1888 these were transformed into the "Force Publique". At its peak, there were 19,000 conscripted African soldiers and 420 white officers.

By means of bribes and lobbying, Leopold gained recognition for the Congo in 1884 by the United States, followed by a similar deal with France. By making a web of bilateral agreements at the Berlin conference in February 1885, he carved out the boundaries for this huge state. Once his ownership of the Congo was secure, the rubber boom erupted. Rubber sap was in great demand for tyres and other products, and the Congo was covered with such vines. Joint ventures ensued between Belgian, British and Dutch firms. The astronomical profits saved Leopold's colonial empire. An example given is the 700 percent profits of the Anglo-Belgian India Rubber and Exploration Company (ABIR).

The race was on to extract as much wild natural rubber as possible before organised cultivation stole the market. Apart from financing Leopold's private army and the Force Publique (which took up half the Congo's budget) to control the slave labourers who gathered the rubber, capital outlay was non-existent.

Natives had to search out vines through inhospitable jungle. In Leopold's Congo it was an illegal offence to pay any Africans with money, so other more brutal forms of exhortation were employed. The British vice consul in 1899 gave a terrifying example of how the Force Publique carried out this task:

"An example of what is done was told me up the Ubangi [River]. This officer['s]... method... was to arrive in canoes at a village, the inhabitants of which invariably bolted on their arrival; the soldiers were then landed, and commenced looting, taking all the chickens, grain etc, out of the houses; after this they attacked the natives until able to seize their women; these women were kept as hostages until the chief of the district brought in the required number of kilograms of rubber.

The rubber having been brought, the women were sold back to their owners for a couple of goats apiece, and so he continued from village to village until the requisite amount of rubber had been collected." (p161)

Companies operating in the Congo used prison stockades to keep hostages. If the men of the village resisted the demands for rubber it meant the death of their wife, child or chief. The Force Publique supplied military might under contract and each company had its own mercenaries.

In the rubber regions, Africans had to gain a state permit to travel outside their villages. Labourers wore a numbered metal disk, so a record could be kept of their individual quota. Hundreds of thousands of desperate and exhausted men carried huge baskets on their heads for up to twenty miles a day.

An account in 1884 describes the actions of an officer known as Fievez taken against those who refused to collect rubber or failed to meet their quota: "I made war against them. One example was enough: a hundred heads cut off, and there have been plenty of supplies ever since. My goal is ultimately humanitarian. I killed a hundred people... but that allowed five hundred others to live." (p166)

The Force Publique had a combined counter-insurgency role: as a force to suppress the natives and as a "corporate labour force." Their murderous assaults against the native population were described as "pacification", as it was during the Vietnam War. The demand was for labour, and they destroyed all obstacles in their way.

Hochschild quotes the Governor of the Equatorial District of the Congo Free State when the demand for rubber became ferocious: "As soon as it was a question of rubber, I wrote to the government, 'To gather rubber in the district... one must cut off hands, noses and ears'." (p165)

Following tribal wars, state officials would see to it that the victors severed the hands of dead warriors. During expeditions, Force Publique soldiers were instructed to bring back a hand or head for each bullet fired, to make sure that none had been wasted or hidden for use in rebellions. A soldier with the chilling title "keeper of hands" accompanied each expedition. Force Publique soldiers were slaves who had been press-ganged through hostage taking, or stolen as children and brought up in child colonies founded by the King and the Catholic Church.

The Heart of Darkness

In August 1890, a young trainee steamship officer headed for the Congo basin. His name was Joseph Conrad, the author of the most famous novel to emerge from the European scramble for Africa, Heart of Darkness. One of the central characters in the novel is Kurtz, who is in charge of the inner station.

Kurtz is notorious for having a row of native heads surrounding his headquarters. He combines pathological cruelty with an interest in art and philosophy. Hochschild writes that, whilst Conrad must have met dozens of candidates for Kurtz during his time in the Congo, Leon Rom, head of the Force Publique, bares his unmistakable stamp. Rom had a fence round his office with severed native heads on each slat, and a garden rockery full of rotting heads.

Hochschild comments, "High school teachers and college professors who have discussed this book in thousands of classrooms over the years tend to do so in terms of Freud, Jung, and Nietzche; of classical myth, Victorian innocence, and original sin; of postmodernism, postcolonialism, and poststructuralism. European and American readers, not comfortable acknowledging the genocidal scale of the killing in Africa at the turn of the century, have cast Heart of Darkness loose from its historical moorings..."

"But Conrad himself wrote, ' Heart of Darkness is experience ... pushed a little (and only very little) beyond the actual facts of the case'." (p143) It had been Conrad's boyhood dream to discover the heart of Africa—now that he had arrived he described what he found as "the vilest scramble for loot that ever disfigured the history of human conscience." Conrad later added, "All Europe contributed to the making of Kurtz."

With the industrial scale of murder brought by imperialism, the use of celebrities, lobbyists and "media campaigns raging in half a dozen countries on both sides of the Atlantic", the colonisation of Africa seems "strikingly close to our time," Hochschild writes. Leopold spent hundreds of millions bribing editors and journalists, and even published his own articles under a false name. In 1904 he formed his own Press Bureau, which published pro-Leopold books, pamphlets and attacks on political opponents. It subsidised a number of Belgian newspapers, and a magazine entitled New Africa. On its payroll were the Brussels correspondents of the Times of London and Germany's Kölnische Zeitung, as well as other editors and reporters from Austria to Italy.

The latter part of Hochschild's book is taken up with the activities of those who opposed Leopold's brutal Congo regime. The radical human rights campaigner E.D. Morel set up the Congo Reform Association (CRA) in Britain. From the early 1900s until after Leopold's death in 1909, Morel used information smuggled out of the Congo by missionaries and Leopold's employees to mount a campaign that won the support of prominent politicians and churchmen, both in Britain and the United States. One of these was Roger Casement—later to become the famous Irish republican—who for a time was British consul in the Congo.

Towards the end of his rule, Leopold, desperate to stop the flow of information about the Congo getting back to the West, filed a libel suit against the black American missionary William Sheppard. Morel called on Emile Vandervelde, a socialist lawyer and president of the Second International, who went to the Congo to defend Sheppard. Vandervelde made a brilliant defence speech and the publicity forced Leopold to retreat. One criticism which can be made of Hochschild's book is that this is virtually the only reference made to the role of the socialist movement in Europe in opposing imperialism.

In the conclusion, Hochschild again asks why has the genocidal rule of Leopold in the Congo made so little impact on popular consciousness? Did the Congo Reform Association campaign do any lasting good?

Leopold attempted to destroy the evidence: for eight days in 1908 furnaces in Leopold's Brussels headquarters were at full blast, as Congo State archives were tuned to ash. He sent word to his agent in the Congo to do likewise. This, the "politics of forgetting", was followed by the entire Belgian state.

More important were the limitations of the CRA. The campaign effectively folded after the Belgian government took over the colony in 1908, as though the issues were resolved. Yet most of the brutal state officials deployed under King Leopold were retained by the Belgian state. With the profits extracted from the Congo, huge sums in compensation were paid to the King by parliament. Whilst the policy of holding women and children hostage or burning villages ended, the Belgians continued to use forced labour.

Hochschild also criticises the almost exclusive focus of the CRA movement on Belgium, citing comparable brutality by the US in the Philippines, the British in Australia, the Germans in what is now Namibia. He points out that joint imperialist ventures in the Congo all utilised the Force Publique, while the French, German and Portuguese used the example of King Leopold's Congo as a template for their own systems of rubber extraction. It was safe for campaigners to single out the Congo because such outrage "did not involve British or American misdeeds, nor did it entail the diplomatic, trade or military consequences of taking on a major power like France or Germany." (p282)

Finally, in 1914, Britain and then America justified the outbreak of world war on the need to defend "brave little Belgium" from German aggression. Falsified stories were put out that German troops had committed mass rapes of Belgian women and cut off the hands and feet of children. As Hochschild explains, "...no one in the Allied countries wanted to be reminded that, only a decade or two earlier, it was the King of the Belgians whose men in Africa had cut off hands." (p296)

There can be no wonder that in this reactionary climate, the very limited critique of imperialism made by the Congo reform movement was easily swept aside. Casement was executed by the British state in 1916 for his attempt to win German military support for the Irish republicans. Morel was sentenced to six months hard labour on trumped-up charges of sending antiwar literature to neutral countries. Both were deserted by their former supporters and admirers.

Only 'devotion', no 'allegiance'!
Friday February 15 2008 07:42 IST

S GURUMURTHY

THANKS to a septuagenarian lawyer from Ernakulam in Kerala many in India now hear of King Leopold of Belgium via Sonia Gandhi. This lawyer took seriously what most people in the country had treated as some kind of fun, namely, the Order of Leopold conferred on Sonia Gandhi in the year 2006.

The brief story is this. Sonia Gandhi received the "Grant Officer" grade of the Order of Leopold on November 15, 2006 at Belgium. This is the second highest honour given by the King of Belgium. Obviously knowing that a Member of Parliament in India cannot accept a foreign title that compromises with his or her allegiance or loyalty to India, Menon investigated deeper to find out whether the Order of Leopold was an innocuous giltedged paper like what the Rotary or Lions Clubs confer or something more serious. He found to his shock that the Order was no ordinary paper but a special title that demanded 'devotion' and 'loyalty' to the King and the state of Belgium in return from the person honoured with the title.

A disturbed Rajan forthwith shot off a complaint to the President of India in May 2007 pleading that Sonia Gandhi be removed as Member of Parliament for having acknowledged her allegiance to Belgian King and State by accepting the Order of Leopold. Fortunately the incumbent of the Rashtrapati Bhavan then was Dr APJ Abdul Kalam, a man of high repute and independence in complete contrast to his successor, a Sonia loyalist. Dr Kalam promptly forwarded the complaint to the Election Commission for consideration. The EC was, as it was bound to be, split on the issue. It was not a secret that except the CEC the other two members owed their allegiance to the present establishment. For understandable reasons they were not keen to issue show cause notice to Sonia Gandhi asking her why she should not be disqualified as member of the Lok Sabha. They were defying the CEC for months. But the simmering tensions within the Commission soon spilled into the media. Obviously concerned at the leak, on February 13, the Commission managed to reach a decision by division. Navin Chawla, one of the members, agreed with the Chairman for the issue of a show-cause notice to Sonia. But he defied the Chairman and agreed with the other member, S.Y. Quraishi, also to ask for a clarification from the External Affairs Ministry on the Order of Leopold. This was to open a window to help Sonia to escape disqualification by getting a favourable report from the MEA. With the manipulations within the EC out, what would be normally discussed in the EC will now be discussed in the public domain.

The Constitution of India (Art 102) says that a person shall be disqualified to be in the Lok Sabha or in the Rajya Sabha if he "is under any acknowledgement of allegiance or adherence to a foreign state." For deciding whether the acceptance of the Order of Leopold by Sonia Gandhi amounts to acknowledgement of allegiance the simple question to ask is: what is the Order of Leopold explicitly for? A click for the "Order of Leopold" in Google search will get some 546000 entries. The Belgian government has it on website. The Association of the Order of Leopold too has its own website. The Wikipedia says (about the membership of Order of Leopold): "The membership can only be granted by his majesty King Albert II (that is the King of Belgium) and is reserved for very important Belgian nationals and to some distinguished foreign persons who contributed in one way to the Belgian military, the Belgian civil society or the Belgian state." The Association of the Order of Leopold was established under the Belgian law in 1944. As to the purpose of the association statute says: "It displays an eternal devotion to Belgium and to the monarchy." Is this requirement only for a Belgian? And what about a foreign member to the Order like Sonia? Says the Belgian statute: "In order to become a foreign member, one should prove his or her quality as a member of the Order as a foreigner." That means the recipient of the Order, Sonia in this case, will have to prove her 'eternal devotion' to Belgium and to the King of Belgium! Moreover, every member of the Association of the Order of Leopold has to take this oath under the law: "I swear not to undertake anything that could damage the respectability of the Order of Leopold and to fully observe the Regulations and act as a loyal and faithful member." So Sonia ought to have taken oath to be loyal to the purposes of the Association of the Order of Leopold, namely, 'display an eternal devotion to Belgium and to the monarchy'. The issue before the CEC was whether this swearing of loyalty to the Belgian state and the King is not acknowledgment of loyalty or adherence to a foreign country? See how this issue seems to have been handled by the Election Commission.

The CEC appears to have taken the view that Sonia's acceptance of the Order of Leopold does amount to acknowledgment of allegiance. Obviously panicking at this, one of the Commission members seems to have taken the extra-ordinary — actually extra-legal — step of seeking and getting a note from the Ministry of External Affairs with a letter from the Belgian Embassy in Delhi to the EC to counter the CEC. But the CEC seems to have pointed out that neither the letter nor the note of MEA referred to the statute of Association of the Order of Leopold which spoke of 'devotion' and 'loyalty' of the recipient Sonia to Belgian King and State. SY Quaraishi seems to have responded to the CEC saying that the term 'allegiance' or 'adherence' in the Constitution of India was not found in the statute of the Association of the Order of Leopold, even though he did concede that in some places the statute did talk of 'devotion'! Obviously Quaraishi has overlooked the fact that the statute of the Association of the Order of Leopold does talk of 'loyalty' also in addition to 'devotion'. Any way the use of the word 'devotion' which means worship, demands the Order recipient Sonia to worship the King of Belgium, while allegiance is only loyalty. While the CEC was troubled by his loyalty to the law, obviously the two other members of EC seem to be troubled by other loyalties. Hence the delay in the issue of the notice to Sonia. The media disclosure of the politicking within the EC has temporarily resolved the stalemate in the Commission by one of the two members, Navin Chawla, opting to support the CEC for issue of show-cause notice to Sonia on the one hand and siding with the other member, Quaraishi, to oppose the CEC who was not for asking for the views of Ministry of External Affairs as to the nature of the Order of Leopold. Now the Ministry of External Affairs will prepare the defence for Sonia thanks to the two members inviting it to do so, while the EC has held that the MEA has no locus in the matter.

QED: The EC will decide whether Sonia Gandhi's oath of "devotion" and "loyalty" to the King of Belgium under the Belgian law does or does not amount to "allegiance" or "adherence" to the Dutch king under the Indian Constitution. With the two members loaded against the CEC, the EC decision is bound to be that "devotion" is not "allegiance." So it is for the people of India to decide whether the EC is correct or not.
http://newindpress.com/newspages.asp?page=m"Title=Main+Article"
A PERMANENT 'THORN' IN INDIA'S FLESH!

The Congress President Mrs.Sonia had accepted the title 'Grant Officer of the Order of Leopold' from the King of Belgium in November 2006, which makes her eternally devoted to Belgium and its Monarchy, as per the statute of becoming a Member of the Association for the Order of Leopold.

The complaint filed by Kerala based lawyer Mr.Rajan Menon in May 2007, against the Congress President Mrs.Sonia for accepting the "Grant Officer" grade of the Order of Leopold on November 15, 2006 personally at Belgium, has shown that this great nation has not gone dearth of patriotic citizens, who are concerned with the 'quality' " 'credibility' of our so-called law makers. Mr.Rajan Menon's valid contention was that "Mrs.Sonia' for having accepted this 'Order' from a Foreign Country in violation of Article 18 of the Constitution, as a Member of the Parliament in India deserves to be disqualified under Article 102(1)". So, he had duly sent his claim to the then President Dr.Kalam in May 2007. The well-reputed former President, who is known for his no-nonsense approach had expectedly done the right thing by promptly forwarding the complaint to the Election Commission for consideration. While the Chief Election Commissioner is known for his 'allegiance' to the Constitution and Rule of Law, the other two Election Commissioners are also notorious for their alleged 'allegiance' to the UPA government in general and Congress Party in particular. So, it is obvious " understandable that the issue has been dragging for the last nine months and even though one of the ECs Mr.Navin Chawla, for whose benefit the UPA government was prepared to the extent of even amending the Constitution, seemed to have gone with the CEC in issuing a show cause notice to Sonia, he had also exhibited his 'loyalty' by siding with the other EC Mr.Quaraishi in asking for a clarification from the Ministry of External Affairs, which doesn't have any locus standi to involve in this issue.

The point to note here is that, it is not going to stop with External Affairs Ministry. The Law Ministry, which went out of the way, keeping even the PM in dark, for the safe exit of "Mr.Q" from London along with the booty, and which was ready to amend the Constitution to save the EC Navin Chawla, would certainly step in with all its might, to nullify the CEC. As the issue centers on 'loyalty' or 'allegiance', both the External Affairs and Law Ministries would vie with each other in exhibiting their 'loyalties' to Belgium's Grant Officer! Now, since this issue has come out in to the open, it has become evident as to why the government was contemplating a Constitutional amendment to equalize the powers of all the three ECs. So, it was contemplated not only to save Mr.Chawla but also to save Mrs.Sonia. In the meantime, Dr.Subramanyam Swamy had clearly mentioned about a precedent in which the Tamil Nadu MLC member Mr.Haja Sherif was disqualified by the Madras High court (AIR 1985 Mad 855) in 1985 for accepting a title of "Honorary Consul" from a small European country. Now, the UPA may even attempt to amend the Article 102(1) in order to save its Chair Person provided, it convinces and manages to obtain the support of the Left.

Dr.Swamy had also come out with another valid point that, accepting this honor had brought disgrace to India, as King Leopold reigned over butchery, plunder and murder of the people of Belgium Congo, an African country, now called Zaire. A small introspection of history shows that, King Leopold of Belgium was a Grotesque Predator notorious for slave-trade and mass-murder! Accepting an "Honor" (!) in his name amounts to sheer immorality!

The Congress Party is trying to show a brave face by dismissing the matter as a 'Non-Issue'. The party it seems had written to the Election Commission saying that the honor is civilian in nature and not a title and hence it doesn't violate our constitution. Another interesting aspect in the issue is that, the Congress Spokesperson Mr.Abishek Singhvi had reportedly quoted the Belgian Prime Minister as having said that, the honor had been bestowed upon Mrs.Sonia for her Contributions to Indian Society and Indian Democracy! The fact that just a decade old politician is chosen by the Belgian Government for this 'great' honor goes to prove her 'immense' contributions to the Indian Society " Indian Democracy in such a short span of time and hence no one should attempt to quantify or evaluate her contributions. Taking in to consideration the history behind King Leopold, one wonders what sort of contributions the Belgian Government would have looked into!

Ultimately, the two Election Commissioners allegedly owing allegiance to UPA might prevail over the CEC. Otherwise, the UPA might attempt Constitutional amendments to save both Chawla and Sonia. But, it should convince the Left Front for support and if those attempts fail, then there is always the 'conscience' factor, which would come in handy as usual in the last minute. The "Inner Voice" would rescue the Congress President leading to her 'renouncing' the Membership of the Parliament, thereby helping her to attain the "Sainthood" for the third time in a row!

The issue would not be a problem at all if Mrs.Sonia is not a member of parliament. It would not have become a problem had she remained as a foreigner. The problem starts when a foreigner is allowed to enter Indian Politics and it continues when he/she is allowed to contest elections and aggravates when he/she is sworn in as a Member of Parliament and stabilizes when he/she becomes the Chief of the ruling alliance and worsens when he/she grows in stature beyond the Constitution!

A "Thorn" has got stuck in India's flesh; medicines would not help; the need of the hour is a Constitutional Surgery; unfortunately a surgeon is not visible even in the near future. People must learn to live with the pain at least for the time being!

- B.R.Haran (15 Feb. 2008).