Last week I spent a whole day attending a Congress Party rally in Jaipur and it left me feeling unusually depressed about the future of our sad and ancient land.

First, there was the sycophancy. I have covered political rallies since Indira Gandhi laid the foundations of the Dynasty and trust me when I tell you that not even in the darkest days of the Emergency when ‘Indira was India and India was Indira’ have I seen such a spectacle of sniveling, groveling, shaming sycophancy.

Remember that Mrs Gandhi was surrounded by a court in which courtiers told her hourly that she was the greatest leader ever, but they did it with a sneer and a wink. They knew it was not true.

With our current Mrs Gandhi, traditional Congress sycophancy has acquired a new and desperate edge. As if the humblest Congress worker knows that he has to wear his devotion to Sonia Gandhi on the sleeve of his grubby, khadi kurta. Every pole that held up the white shamiana at last week’s rally had a placard of either Sonia or Rahul Gandhi on it.

Nearly everyone who entered carried more placards of Sonia, which they raised high when someone from the stage ordered them ‘to lift up Soniaji’s pictures for the cameras’.

In the press enclosure there were gigantic pictures of Rahul baba and his Mummyji and Daddyji, resembling enlarged versions of the pictures you see of Sethji and his family in old-fashioned shops and business establishments.

Every speaker intoned Soniaji’s name like a mantra and some followed up with personal paeans of praise.

... contd.