New Delhi, Dec. 12: The RSS says it knows all about why Sonia Gandhi went to Oxford University’s Centre for Islamic Studies.

An uncredited article in the December 15 issue of its in-house magazine, Organiser, says certain “forces” are “creating, packaging and marketing Sonia Gandhi”.

“The forces behind Sonia Gandhi are more ambitious than the MNCs that are bleeding India dry. They have managed to make the Oxford University, the English press and the electronic media integral parts of their assembly line....”

The article, “Packaging and Marketing of Sonia Gandhi”, describes the Congress president as the “gateway to national sovereignty”.

“She is not a breach, folks, she is the gateway. She and her children, all global citizens,” writes the anonymous author.

The article, with the sub-headline, “The MNC called Oxford University”, elaborates its take on multinationals.

“The characteristic thing about MNCs is that they control every aspect of a product that finds its way to the shelves of supermarkets... They have no respect for national ethos or national sensibilities and have, in recent years, managed to give nationalism a bad name.”

Nationalism for an MNC is “parochialism” and “some kind of atavistic human behaviour”, the article says.

Obtained from a website, hsita.scj.net, the article draws in Rabri Devi as well to cement its point.

“Rabri Devi, who entered the Indian political scene for the same reason as Sonia Gandhi, will never be invited by Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies to deliver the annual Commonwealth lecture… because she has not been packaged and marketed by our media and academia the same way as Sonia Gandhi has been.”

Drawing “parallels” between the Bihar chief minister and Sonia, the article says: “…Sonia is as relevant to Islamic studies as Rabri Devi, ... Sonia is no more a scholar than Rabri Devi…Sonia’s English is no better than Rabri Devi’s while Rabri Devi’s Hindi and knowledge of Indian social and political tensions is definitely far superior.”

Next, the article explains why Sonia should not have been invited. She’s “not Indian”, certainly not an “Indian Muslim”, not a “scholar of standing” but just an “Italian Roman Catholic whose only credential to be called Indian is that she was smart enough to be married to the Indian Prime Minister’s son”.

The author forwards a reason why the English media and academics “packaged and marketed Sonia so assiduously”. “They are reinventing India, the ‘idea that is India’. India is not a nation-civilisation which was Hindu yugas (centuries) before Islam and Christianity invaded its body like cancer. It is this past (of a Hindu India) which this class does not want us to uncover for the world.”

According to the author, the “secular brigade” has thwarted the RSS and its allies’ public efforts to highlight a Hindu rashtra by saying “India has always been a multi-religious, multi-ethnic and multi-cultural nation”.

“An idea they can re-formulate, re-invent, re-define.”

The article packs in the punch with its contention that Sonia is the “test case for concretising their (secularists’) ambitious venture”.

“She is meant to be the secular intellectuals’ triumphant trophy of India maturing into a global cultural entity. An idea which disowns nation, and therefore thinks ‘national’ and nationalism are passe.”