For nearly a year the Gandhis haughtily ignored the G23 letter, but have now adopted a more conciliatory tone. The attempt at some sort of rapprochement is probably motivated less by the belated realisation of the party’s rapid decline and more because of apprehensions that an open confrontation or split would offer a pretext for the Election Commission to intervene and freeze the Congress symbol, accounts and properties. Legitimacy of leadership cannot be demonstrated merely by a show of hands, as is the Congress’s normal practice, the constitutional procedure would have to be strictly adhered to. The de facto president, Rahul Gandhi, is reluctant to take formal charge as he does not want to shoulder blame for the Congress’s poor performance. On the other hand, the paranoid Gandhi family remains firm that they cannot hand over charge to anyone other than a very trusted loyalist, but one with some stature is hard to find. Incidentally, when Rahul attended the CWC, he was taken aback to find that though the meeting was deliberately packed with many special invitees, the only voices defending him were Ashok Gehlot and Mallikarjun Kharge. While leaving, he remarked in an aside to his companion that the silence weighed heavy.

Individual clout

The only G23 rebel with whom Rahul Gandhi has interacted is Bhupinder Singh Hooda. While he dismisses other party rebels as armchair leaders with no grassroots support, Gandhi realises that the Congress will be in trouble in Haryana without Hooda, who wields sizeable influence in his bastion of Sonipat-Rohtak and is the only prominent Congress Jat leader in the state. While the elder Hooda is with the rebels, his son Deepender remains in the Gandhi camp. Another prominent Congress family is also divided. But here the father is backing the Gandhis, while the son demands introspection by the high command. But this family’s differences are not for public consumption.

Ignoring AAP win

It is customary for chief ministers to congratulate their newly elected counterparts in other states. But West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee, who wants no competition as the leader of a non-BJP, non-Congress front, was conspicuously silent over the AAP victory in Punjab. So were the CPI(M)’s Pinarayi Vijayan, Shiv Sena’s Uddhav Thackeray, Ashok Gehlot and TRS’s K Chandrashekar Rao. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Sharad Pawar, M K Stalin, Akhilesh Yadav and Naveen Patnaik were among the few prominent leaders who graciously congratulated Bhagwant Singh Mann.

Forgotten Names

Among the several nuggets that author Pramod Kapoor brings out in 1946, his meticulously researched history of the short-lived Royal Indian Navy (RIN) mutiny, is that Admiral John Henry Godfrey, who headed the RIN at that time, was the inspiration for spy thriller writer Ian Fleming’s character ‘M’, the boss of his swashbuckling hero James Bond. In real life, Godfrey as Director of Naval Intelligence in 1939 appointed Fleming as his assistant and treated him as his son. Godfrey was made the scapegoat by his naval bosses in London and replaced the day after the mutiny ended. Another interesting character in the book is Rishi Dev Puri, a good-looking daredevil who played a key role in fomenting the mutiny, but was discharged from the navy three weeks before the actual event. His influential family whisked him away to Shimla to run the family owned Devicos Hotel on the Mall. Incidentally, Puri, who once earned a living as a professional piano player in London, was the younger brother of Vidya Vikas Purie, who, along with his children, founded the India Today media empire.

Savarkar Place?

BJP MP and president of the Indian Council of Cultural Relations, Vinay Sahasrabuddhe, has taken note of the fact that a prominent circle in the heart of New Delhi still carries the British royal family’s surname, Windsor. Sahasrabuddhe has written to the New Delhi Municipal Corporation demanding that Windsor Place, which is in any case a confusing address as it incorporates bungalows standing at the intersection of several prominent roads, including Janpath and Ashoka Road, should be re-named after Veer Savarkar. The New Delhi Municipal Committee authorities are believed to be considering the request sympathetically.

Balancing Act

In the last lap of SP chief Akhilesh Yadav’s campaign, party MP Jaya Bachchan made some fiery speeches against the ruling BJP, accusing it of telling nothing but lies and hiding its weaknesses by pointing a finger at others. Perhaps to compensate, Amitabh Bachchan flew down for Yogi Adityanath’s swearing-in ceremony in a Reliance plane.