by Javier Moro
Given their failure to convince her, they try other methods. Rao’s government decides to make a donation to the Rajiv Foundation of ten million rupees, payable over five years, as though that way they could make up for the loss of her husband. Sonia gets even angrier and sends a letter to Rao: “We thank you personally, and your colleagues, for this generous offer, but it would be better for the government to design its own humanitarian projects and programmes and to finance them directly, honouring the memory of my husband in that way.” But it is too late, the scandal blows up. As soon as the news of this supposed donation becomes public, the opposition attacks what it calls the Rome Raj: “A government that can steal from the poor to give ten million rupees to the family of Rajiv Gandhi is capable of anything.”
Tired now of so much manoeuvring and manipulation, of this new, unnecessary scandal that the opposition gets the most out of with great relish, of all the pressure that does not respect her grief, of the Press speculating all the time about her role, Sonia decides to follow the advice of her children and go off on a trip to Europe and the United States for a while. The trip serves to distract her from the confusion in India and allows her to rest mentally and set her thoughts in order. She is more determined than ever to keep Rajiv’s legacy alive without having to get into the mire of politics herself. But is that possible?
When she gets back, the police inform her that they have identified Rajiv’s assassins. The investigation was made possible thanks to the heroic work of a local photographer from Sriperumbudur, a young man called Haribabu. That fateful night, the reporter had waited impatiently for the leader’s arrival. As soon as Rajiv got out of the white Ambassador, Haribabu had bombarded him with his flash shots, to such an extent that the bodyguard, Pradip Gupta, waved at him to stop being a nuisance. But, not concerned about saving rolls of film, the photographer went on with his work. Who knows when a personality as important as Rajiv Gandhi would be back to that remote corner? His persistence cost him his life. Haribabu’s body was blown apart by the shock wave. His remains were found twenty metres away from the place where he was originally. What the police discovered was his camera among the smoking remains of the conflagration. Miraculously, it was intact. When the roll of film inside it was developed, the last faces that Rajiv had seen in his life appeared, among which was that of Dhanu, the suicide terrorist.
“Take a good look at the photo,” the chief of police tells her. “She is your husband’s assassin.”
Sonia’s hands sweat when she takes it to see. It is deeply disturbing to see the face of the person who has done them so much harm like this. From being an abstraction in her mind, the murderess now seems an apparently normal woman. “How could she do something so awful?” Sonia says to herself, staring at her, as though seeking some external sign of her evil, as though she could get inside her mind, look into her soul and guess why she decided to kill him. The policeman points with his finger to the face of a dark-skinned man, a southerner, in one corner of the photo.
“The police special investigation team has managed to identify him. He’s a terrorist known as Shivarasam, a leader of the LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam). Madam, this confirms what we all knew already: that your husband was the victim of a plot by Tamil extremists.”
“His murder was the revenge of the Tamils for the military intervention on the island, isn’t that so?”
The policeman nods.
“The extremists turned against him, Madam, just like a tiger, forgive the comparison, who strikes out at the one who has come to bring him his food.”
When she thinks about it, Sonia discovers that there is a horrible link in the deaths in the family, as though its members were the architects of their own destruction. Indira died because of a problem that Sanjay originated by creating the Brindanwale monster to control the Sikhs politically; Rajiv has died through a problem originally created by Indira, who for years provided support for the Tigers in order to gain the votes of the Tamils in India and not lose the electoral grassroots. Had she not heard Indira often say that the worst thing about politics was not doing what you really thought you should do from fear of losing support? Both of them ended up paying for the error they made at some moment of weakness, of lack of faith, the error mistake of putting short-term political considerations before the long-term general interest of the country. And errors cost dear in politics. Sonia, Priyanka and Rahul’s blood runs cold when they think about it. It is the most expensive lesson of their lives.
Unlike the Congress Party, the Hindu fundamentalists are very satisfied with their electoral results. They realize that the campaign to destroy the mosque in Ayodhya and replace it with a Hindu temple dedicated to the god Rama, has brought important political returns. The riots have turned into votes. So why not go on? In October 1991, extremist Hindu organizations affiliated to the BJP arrange to purchase the land all round the mosque. Immediately afterwards they begin works to level the ground. And as the last straw in provocation, they announce that on December 6th they will start the construction of the temple. When the Moslems scream blue murder, the government sends a team to Ayodhya to assess the situation, and they find a large concrete platform put up by the extremists next to the mosque. It is a flagrant violation of the law that had forbidden things to be changed after the last riots. The government team is dismayed to find that the local government has turned a blind eye, but the explanation is very simple: its leader is a member of the BJP.
Concerned about a possible escalation in violence, the Home Secretary in New Delhi sends 20,000 men, who are distributed in different barracks located less than an hour from the mosque. But, on the other hand, a hundred thousand Hindu militants start arriving, dressed up as heroes from mythology, with tridents, bows and arrows, and they camp in the area. Some leaders of the BJP invoke the pacific and symbolic nature of the gathering.
“We have our own public order service ,” they argue to the authorities.
The authorities decide not to send the soldiers to the grounds on the morning of December 6th, the date announced for laying the first stone of the temple. “We did not want to provoke them”, they would say later, when the seriousness of that error came to light.
In the area around the mosque only the state police are present, a small force, poorly motivated and even worse equipped to hold back the passions of a gigantic crowd. At half past eleven in the morning, while half-naked holy men covered in ash begin to intone psalms and prayers on the concrete platform, some militants approach the mosque with a threatening attitude. When they try to stop them, the only thing the agents of public order and some policemen achieve is to be stoned by the angry crowd.
“We will build our temple right here!” the militants shout enthusiastically.
An intrepid young man manages to jump over the police and climb the walls of the mosque until he gets to one of its three domes. The crowd see this as a signal to attack. Armed with axes, picks and shovels, an avalanche of militants launch themselves at the mosque. The police flee in terror.
Half an hour later, the militants are walking over the roof waving bright yellow flags and cheering. While some throw hooks tied to ropes to stick into the roofs of the minarets, others attack the base with sledgehammers, hammers and picks. At two in the afternoon, the first minaret falls, and with it a dozen men who were destroying the roof with axes. But it does not seem to matter, human life does count, what is important is to bring down the symbols of their Moslem neighbours. An hour later, the second minaret falls. Then the last one, and finally the central dome. In a single afternoon, a monument that has witnessed countless disturbances in history, which has borne the lashing of 400 monsoons is reduced to rubble by the fury of a few fanatics.
Most Hindus in the country are not in agreement with a minority of extremists forcing the government to bow to their will. If the forces that could have stopped the sacrilege are at hand, why did the order to intervene not come? In those days of terror, many Indians miss Indira; with her
in power in New Delhi, they think this would probably never have happened. They attribute it to an act of cowardice on the part of the government of Narasimha Rao, who does not want to be seen as “anti-Hindu” in a country with a Hindu majority.
The demolition causes six deaths among the militants and some fifty casualties. The leaders of the BJP are arrested by the police and held in protective custody. An influential local priest expresses the wish that Ayodhya may become the “Vatican of the Hindus” and makes a call for violence. The first step, he adds, is to cleanse the city of its minorities. The militants respond heatedly to this war cry and launch themselves into an orgy of violence, burning Moslem homes and then whole districts. Soon the violence extends up and down India. The Moslems come out on to the streets, attack police stations and set fire to government buildings. The worked up crowds use all kinds of weapons, from acid to shotguns, including slingshots and daggers. The Press tells of cases of children being burned alive, of women shot at point blank range by policemen. The spectre of Partition has reappeared.
There are thousands of deaths all over India. The army imposes a curfew. The country is paralyzed with fear. Planes do not take off, trains do not run. The nightmare of Nehru and Gandhi, of communal hatred, is becoming a reality before the astonished eyes of the people, who see how co-existence between neighbours is replaced by hostility and suspicion. Moslem and Hindu children no longer play together as they have done for over a thousand years now. Their parents no longer trade with each other and relations come to a halt. Moslems are beginning to be required to prove their loyalty to India. At cricket matches against Pakistan, they are forced to display the national flag on the fronts of their homes, and to cheer on the national team. They are forced to be on the defensive, but in Kashmir, where they are the majority, the roles are reversed. There, Moslem extremists launch a jihad against the Hindu Pandit community, where the Nehrus come from. Over a hundred thousand of them are forced into exile. Both processes feed on each other, while the people, who are not used to dealing with politics in terms of faith and religion, ask themselves a multitude of questions: can a government be trusted if it does not honour its commitment to protect an ancient place of worship?, can a community be trusted if it expels so drastically those who profess another faith? “Like the minarets that crown this old mosque,” Time Magazine reported, “the three pillars of the Indian State — democracy, secularism and the rule of law—run the risk of being knocked down by the fury of religious nationalism.”
For three years, Sonia has been shut in the house, completely involved in the task of organizing the family archives. She has written a moving book about her husband for which she had had to dig deep into some one hundred thousand photos, five hundred speeches and numberless notes. A voracious reader, she went through her period of mourning among books, bundles of papers, photos and documents. She has also edited the second volume of letters between Nehru and Indira, intense, moving correspondence. “You cannot get away from the family tradition,” wrote Nehru from prison to his daughter, “because it will pursue you and, whether you want it or not, it will give you a certain public standing that you have done nothing to deserve. It is unfortunate, but you will have to put up with it. Although, after all, it is not a bad thing to have a good family tradition. It helps us to face the future, it reminds us that we have to keep alive a flame and that we cannot lower ourselves or debase ourselves.” Sonia cannot get that letter out of her head. Written in another time and in other circumstances, its echo reverberates inside her because it holds an inevitable truth.
What is happening around her now turns her stomach. That the government, led by a Congress Party Prime Minister, has not been able to prevent the catastrophe in Ayodhya, cuts her to the quick. It is an insult to the ideology, to the very essence of the party. Is it possible that the sacrifices of Gandhi, Indira and Rajiv have all been for nothing? she wonders in bewilderment. Has all that pain been for nothing?
In a meeting of the board of the foundation that bears her husband’s name, she proposes they issue a strong declaration of condemnation of the government.
“The foundation is a non-political body,” one of the patrons tells her, a former member of the Congress Party and an old friend of Rajiv’s. “There is no need to make any comment about a political matter.”
Sonia shakes her head.
“Rajiv and the other members of the family are identified with secularism, with the desire not to mix politics and religion. I have the impression that if the foundation does not express its condemnation, we are betraying the legacy of our family.”
“But if you do that, you are getting involved in politics. You have to know that if you involve yourself against what the Congress Party does, you are giving fuel to the adversaries, to the Hindu extremists…”
“It is not a question of making politics or not. It is a question of principle. I cannot remain impassive at what is going on.”
She does not intend to remain silent, she does not care who is in government. She repeats that hers is moral authority, not political. Has Prime Minister Rao not committed the same mistake in dealing with the crisis in Ayodhya as Sanjay committed in his day with the Sikhs and Indira with the Tamils? Are the lessons of the past no good for anything? It is quite clear that Rao did not send in the army in time to prevent the destruction of the mosque in order not to alienate the Hindu electorate. He sacrificed peace in the country for a short-term electoral benefit. That is not the politics that Sonia is prepared to support, no matter who may fall, even if it is the Congress Party.
So she goes ahead with her idea and writes a declaration of condemnation in severe terms, in which she attributes a large part of the responsibility to the government of Narasimha Rao. Inevitably, a political storm is unleashed. “She is getting involved in politics and she’s against us?” they ask each other in the government in astonishment. As was to be expected, the opposition enjoys the sight of this internal struggle within the Congress Party, which is added to other struggles between different leaders. In the party, they are devouring each other, it is a real viper’s nest. The Hindu extremists applaud.
But Sonia is very clear about it. Being faithful to her commitment to preserve the memory of her husband and the family has nothing to do with the fate of Rajiv’s men in politics, especially when there are no reasons to back them. She thinks that doing nothing is being disloyal. And Rajiv is still very present in her memory. Everything she has done in her life, she did for him. Now too, in that respect death has changed nothing. He lives on in her. He is her raison d’être.
And besides, she has another grievance against Rao’s government. The trial of the conspirators arrested by the police shows no sign of ever beginning. As a result of the interrogations of those detained, the police have discovered a meticulously drawn up plan to put an end to Rajiv’s life. They know it was designed in the depths of the jungles of Sri Lanka by the official leadership of the terrorist organization, which used the pool of activists they have in the south of India because they needed local Tamils who could not be identified by the accent from the island. The police have discovered a whole support network for the terrorist organization, with a structure in which those who lent their safe houses only knew that they were fighting for the cause; those who were closer to the leadership only knew that the mission consisted of assassinating a politician “hostile to the struggle of the Tigers”; and only the leaders knew who the target was. Those leaders feared that if Rajiv had got back into power, he would have sent the Indian army back to the island again, which would have hurt their cause.
Sonia and her children are disappointed and angered that all the good work of the police runs the risk of coming to nothing because of the inaction of the courts.
“Wait a little longer, you have to be patient…” Rajiv’s former colleagues tell her again and again.
“If it is slow, justice is not justice… Don’t we all know that?” says Sonia, repeating another phrase she has heard a
thousand times at home when Indira was alive.
“This is not the moment to attack the Congress Party. It is so weakened that it would be fatal. Especially if it comes from you.”
“Neither my children nor I will go on waiting for much longer.”
Sonia, involved in the work of the foundation, goes round the country like she has never done before. It is a rediscovery of deepest India, this time alone and seeing it with different eyes. Whether it is to inaugurate the Lifeline Express, a train made into a travelling hospital to operate for blindness, or providing aid material for the areas most affected by the riots, launching literacy programmes or opening a cancer hospital in a remote rural area, her presence attracts a growing number of people who invariably give her a warm welcome. At feeling herself loved, she learns to be more communicative, not with the Press, of which she is still suspicious, but with the women with whom she shares tea and a chat, and with the children whom she hugs and to whom she gives gifts. Her work deeply satisfies her. She takes on the old family commitment with the poor of India with vigour and efficiency, and she does it her way.
But if she is committed to the people and has principles and the power that comes from belonging to the Nehru family, can she be silent at the inefficiency and laziness of the authorities, whatever side of the fence they are on? Is silence not like approving of the government’s behaviour, which has brought the country to the brink of the abyss?
On August 24th, 1995, the fourth anniversary of Rajiv’s birthday, now tired of waiting, and concerned about the increase in confrontations between communities, Sonia takes the floor, and does so in Amethi. Ten thousand people deliriously cry: “Sonia, save the country!” as she slowly goes up the steps to the stage, with her head covered by the end of her sari. Her hands tremble because of how nervous she is and she seems unsure of herself, in contrast with her daughter Priyanka, who greets the crowd in a relaxed fashion.