by Javier Moro
“I understand perfectly, Madam.”
Sonia goes on:
“I am not a born leader, you know that, it is not something that comes naturally to me…”
“I don’t think the ability to lead is something innate. Look at the example of Indira. She was timid and at first she didn’t speak very well. Or your husband. Everything can be learned. And in politics you learn even faster.”
“Do you think that can be learned?”
“I’m sure of it. Just look at the number of people who come to see you at any event. It’s as though they are drinking in your words… Besides, we can prepare you. You have the advantage of having at your disposal the large pool of talent there is in the Congress Party, unless the party disintegrates so quickly that they all end up leaving before the elections. But we still have the best specialists in the fields of the economy, the administration, or science and technology.”
Sonia remains looking at him, but she says nothing. She has the hermetic expression of a person who is resigned to accepting the inevitable.
Shortly after that meeting, Sonia discreetly carries out some paperwork, in her own way. She heads for the headquarters of the party in Akbar Road and she fills in the form that goes with the request to join the organization. She returns home with her membership card in her hand, which links her even more closely with Nehru, Gandhi and all those who fought for the ideals of an independent, free India. She goes into her office and before she puts it away in a drawer, she gazes at the pictures. She gives a timid smile, as though she were no longer ashamed to look them in the eye.
On December 28th, 1997, Sonia publicly announces her decision to go into politics and stand as a Congress Party candidate in the coming elections. The news goes round the world. No one understands the reason for this volte-face, not her mother or her sisters or her friends or the public in general. The leaders of the party make a great show of welcoming her, but some are suspicious because they know that this “neophyte” will end up ruling them. Evil tongues spit their venom: Sonia is getting into politics in order to cover herself from the Bofors scandal, say some. Sonia wants to be Prime Minister, say others. She’s finally showing her true colours, a third claims. Maneka Gandhi does not miss the chance to add her bit. “She waves like a windscreen wiper on a car,” she says, referring to Sonia’s greeting to her enthusiastic followers when she came out of the party headquarters. And she adds in an interview in the weekly Panchjanya: “Sonia will not be elected because she is a foreigner… The only thing she wants is to be Prime Minister one day so she can have a comfortable life. That post is like a toy for her, she is not aware of the difficulties involved in it…”
Sonia refuses to make any comment about her ex-sister-in-law. What she tries to do is to protect herself from the criticism and mockery, wherever they come from. She has always known that she would be subjected to even more intense public scrutiny than before. It is part of a politician’s life. That is why she wants to be as well prepared as possible. Aware of her limitations, she surrounds herself with the best specialists: a historian, a sociologist, a jurist expert in constitutional law, an ex-director of the Intelligence Agency, an expert in political science… In general, they consider her a “conscientious student” who, for example, quickly learns the customs and usage in Parliament. But she makes a few mistakes. When they introduce her to an influential caste leader from the state of Uttar Pradesh, a brilliant man, with an analytical mind able to explain to her the delicate balance between the castes, Sonia tells him frankly: “In the Congress Party, I want caste considerations to be minimized.” The man gets up suddenly and says he will be back when Sonia has a better idea of how important the subject he is talking about is.
The moment of her entry into politics coincides with her daughter’s wedding. Priyanka marries a jewellery designer, the son of a tin magnate from a city near New Delhi. Sonia is not very happy about the marriage; the groom has not finished university and, even worse, some members of his family have links with extremist Hindu organizations affiliated to the BJP. But that does not seem to bother Priyanka. She is in love with a man, not with his family, and in that she thinks like a westerner, not like an Indian. She has taken a decision and is going to go ahead with it.
“Priyanka is being faithful to the family tradition,” Rahul tells his mother sarcastically. “She’s marrying someone with whom she has nothing in common. What’s wrong with that?”
“That is precisely the problem.”
“Problem? What did Great-grandfather Nehru have in common with Great- grandmother? Nothing. Grandmother Indira and Grandfather? Nothing either. Uncle Sanjay and Maneka? And you and Dad… you said yourself that you were from very different worlds. Sometimes it works, other times it doesn’t, you never know.”
“If your sister and you are going to gang up on me, I don’t intend to open up another front,” Sonia says, smiling again.
The cream of society attend the wedding of Priyanka, daughter, granddaughter and great-granddaughter of three Prime Ministers. Sonia, very elegant in a maroon and gold sari, welcomes the President of the Republic, the Prime Minister and the top leaders of the party. The atmosphere is charged with expectation at this event labelled by the Press as the “wedding of the year”. Never as much as today has the “ruling” family been the source of so many comments and so much gossip. Since Sonia announced her entry into politics, some predict her imminent failure, others show their satisfaction at having found a leader able to help the Congress Party rise up again. They say that the mother has agreed to make the sacrifice of going into politics for the sake of her children, the real natural heirs of the dynasty. Among the guests there is also a tall, good-looking boy, that Priyanka has insisted on inviting. He is her cousin, Firoz Varun Gandhi, Maneka’s son, who is studying at the London School of Economics. He has come alone, without his mother. Whether it is Priyanka, Rahul or Firoz, the party leaders have absolute faith in them. They consider them to be born leaders, charismatic and able to decide the fate of millions of people. Now their mother has taken the first step, they are convinced that the future of the Congress Party, and of the nation, will be in their hands. It does not escape them that Priyanka, radiant, is wearing the splendid sari made of cotton that her great- grandfather Nehru wove in prison. The same one that Indira wore at her wedding, and then Sonia at hers. A real symbol, that red sari.
A real symbol too, the fact that Sonia begins her campaign where her husband ended his, in the city of Sriperumbudur. She has to get over the emotion of being in the place that Rajiv saw for the last time. She has to get over her shyness, her nervousness and her asthma attacks when speaking in public. “I am here before you, surrounded by security measures, in the same place where Rajiv was alone and unprotected and facing his murderers. His voice has been silenced, but his message and the ideas he defended are more alive now than ever.” She no longer makes mention of the slowness of justice with the bitterness she had before. Finally, in January 1998, the judge presiding over the case against those accused of murdering her husband has passed sentence: the death penalty. Those convicted have appealed to the Supreme Court, but their chances of having their sentence commuted are minimal. It is no comfort to Sonia, who has always been opposed to capital punishment. She would prefer them to be locked up behind bars.
Making reference to her foreign origins, the weak point that her adversaries are already using against her, she adds: “I became a part of India thirty years ago, when I came into the home of Indira Gandhi as the wife of her elder son. It was through her heart that I learned to understand and love India.” These are simple words, said in a natural, pleasant way, punctuated by a slight smile. She repeats them over the period of a month, during which time she travels thirty thousand kilometres, one of those marathons that several members of her family have had to undergo. In her speeches, which she reads directly in Hindi, she also speaks about sacrifice, about stability and above all about secularism. She explains that she has launched
into the campaign as a reaction against the distress she feels about there being politicians calling for votes in the name of religion. “You have to choose between the forces of harmony and progress or those who seek to exploit our differences in order to gain power.” She takes advantage of any occasion to apologise for the mistakes of the past, such as Operation Blue Star in the Punjab, or the demolition of the mosque in Ayodhya. She takes on the failures of others with total humility. She speaks with the feeling of being infused with a mission. The crowds attend her rallies not just from the immense curiosity she arouses, but because Sonia is able to combine emotion with a forceful political speech. Her campaign provides a note of freshness and novelty to the general panorama. The most sceptical leaders are surprised at Sonia’s efficiency when it comes to filling rallies with people and galvanizing the electorate. At the end of the campaign, the Times of India carries the headline: “From evasive empress to long-suffering wife and powerful politician, the transformation of Sonia Gandhi seems complete.”
Sonia does not gain an overwhelming victory, but she gets 146 seats for the Congress Party, and ensures that voter participation increases significantly. That is to say, she avoids a catastrophe. Recognized as the saviour of the party and in order that in the future the organization will not disappear in internal squabbles, the leaders decide to raise her to the presidency. Sonia Gandhi becomes the fifth member of the house of Motilal Nehru to take on the post. Ah, if only Stefano Maino could see her now!… How distant now are the Asiago mountains, those evenings spent by the warmth of the fireplace with her sisters waiting for the zuppa for dinner, those never-ending masses in the church in Lusiana, the smell of snow at the end of autumn, her girlish dreams of wanting to live in a city and not in the country… And all of it because her eyes met his in a restaurant in Cambridge.
Eleven months after her wedding, Priyanka comes across a piece of news in the newspaper about her father’s murderers. One of the female terrorists convicted is about to be executed by hanging, along with three accomplices. One of them is her husband. The woman, who goes by the name of Nalini Murugan, married him in jail in Vellore, a city in the south, and they had a baby girl. Every afternoon, the little girl goes to visit her mother in prison for half an hour accompanied by her grandmother. Priyanka, deeply saddened by the news, talks to Sonia and her brother about it. Is it really necessary for more people to die? Has there not been enough tragedy already? Does a little girl have to be left an orphan? Sonia and Rahul are just as upset. None of the three of them is in favour of the death penalty. Justice has been done, and to a certain extent that has served for them to be reconciled with the drama they have been through. But for an act of State to leave a child an orphan because of the wrong-doing of her parents is something that seems unfair to them.
“It isn’t going to be any consolation to us,” says Sonia.
“Rather the opposite,” adds Rahul. “What can we do?”
“Ask for clemency for the mother,” Priyanka suggests, “and get the execution of the others postponed indefinitely.”
When the President of the Republic receives Sonia at a special audience in his Rashtrapati Bhawan residence, the former Viceroy’s palace, he is astonished at what he hears, after all the protests Sonia has made regarding the slowness of justice. “My children have been left without a father, and that is enough,” Sonia tells him. “Our argument is that no other child needs to be left an orphan. We do not want that tragedy to engender even more tragedy. I ask you to do whatever is possible to get a pardon for Nalini Murugan so that she can bring up her daughter.”
When they come to take the young terrorist woman out of her cell, she is convinced it is for her last journey. But they take her before the judge of Vellore, who informs her that her sentence of capital punishment has been commuted to life imprisonment. “I hope this serves some purpose, even if only to call attention to the futility of acts of terrorism, which only lead to destruction and death,” Rahul declares to the Press. Then, thanks to Sonia’s mediation, Nalini obtains a visa for her little daughter and her paternal grandparents so that they are able to travel to Australia, where they are taken in by exiled members of the Tamil community. The child will be able to be educated in an environment not stigmatized by the situation of her parents.
45
Sonia has brought hope back to the biggest party in the world, although she has not put it back in power. She has not managed to halt the rise of the Hindus of the BJP, whose results allow them to lead a coalition and form a government. Will they go on whipping up rivalry between communities? Will they go on pushing the country towards the brink of the precipice? At least the new Prime Minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, is a moderate, cultured man, well-respected in political circles. Will he manage to control the more extremist members? The whole country asks itself these questions, especially in view of the programme, which is enough to make anyone tremble: a Hindu India, reform of the Constitution, construction of the temple to Rama in Ayodhya, etc.
It is logical that many people have their trust in Sonia, who has to take on the role of leader of the opposition since she is president of the Congress Party. Back home in Italy, relations, friends and neighbours gather round the television to follow the amazing story of this daughter of their land. The Cinderella of Orbassano has given way to the supplication of her courtiers and has launched herself after power in that land… But does it not make her feel dizzy? Is she not afraid of being killed? Is she not afraid for her children? Why does she not leave it all and come here to set up a home interior shop and live quietly? They do not understand what is running through this woman’s head… a woman who has fallen in love with a prince and may end up as a queen.
Eight years after Rajiv’s assassination, the doors of Parliament are opened to Sonia. As she goes up the steps, she remembers something her mother-in-law said about hers not being a normal family, “because they expect miracles of us.” Was it not a miracle to be in that immense, round, singular building in the heart of New Delhi, where the aspirations of a nation that now has a billion inhabitants converge, where Nehru, Indira and Rajiv defended their ideas? Where she now has to defend her ideas. She has come from so far away, she dies of embarrassment when people look at her, and yet she has accepted that challenge that is so contrary to her temperament in order to protect the family of the man she has most loved and to save the country from the yoke of the fundamentalists. Will she be able to perform those miracles?
What a lot of travelling, how much joy and excitement, how many disappointments and tears shed!… And above all, what a lot of love for her husband, whose warm presence she feels in this place where he was so often. She concentrates on the memory of him, and asks him for protection on October 29th, 1999, when she has to give her first speech. Her whole body is tense. She has been to the bathroom five times thinking about the step she is about to take. She is aware that there are five hundred pairs of eyes closely watching her every movement, a torture for a woman who is unhealthily shy. But she does it out of the same sense of duty because of which her husband launched himself into politics. She is not doing it out of pleasure, but out of love. From that immeasurable love she gains the energy to swim against the current, to overcome her own wishes, to put up with all the staring from those occupying the Press stand, the visitors’ stand and the diplomatic stand, which are full to overflowing. On the government bench is Maneka, recently named as Culture Minister for the coalition led by the BJP. Both sisters-in-law represent the most opposite factions of the ideological spectrum, like a metaphor of the division the country is suffering. On the Congress Party bench, there are at least a dozen colleagues ready to help Sonia, if she should need some information, in case she makes a mistake, in case she puts her foot in it. She is the very picture of elegance, with her shiny black hair falling in soft waves over her shoulders, her silk sari in tones of pastel green, her proud bearing, her direct gaze.
She puts on her glasses. She has come prepared with a text printed
in very large print so that it does not look as if she is reading, an old family trick. A text in which she complains that the present regime is claiming reforms that were originally promoted by the Congress Party, specifically, by Rajiv. She takes no notice of the boos and whistling that come at her from the bench of the coalition in power. On the contrary, she goes ahead and denounces the latest manoeuvres of the government to discredit her husband in the Bofors affair. “Suspicion cannot be cast on a man who is innocent and, furthermore, who is not here to defend himself,” she exclaims. Her emotional speech causes a very favourable impact on her MPs, who see for themselves that Sonia is able to take the bull by the horns in a matter as delicate as the Bofors affair. Suddenly, it is as if memories of a smiling, jovial Rajiv were reappearing. But everyone is asking themselves the same question: What is going to happen when she has to attack or defend specific economic options? What will happen when her speech does not have an emotional charge to it?
Over several months, she dares to make short speeches in Parliament relative to current affairs, although she avoids commenting on economic matters. In that respect, she fully trusts a man she met when the first government was formed after Rajiv’s murder. He is a Sikh called Manmohan Singh, an ex-Cambridge student and a brilliant economist, the architect of the reforms that managed to lift the country out of the economic crisis in the nineties, known for his irreproachable reputation for honesty. He followed in Rajiv’s wake and he is committed to modernizing the economy. His influence on her is so great that the old Socialists and Leftists in the Congress Party look at her with suspicion. “Isn’t she going to lead us away from the old Socialist ideas in order to set us on a course towards liberalism?” they ask each other in alarm.
At first, her role as leader of the opposition confuses both her party colleagues and her adversaries. As she is afraid to deal with thorny questions, she shares them out among different MPs who are considered to be specialists, whether in foreign policy, economic policy or legislative matters… But those opposite her furiously attack that fragmented opposition, without a helm, without any weight behind it, and without any force. In the ranks of the Congress Party, the MPs come to fear sessions in Parliament as much as or more than Sonia herself. She defends herself poorly from all kinds of accusations, launched without any basis in order to damage her image. The worst are those from Maneka, who as Minister for Culture suddenly finds herself placed over the charitable and family institutions that Sonia administrates and who, in order to make her power quite clear, orders a series of audits, alleging suspected financial irregularities. She is finally enjoying the taste of revenge. But her fury is such, her rage and personal ill-will towards Sonia are so obvious, that the other parties in the coalition protest at that gratuitous persecution. So, in an abrupt manoeuvre, she is removed from her position and put at the head of the statistics department, where her inquisitorial activity is neutralized.