by Javier Moro
The deficiencies in Sonia’s role as leader of the opposition (“a leader who hides”, as those in the government accuse her) are compensated by her efficiency when it comes to leading the party. The old satraps who thought they could manipulate her quickly realize that that she will not allow that to happen. She has been too close to Indira not to have learned the lesson. But, in addition, Sonia undertakes thorny reforms that had always been postponed by previous leaders. For example, she gets the Congress Party to be the first party to keep a quota of 33% for women at all levels of the hierarchy. It is harder to attack corruption, but Sonia does not hesitate. Under the new mantra of integrity and transparency, she gets the party to only accept donations by cheque in order to make accounting easier and she demands that all members with a certain influence pay their dues punctually, proportionate to their position in the hierarchy. The people in the top positions are forced to pay a month’s salary to the party. These are profound changes, which many see as personal triumphs. “The Congress Party is getting ready to clean up the system,” she says in a threatening tone to some sceptical, and in many cases corrupt, MPs, who are already conspiring to get rid of her.
They take advantage of the fact that her role as leader of the opposition leaves much to be desired. Sonia does not dare to communicate directly with the other leaders in opposition from embarrassment and shyness, which leads to a great lack of coordination. It is quite clear that she does not know what the game of politics is about. It is hard for her to hide her lack of experience and self-confidence, which makes her an easy target for the attacks of the coalition in power, which challenges her and humiliates her every time there is an opportunity. “They don’t know what I’m made of!” she says one day to her children, coming out of a session in Parliament during which she has been slated. She has caused great embarrassment because she had nothing to say when the Prime Minister asked what the Congress Party’s position was on nuclear deterrence, a matter about which she knew nothing. So she swears to herself that it will not happen again, and she calls for the best experts in nuclear security and defence, including those who are not part of the Congress Party’s think tank, in order to understand all the ins and outs of this complicated subject. When she is sure of herself, she goes back to Parliament. She seems like a different woman: “At the last session, the honourable Prime Minister laughed at me because I did not answer his question… But it is a subject too important to be answered amid the laughter of his MPs. Now I ask you: What is your position on this matter?… You only mention three words: minimum credible deterrence. Do you think that those three little words make up a serious policy?”
In May, 1999, the BJP government loses its majority in Parliament and the advisors and old leaders of the Congress Party think that Sonia’s time has come. They think they can articulate the formation of a coalition to govern. They need the magic figure of 272 MPs and they are convinced they have that number. They are already dreaming about the share-out of ministries: perhaps so and so will fight for the Home Office, and so and so will go to the Foreign Office… The mood in the party’s ranks is exultant. They are so sure they will take power that they push Sonia to announce that she is in a position to quickly form an alternative government. For Sonia, it represents the chance to get even for the constant attacks on her. At last she is going to be able to stop her adversaries in their tracks. When she comes out of the old Viceroy’s palace, where the President of the Republic has called all the parties to invite them to form a government, she is surrounded by television cameras. “We have 272,” she states. Actually she meant that an alternative government was possible as a majority of MPs was against the BJP. But the Press announces it in its own way: “Sonia Gandhi is going to head a new government.” The country seems suddenly inflamed at the prospect of an Italian woman taking power, but the suspense does not last long. Sonia does not get the magic number because many small groups opposed to the BJP, and in particular the Socialists, refuse to back her as Prime Minister because of her foreign origins and the strong anti-Congress feeling there is among many parties. The fiasco is as big as the expectations aroused. She looks bad to her followers, and ridiculous in front of the entire country. Her haste shows the public her lack of experience in the political arena as well as her excessive dependence on her advisors.
“Mother, drop it now,” Rahul tells her.
“Now? Do you think I can? I don’t intend to go without defending myself.”
Little by little, Sonia is learning. “There is a fighter inside her and that is very good for the organization,” says one of her colleagues on the bench. She is forced to fight because the Press and her political adversaries redouble their attacks on her. They laugh at the accent of “the Italian woman”, as they call her insultingly. They claim she is arrogant and cold, they say that she does not know the Hindi alphabet and that her speeches are transcribed into the Latin alphabet, which is a lie. “She reads her speeches as if she was reading her shopping list,” writes a well-known journalist. But if enemies are good for anything, it is to learn from them, and Sonia learns tenaciously. Gradually, she puts fire and passion into her speeches, she increases the number of trips, meetings and personal contacts. She maintains that she is not arrogant, just shy. But it is a struggle that wears her out, because it is sterile. It is based on prejudice, on a male chauvinist attitude and on an exaggerated form of nationalism that masks her adversaries’ desire to keep her out of power at all costs. In the most extremist circles, they even accuse her of being an agent of Rome, as though she were a Vatican spy who had infiltrated the labyrinth of Hindu politics… Her father had a prophetic vision when he said that they would throw her to the tigers. Well, there his daughter is, in the centre of the arena, avoiding the claws.
Nothing affects her as much as the challenge that comes from her own people, from members of her own party. One day she receives a letter signed by the chief of her party’s parliamentary group and two other MPs, in which they cast doubt on her ability to ever be up to taking on the role of Prime Minister, in view of her poor record as leader of the opposition. In the letter they suggest that the Constitution be amended in order to keep the top posts in the State—President of the Republic and Prime Minister—only for Indians by birth. After the fiasco of the failed coalition, this is a blow below the belt that Sonia feels bitterly. Not because they want to prevent her from being Head of State one day, which she does not aspire to or desire anyway. But she is hurt by the lack of confidence, she is hurt that they want her as a fairground attraction, nothing more. As an advertisement for the elections, as a pawn who lends her name—and her whole life—to a party that really only despises her. It hurts her to realize that she is alone when she had thought she was in friendly territory.
When she gets back home that afternoon, all she has on her mind is being with Priyanka and Rahul. Her daughter immediately realizes how hurt her mother is. Rahul is annoyed:
“Drop politics once and for all, Mother!” he says.
“I think Rahul is right,” adds Priyanka. “There’s no point in going on like this.”
“The moment has come to throw in the towel,” Sonia admits. “Please help me to write a letter to the parliamentary group of the Congress Party,” she asks.
Priyanka takes some paper and a pen and together they write a very clear, concise text: “Some colleagues have expressed the idea that because I was born abroad I am a problem for the Congress Party. I am hurt by their lack of confidence in my ability to act in the best interests of the party and of the country. In these circumstances, my sense of loyalty to the party and my duty to the nation oblige me to present my resignation from the position of President of the Congress Party.” Further on she adds, “I came to serve the party, not to acquire a position or to hold power, because the party was facing a challenge that questioned its very existence and I could not remain impassive at what was happening. Just as I cannot cross my arms and do nothing now.” Sonia gives a long sigh: “Free at last!”
she says to herself.
Her letter causes a real cataclysm in the party ranks. Her closest collaborators are dismayed by the decision. After the trouble they took to get her to take charge, and now the barons who see their power within the organization threatened throw it all overboard! When the members of the parliamentary group ask her to reconsider her decision, she answers that she is very hurt by the display of xenophobia surrounding the matter of her origins.
“For that to happen in the BJP, an ultra-nationalist party, or among the Socialists, is already sad enough,” Sonia adds, “but OK, I was prepared to defend myself as long as the party backed me. What I could never have imagined is that my own colleagues would attack me in this way. So I’m leaving.”
The parade begins: the chief ministers of the states governed by the Congress Party come to pay homage to her at her house. They threaten to resign en masse: “We are heads of government thanks to you. Why should we go on if you aren’t with us?” they tell her.
The earthquake caused by her resignation is so huge that thousands of followers camp outside the gates of number 10 Janpath Road to ask her to come back. “Sonia, save the Congress! Save India!” they chant. One afternoon when Rahul comes home with a friend, several party leaders intercept him: “You have to convince your mother to withdraw her resignation.” Among the crowd blocking the street there are women weeping and begging Sonia not to abandon them. One morning, as she leaves the house, as her Ambassador makes its way through the crowd, Sonia is stopped by an old Moslem man who comes up to her:
“Have you thought about the fate of the minorities in a government led by the BJP? Don’t you want to fight for us any longer?”
Sonia does not answer and puts the car window up, as the man’s words echo inside her head.
The height of desperation among her followers is symbolized by a young man, one of those camping outside her house. He tries to set fire to himself, which causes considerable uproar. The police and security guards throw themselves on him and manage to put out the flames before he is burned to death. The reporters’ cameras record the scene so the whole country can see it on the evening news. So the whole sub-continent can see what passions “the Italian”, who everyone thinks belongs to them, arouses. Because Sonia does belong to them, because she carries the magical name of Gandhi. And for that reason she cannot leave.
The tragic incident precipitates events. Once again, Sonia receives the party leaders in her house, in Rajiv’s office, a group of middle-aged men, dressed in kurtas and wide cotton trousers.
“There is no other leader who can keep us united as you can. There is no one else who can get the votes that you get. That is why we are asking you to stay on as president. The party is behind you. Listen to the shouting in the street.”
In the background, slogans supporting Sonia can be heard which the followers crowding round the gates chant at regular intervals. One of the party leaders goes on:
“Don’t ignore the signs of affection the people keep giving you… The people who sent you that letter do not represent even a minority within the party, they only represent themselves and their own ambition.”
“There is no room for them in the organization,” another adds. “We have expelled them. You have nothing more to fear.”
Once again they offer her power on a silver tray, again she hears the same arguments, the same flattery, the same old story…
“I have to talk to my children about it.”
She is prepared to maintain her resignation, and she has already got an idea of how nice it would be to go back to her collection of Tanjore miniatures, and take up her hobby of restoring old pictures and furniture again. But Priyanka and Rahul are moved by the sudden outburst of emotion and solidarity. They had not been expecting such a mobilization. The three of them are overcome by that curious feeling that the surname they bear does not belong to them, but to India, to the crowds who call for their leadership, and that they are not masters of their own destiny. Sonia hesitates, although now she knows that if she goes back it will be in style. Her friends finally convince her to stay. She cannot leave because of an attack from three rivals who are after her job. Her resignation, they say, will only strengthen the ones who have written the letter and all the xenophobes in India. Again Sonia thinks about Rajiv, about her children, about the family, about the tragedy of power, about her fear of losing security, about her sense of duty… and again she gives way. She does it reluctantly, but the result is that she takes on the highest post within the party again with more strength and authority than before. She announces her return in a packed stadium. So many people that a member of the party comments to a colleague:
“Can you imagine so many people all together without a Sonia Gandhi?”
“Quite simply there wouldn’t be a rally now,” the other one replies. “Without Sonia, there’s no rally; without Sonia, there’s no party.”
“Even though I was born abroad,” says Sonia as soon as the loud, extremely lengthy ovation allows her to speak, “I have made India my country. I am Indian and I will be until my last breath. I got married here, I had my children here, and I became a widow here. Indira died in my arms. If I have decided to come back today it is because the party has given me renewed confidence and hope. I want a party that is prepared to follow me and be ready to die for the principles I have decided to adopt.”
So, little by little, learning from all her troubles, Sonia Gandhi begins to get used to the game of politics. Certain reflexes come to her unconsciously, not by vocation, but by contagion, from having lived so many years in that breeding ground. She has cleared the party of its black sheep. Now she has more influence over the organization than her husband had. She has managed it without the skill to share out power, and only with a remote hope of gaining power one day, which shows how demoralised the rank and file were.
46
In time she manages to forge a public image of herself as a reluctant politician, averse to politics, which the Press transmits. But she lives in a state of perpetual terror of the media. Every word she says is closely scrutinised by her adversaries in the hope they will discover some sign that she is not as Indian as she claims to be. She lives shut inside her shell, entrenched at number 10, Janpath Road, a fortress more difficult to enter than all the residences where she has lived previously. She lives without any freedom, dealing from dawn to dusk with committees, party members, and delegates who come from every corner of the country to ask her advice, and to ask for her opinion as number one leader. Only the visits from her children provide her with any affection. Her mother spends the winters in New Delhi, and her sisters and old friends come to visit her periodically. But these are visits she keeps secret, so they cannot accuse her of being a “foreigner”.
Just the mention of her name is enough to enliven the most boring of dinners or social acts, with opinions being divided vehemently between those who admire her and those who despise her. Two well-known MPs from her party complain at every cocktail party of having as leader “an uneducated Italian housewife”. Nothing much in comparison with the venom of some members of the coalition in power, such as the Hindu fundamentalist, Narendra Modi, who publicly calls her “Italian bitch”. Sonia knows that her being a foreigner is her Achilles’ heel, and the coalition in government, fiercely nationalist and Hindu, never misses an opportunity to touch that raw nerve. Her radical refusal to give interviews is attributed to the fact that she does not want to define her position. She thinks that this way she can leave her adversaries without any arguments with which to attack her. She does not want to have to say that she is Catholic, although she is not practising. She does not want to have to talk about the Italy where she was born, or about her memories of her childhood or of her friends or of her family. On the contrary, it seems essential to her that she should be seen to be comfortable with the traditions of her country of adoption. She tries hard and visits holy men in great Hindu temples, as Indira used to do. When the BJP steps up its attacks in P
arliament on her “foreign origins”, Sonia takes refuge in the temple of the Ramakrishna Mission in New Delhi and spends whole afternoons with Swami Gokulananda, a very respected holy man who ties a piece of red cord round her wrist as a sign of brotherhood. Sonia has a lot of faith in that cord, she is becoming a little superstitious, just as her mother-in-law was. Every time there is a family celebration, she calls the family priest, who lives in Benares, to come and officiate the appropriate religious rituals. When her first grandchild, Priyanka’s son, is born, the pandit makes sophisticated offerings as he recites his prayers. Just as Indira chose the names of her children, Sonia is to choose the name of her grandson. “Rajiv?” she suggests. Priyanka is worried that the name might condemn her son to being compared all his life with her father. Sonia suggests a name that begins with R. In the end they decide on Rehan, a Parsee name, to connect up with the tradition of their grandfather, Firoz Gandhi. But Sonia insists on calling him Rajiv. In the end it is Rehan Rajiv. Thank God the horoscope the holy man prepares for him predicts fame and fortune for the child, but not a political role for the sixth generation of Gandhis. Mother and daughter breathe a sigh of relief.