| Only 'devotion', no 'allegiance'! 
THANKS to a septuagenarian lawyer from Ernakulam in Kerala many in India now hear of King Leopold of Belgium via Sonia Gandhi. 
This lawyer took seriously what most people in the country had treated as some kind of fun, namely, the Order of Leopold conferred on Sonia Gandhi in the year 2006.
The brief story is this. Sonia Gandhi received the "Grant Officer" grade of the Order of Leopold on November 15, 2006 at Belgium. This is the second highest honour given by the King of Belgium. Obviously knowing that a Member of Parliament in India cannot accept a foreign title that compromises with his or her allegiance or loyalty to India, Menon investigated deeper to find out whether the Order of Leopold was an innocuous giltedged paper like what the Rotary or Lions Clubs confer or something more serious. He found to his shock that the Order was no ordinary paper but a special title that demanded 'devotion' and 'loyalty' to the King and the state of Belgium in return from the person honoured with the title.
A disturbed Rajan forthwith shot off a complaint to the President of India in May 2007 pleading that Sonia Gandhi be removed as Member of Parliament for having acknowledged her allegiance to Belgian King and State by accepting the Order of Leopold. Fortunately the incumbent of the Rashtrapati Bhavan then was 
Dr APJ Abdul Kalam, a man of high repute and independence in complete contrast to his successor, a Sonia loyalist. Dr Kalam promptly forwarded the complaint to the Election Commission for consideration. The EC was, as it was bound to be, split on the issue. It was not a secret that except the CEC the other two members owed their allegiance to the present establishment. For understandable reasons they were not keen to issue show cause notice to Sonia Gandhi asking her why she should not be disqualified as member of the Lok Sabha. They were defying the CEC for months. But the simmering tensions within the Commission soon spilled into the media. Obviously concerned at the leak, on February 13, the Commission managed to reach a decision by division. Navin Chawla, one of the members, agreed with the Chairman for the issue of a show-cause notice to Sonia. But he defied the Chairman and agreed with the other member, S.Y. Quraishi, also to ask for a clarification from the External Affairs Ministry on the Order of Leopold. This was to open a window to help Sonia to escape disqualification by getting a favourable report from the MEA. With the manipulations within the EC out, what would be normally discussed in the EC will now be discussed in the public domain.
The Constitution of India (Art 102) says that a person shall be disqualified to be in the Lok Sabha or in the Rajya Sabha if he "is under any acknowledgement of allegiance or adherence to a foreign state." For deciding whether the acceptance of the Order of Leopold by Sonia Gandhi amounts to acknowledgement of allegiance the simple question to ask is: what is the Order of Leopold explicitly for? A click for the "Order of Leopold" in Google search will get some 546000 entries. The Belgian government has it on website. The Association of the Order of Leopold too has its own website. The Wikipedia says (about the membership of Order of Leopold): "The membership can only be granted by his majesty King Albert II (that is the King of Belgium) and is reserved for very important Belgian nationals and to some distinguished foreign persons who contributed in one way to the Belgian military, the Belgian civil society or the Belgian state." The Association of the Order of Leopold was established under the Belgian law in 1944. As to the purpose of the association statute says: "It displays an eternal devotion to Belgium and to the monarchy." Is this requirement only for a Belgian? And what about a foreign member to the Order like Sonia? Says the Belgian statute: "In order to become a foreign member, one should prove his or her quality as a member of the Order as a foreigner." That means the recipient of the Order, Sonia in this case, will have to prove her 'eternal devotion' to Belgium and to the King of Belgium! Moreover, every member of the Association of the Order of Leopold has to take this oath under the law: "I swear not to undertake anything that could damage the respectability of the Order of Leopold and to fully observe the Regulations and act as a loyal and faithful member." So Sonia ought to have taken oath to be loyal to the purposes of the Association of the Order of Leopold, namely, 'display an eternal devotion to Belgium and to the monarchy'. The issue before the CEC was whether this swearing of loyalty to the Belgian state and the King is not acknowledgment of loyalty or adherence to a foreign country? See how this issue seems to have been handled by the Election Commission.
The CEC appears to have taken the view that Sonia's acceptance of the Order of Leopold does amount to acknowledgment of allegiance. Obviously panicking at this, one of the Commission members seems to have taken the extra-ordinary — actually extra-legal — step of seeking and getting a note from the Ministry of External Affairs with a letter from the Belgian Embassy in Delhi to the EC to counter the CEC. But the CEC seems to have pointed out that neither the letter nor the note of MEA referred to the statute of Association of the Order of Leopold which spoke of 'devotion' and 'loyalty' of the recipient Sonia to Belgian King and State. SY Quaraishi seems to have responded to the CEC saying that the term 'allegiance' or 'adherence' in the Constitution of India was not found in the statute of the Association of the Order of Leopold, even though he did concede that in some places the statute did talk of 'devotion'! Obviously Quaraishi has overlooked the fact that the statute of the Association of the Order of Leopold does talk of 'loyalty' also in addition to 'devotion'. Any way the use of the word 'devotion' which means worship, demands the Order recipient Sonia to worship the King of Belgium, while allegiance is only loyalty. While the CEC was troubled by his loyalty to the law, obviously the two other members of EC seem to be troubled by other loyalties. Hence the delay in the issue of the notice to Sonia. The media disclosure of the politicking within the EC has temporarily resolved the stalemate in the Commission by one of the two members, Navin Chawla, opting to support the CEC for issue of show-cause notice to Sonia on the one hand and siding with the other member, Quaraishi, to oppose the CEC who was not for asking for the views of Ministry of External Affairs as to the nature of the Order of Leopold. Now the Ministry of External Affairs will prepare the defence for Sonia thanks to the two members inviting it to do so, while the EC has held that the MEA has no locus in the matter.
QED: The EC will decide whether Sonia Gandhi's oath of "devotion" and "loyalty" to the King of Belgium under the Belgian law does or does not amount to "allegiance" or "adherence" to the Dutch king under the Indian Constitution. With the two members loaded against the CEC, the EC decision is bound to be that "devotion" is not "allegiance." So it is for the people of India to decide whether the EC is correct or not.
Sriram Savarkar
Hinduism is more a way of life than a method of worship.
Dharmo Rakshati Rakshithaha
If you protect Dharma, Dharma will in turn protect you
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