Pawan Kumar / Reuters Sonia Gandhi, chief of India's ruling Congress party, addresses during an election campaign rally in Amethi in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh April 19, 2014. Around 815 million people have registered to vote in the world's biggest election - a number exceeding the population of Europe and a world record - and results of the mammoth exercise, which concludes on May 12, are due on May 16. REUTERS/Pawan Kumar (INDIA - Tags: POLITICS ELECTIONS)

If Sonia Gandhi loves India so much why did she become an Indian citizen only in 1983 after Rajiv entered politics? Asks Tavleen Singh, writer, columnist and indefatigable Sonia foe. That’s exactly the wrong question to ask, even rhetorically. If Sonia Gandhi was involved in some ghotala in the Agusta Westland helicopter scandal, that should be investigated. Absolutely. But to get into the melodrama of competitive desh prem is foolish and counterproductive. If Sonia Gandhi’s Italian connections helped grease the wheels during an Anglo-Italian helicopter deal, that should be exposed. But it has nothing to do with the purity of her love for India. As a journalist like Tavleen Singh is well aware, desh prem and desh looting can happily go hand in hand. The long list of scams by Indian politicians with undeniable asli desi roots from Lalu Prasad Yadav to Suresh Kalmadi to B S Yedyurappa is clear proof of that. We know full well that citizenship is not the only proof of love for a country. It’s a passport acquired often for the most prosaic of reasons – marriage including same-sex marriage, jobs, children’s future, ease of travel. And the timing of when one becomes a citizen, or whether one becomes a citizen or not, is a deeply personal matter that often has no bearing on one’s love for a country. Ask some of the strongest supporters of the BJP – the Overseas Friends of the BJP. Many of them have become American citizens phir bhi dil hai Hindustani. And in that case we laud them for it. None other than Narendra Modi flattered and stroked their egos at Madison Square Gardens. You may not have voted in 2014, he told them, but you were involved in the electoral process, you celebrated when the results came in. “Today I am here to thank you all,” he said to thunderous applause. And then he promised them visas on arrival in India.

Yet some of the same people turn around and hold up every instance of Sonia’s love or even affection for her own motherland as clinching proof of her duplicitous heart. And they fail to see the double standards there. “Madam Soniaji… do you have anyone known to you in Italy? Do you have relatives in Italy? Have you gone to Italy?” mocks Modi in an election rally in Thiruvanthapuram as if answering “Yes” to any of those questions is damning evidence that her Italian roots have not been fully expunged despite 48 years and counting in India. This approach is self-defeating because it allows Sonia Gandhi to deflect the charge from corruption and bribery and joust with her opponents on an emotional plane, playing victim, invoking her 93-year old mother just as Modi has invoked his own nonagenarian mother. “I was born to proud and honest people. I will never be ashamed of them…Yes I have relatives in Italy. I have a 93-year-old mother and my two sisters.” The jibes of “Italian waitress” routinely directed her way by the likes of Dr. Subramanian Swamy are what is truly shameful, especially for a party that likes to flaunt its prime minister’s chaiwalla credentials. Whether she is good or bad, Sonia Gandhi’s bloodstained connections with her adopted homeland cannot be challenged. This is an old feudal country and Sonia Gandhi knows the power of that rhetoric of sacrifice. An Italian by birth, an Indian by choice, if nothing else Sonia understands the power of family drama.