This raises a fundamental question: what makes a great political party that claims to have fought hard and long to end European colonial rule present a foreign-born woman with no record of achievement or service to the nation as the one best fitted to lead the country? The answer is to be found in the fact that the history of modern India as found in textbooks is the version written by the successful side -- the party that enjoyed power for the better part of 50 years.

This gave it ample opportunity to impose a version of history that showed the Congress and its leaders in the mostfavourable light. A historical myth was created to show its leaders as national heroes in a titanic struggle against a formidable foreign adversary. The reality is different. A careful examination of the history of the last 80 years or so shows that, at crucial points, the Congress leadership has looked beyond the borders for inspiration.

This tendency of the Congress came to the fore in 1920, when Mahatma Gandhi launched the great non-cooperation movement in support of the Khilafat. It was for the restoration of the Sultan of Turkey who had lost his empire following his defeat in the First World War. (The Sultan had pretensions to being the successor to the Caliph -- a claim not recognised by Muslims outside India.) In launching the Khilafat non-cooperation movement, Gandhi was prepared to abandon the goal of Swaraj -- or independence -- in favour of the Khilafat. In his own words: ``To the Musalmans Swaraj means, as it must, India's ability to deal effectively with the Khilafat question... It isimpossible not to sympathise with this attitude... I would gladly ask for the postponement of the Swaraj activity if we could advance the interest of the Khilafat.''

Two points are worth noting. The people of Turkey themselves had no use for their Sultan whom they eventually drove into exile. Secondly, the Congress, only a year earlier, had declared Swaraj to be its goal. But Gandhi was not only prepared to abandon the goal in favour of a discredited, nationally irrelevant theocratic institution, but even went to the extent of defining Swaraj itself as support for the Khilafat. It is also a fact of history -- though not emphasised in history books today that Gandhi's movement led to a jihad known as the Moplah rebellion in which thousands of innocent lives were lost.

It was only in December 1929, at the Lahore session of the Congress, that Swaraj returned to the Congress agenda. But a similar pattern followed. The Independence Day was celebrated on the banks of the river Ravi on January 26, 1930, andGandhi was authorised by the Congress to lead a civil disobedience movement in support of Purna Swaraj (complete independence).

But soon Gandhi wrote something in his paper Young India that practically sabotaged the whole thing. Instead of demanding complete independence, he listed 11 administrative reforms and appealed to the Viceroy: ``This is by no means an exhaustive list of pressing needs, but let the Viceroy satisfy us with regard to these very simple but vital needs of India. He will then hear no talk of Civil Disobedience; and the Congress will heartily participate in any conference where there is perfect freedom of expression and demand.''

This demonstrated the truth of what Sri Aurobindo had written years earlier: ``The Congress started from the beginning with a misconception of the most elementary facts of politics, with its eyes turned towards the British government and away from the people.'' This was further confirmed by the subsequent behaviour of Gandhi and the Congress.

Nothing came ofGandhi's offer to the Viceroy and civil disobedience began with the famous Dandi Salt March. This was followed by civil disobedience all over the country. Had it been pursued to its logical conclusion, it is difficult to see how the British could have held on much longer. But, once again, Gandhi turned away from his followers and looked to the Viceroy who offered him the Gandhi-Irwin pact. With this, the dream of Purna Swaraj, so eloquently proclaimed in the manifesto, went up in a puff of smoke. ``Was it for this that our people had behaved so gallantly for a year?'' Jawaharlal Nehru asked in anguish.

The 1942 Quit India movement was a non-starter and Gandhiji disassociated himself from it almost at the start. But the pattern of looking outside India for inspiration continued after independence. In Kashmir, Nehru disregarded the advice of his own field commanders Thimmayya and L. P. Sen and followed the advice of Mountbatten to refer it to the United Nations.

In the northeast also, Nehru relied heavilyon the advice of foreign missionaries like Verrier Elwin, resulting in a massive increase in Christian missionary activity in tribal areas, while Indian institutions were discouraged and even kept out. Even today, Christian institutions, mostly controlled from outside the country, enjoy benefits that native Hindu institutions do not. This is similar to the British colonial practice of encouraging the import of products while discouraging local manufacturers. For the development of the country also, Nehru and his successors looked to the Soviet model. India is yet to recover from these decisions.

This brief excursion into history shows that the Congress' appeals to Sonia Gandhi to take over the leadership of the country is no aberration but part of a consistent pattern going back more than a century. It is a manifestation of the party's inability to evolve an ideology or any school of thought rooted in the soil. Its vision for the country is not national but colonial. Its leader, Sonia Gandhi, is its mostvisible symbol. The question now is whether it will evolve an ideology rooted in the soil, or whether this party started by an English-man will be wound up by an Italian woman. That would be a fitting epitaph for a party born in colonialism and trying to perpetuate colonial values.

The writer has just completed the book `Gandhi, Khilafat and the National Movement: A Revisionist View Based on Neglected Sources'