Left parties have, justifiably, prided themselves on two attributes: probity in public life and a secular, modern outlook that takes a particularly dim view of public religiosity. It cannot then be a very comfortable experience for these stalwarts to be confronted with growing evidence that the UPA’s presidential candidate appears to fail the test on both counts. As if Pratibha Patil’s opinion on Mughal rulers and veiled women was not bad enough, now come stories of dodgy banks, dodgy loans and dodgier relatives. There are even ghosts riding the swirling dust of the presidential election process: Pratibha Patil’s reported conversation with her long dead guru during a visit to the Brahma Kumari sect at Mount Abu.

All this may have been par for the course in parties far less scrupulous about their normative parameters. But for the comrades brought up on a diet of Marxian strictures against religion, it is important to be seen influencing the somewhat shambolic polity, given to capitalist corruption and irrational forces, for the better. They had until recently been vociferously congratulating themselves on having kept out of the contention candidates who did not meet their supposed high standards. Who would have thought that this demure, gentle, sari-clad lady could have proved to be so controversial? The raft of accusations that have followed in her wake is therefore unsettling in the extreme. And the Left is trying to disentangle itself from what is increasingly beginning to look like a fairly messy situation through some skilful distancing.

... contd.