The Red Sari: A Novel

by Javier Moro

  The BJP loses in 24 of the 28 states in India. It loses even in the bastions it thought were unassailable, such as the holy city of Benares or Ayodhya itself. This time, its conviction that community communal riots make votes has turned out to be a monumental mistake.

  “The people have reacted,” says Priyanka when she arrives to congratulate her mother.

  Every minute that goes by, the slogan of the Hindus, “India shines”, seems even more ridiculous, as if the voters had uncovered the falseness of that over-confident propaganda, which left aside most of the people, those that are not to be seen in the cities, but who now take their revenge from the burning plains and the remote villages. The expression in Sonia’s eyes conveys the feeling of the members of her party: triumph, pleasure, laughter and, at a given moment, tears. She had entered the electoral race with only the hope of not being completely crushed, and she has reached the goal as absolute winner.

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  “Incredible shock”, runs the headline of the special edition of the Hindustan Times, the most widely read newspaper in English in New Delhi, the next day, Friday, May 14th. At Sonia’s residence, the huge quantity of messages of congratulations and support have jammed the fax. Letters, telegrams, SMS… from everywhere and via all possible methods, messages of congratulations pour in for the future “Prime Minister”. Carlo Marroni, the mayor of Orbassano, sends her a telegram in the name of the 25,000 inhabitants of his city: “We are proud of you and we hope you continue along the path of development and solidarity in the largest democracy in the world. We share with you, with your India, those values that link us all.” Paola, Sonia’s mother, has heard about her daughter’s victory at her home in Via Bellini from a local journalist. Then she received an avalanche of calls. “Yes, of course I’m pleased,” she repeats hiding her uneasiness, “but I feel besieged and I have nothing to say.” How can she say that she is afraid the same may happen to her daughter as happened to her son-in-law? So Paola prefers to remain silent, and she decides not to answer the phone any more.

  Now Sonia’s task is to secure a coalition capable of governing. She does not hesitate for an instant to call on her old friend, the brilliant Sikh economist Manmohan Singh, her guru in matters of the economy. With him, she writes an agreement of the minimum conditions in order to get the firm adhesion of the other members of the coalition, which consists of over twenty parties. How far off are Indira’s or Rajiv’s times, when the Congress Party governed with an absolute majority! Politics now is like a gigantic pot where the dreams, aspirations and interests, more and more diverse, even at loggerheads, of a sixth of humanity simmer. And Sonia suddenly finds herself in the position of chief cook. She has to season the stew well, keeping the Communists from the Left and also the Liberals happy, as well as the regional parties and the representatives of the castes… But the task does not take her unawares: she has spent months making alliances, talking with one group and another, preparing the way. Her invisible groundwork now brings results. As the nuns in the boarding school in Giaveno where she studied said, she has a talent for getting consensus: in that she is not like her mother-in- law, who leaned more towards authoritarianism. What really interests Sonia are great matters of State such as reducing poverty and ensuring economic growth; or how to get peace with Pakistan and solve the dispute over Kashmir. The same is not true of her partners. Most of them are real satraps, petty leaders of regional parties with egos greater than their organizations. Each of them looks after number one and demands ministerial portfolios and specific policies to support the members of their caste or their voters. In exchange for his backing, the well-known leader of one of the poorest states demands the Ministry of Railways, a very important ministry because it employs over ten million people. And they all think that Sonia will be the Prime Minister. Some of them even demand it, because they do not want to be left without her valuable leadership which is going to allow them to enjoy their little bit of power; they think that without her the coalition will have a very short life.

  After the announcement that the party is going to name her as leader of their parliamentary group, the whole country takes it as given that Sonia will take on the position. In case there was any doubt, when a journalist asks her if it is true that the leader of the parliamentary group will be the next Prime Minister, Sonia replies: “Normally that is so.” Four words which are like four slaps in the face for her adversaries. Sweet revenge, which immediately finds a reply when a leader of the defeated party declares on television that he finds it shameful that a foreign woman should govern India. Another leader of the same party adds that he will boycott the act of investiture of the coalition if Sonia Gandhi is Prime Minister. A shudder of nationalism sweeps the country and even affects members of Sonia’s own party. A head of government from the state of Madhya Pradesh, a middle-aged woman named Uma Bharti, a Hindu extremist affiliated with the BJP, announces her resignation claiming that “putting” a foreigner in the highest position is an insult to the country and puts national security in danger. Another woman, called Sushma Swaraj, a respected leader of the defeated party, asks for an interview with the President of the Republic, the Moslem scientist Abdul Kalam, to express the “grief and anguish” the matter causes her. “If Sonia ends up as Prime Minister, I will shave my head, dress in white clothes, sleep on the ground and go on an indefinite hunger strike. I will mobilize the nation against her,” she threatens to the media as she comes out of her interview.

  But no doubt the event that causes the most impact is the suicide in a village near Bangalore of a card-holding member of the defeated party, the 30-year old family man, Mahesh Prabhu. Before swallowing a can of rat poison, he left a note explaining that he “cannot bear the idea that in a country of eleven hundred million people it has not been possible to find a single Indian leader to lead the nation.” The man leaves a widow and a child of eighteen months, and the whole country disconcerted.

  Too much confusion, too much division, too much hysteria… The consequences of her victory are beginning to scare her. It has touched the nerve of nationalism, an irrational feeling that can quickly turn into madness. In spite of the results of the elections having shown that her origins mean little to the people, the matter is still explosive. She has learned her lesson and is so cautious that she speaks to an interviewer from Italian television in English and not in her mother tongue, leaving the journalist absolutely perplexed. How can you make someone who is interviewing you for five minutes understand that you cannot speak to him in his own language even if you wanted to? How to explain what it means to be a foreigner in India and to be so close to power that you can feel its blazing heat? How to tell about the violence that has decimated your family and that lurks like an animal in wait? How to explain all the grief, the pain, the anguish, the fear? How to tell all that, without which it is impossible for anyone to understand her reactions? She would have to start from scratch every time she speaks to a reporter, and there is never time for that.

  To make the general anxiety even worse, the Bombay share index, the Sensex, collapses in the biggest fall in the financial history of India, made worse by fear of a government in which the weight of the Left may put an end to the reforms that have already been achieved. Sonia urges the man she trusts, Manmohan Singh, to make some declarations to calm the markets, waiting for things to get back to normal as soon as possible.

  She needs to think. The following morning, accompanied by her children, the three of them discreetly leave the house, but the police are nervous and their bodyguards are even more nervous. It was foreseeable that after her electoral victory security measures would limit her almost non-existent freedom of movement even more. Now she must let them know her movements even more in advance, so that the Delhi police force can be alerted, apart from her personal guard.

  A light mist envelops the streets, empty at this early hour. It is the best time of day to avoid the heat and drive quickly. Sonia’s car goes along the wide avenues in the new part until it g
ets to the gardens where the family mausoleums are. The singing of the birds can be heard over the dull murmur from the new motorway that crosses Delhi from north to south. The three of them take a moment to get a grip on themselves and then each of them makes a floral offering, throwing rose petals over the mausoleum. What would Rajiv say about this unexpected victory of his wife’s, which again puts the whole family in the limelight? She who fled from the attention of the media like the plague, now remembers the time when her husband was Prime Minister and she left him high and dry with a French television team that was insisting on having some shots of the whole family together… “Not even I can make her change her mind,” Rajiv had told the reporter. Now her husband must be laughing up in heaven. He must be surprised, like everyone in India; and proud too, probably; but especially alarmed, for her, for their children and for the grandchildren he has never known. Be careful with victory, it can turn against you and destroy everything in its way. Be careful with the hidden face of triumph, you never know what is hiding behind it. “What about you, Rajiv? What would you do in my place?”

  In the successive interviews she carries out that day with different members of her coalition, she avoids mentioning the matter of leadership. She blurts, “I have no particular post in mind,” to a BBC journalist.

  The next day, May 15th, the most highly respected leaders of the party, alarmed at the idea of being left without a leader, ask her to delay her decision, whatever it is, by a few hours. They want to gain time to allow the messages of support to arrive from their allies in the furthest corners of India. Normally the candidate for Prime Minister goes to the President of the Republic with that endorsement in order to receive official permission to form a government. It is a step that she will soon have to take, carrying in her briefcase those messages that praise her and make it clear that she is the essential leader without whom the coalition lacks any sense. Partners and allies hope that Sonia will finally give way: the party needs to prove to its grassroots that it has found its guide. Added to this is the emotional pressure from her friends, with whom she has shared so many troubles and difficult moments. She has the impression that she will be leaving them in the lurch if she does not accept the job. It is not easy to say to them now: I’m not playing any more. Will they be able to understand? To reassure her they say: “We will accept your decision as final.” Sonia still has three days to think about it.

  In the afternoon of 15th, after having been formally elected unanimously as leader of the Congress Party Parliamentary group, Sonia Gandhi addresses her MPs. “Here I stand in the place occupied by my great masters, Nehru, Indira and Rajiv. Their lives have guided my path. Their courage and entire devotion to India have given me the strength to continue along their path years after their martyrdom. Soon we will have here, in the central government, a coalition led by the Congress Party. We have triumphed in the face of all the forecasts. We have overcome in spite of the ill-omened predictions. In the name of all of you, I want to express with all my heart my gratitude to the people of India. Thank you.”

  The hall bursts into a lengthy ovation and then the MPs prepare to congratulate her personally. They all want to get close to the architect of so much joy and expectation, the person who holds the key to power. In that hall that has been witness to so many national dramas, so many bitter arguments, a festive atmosphere now reigns. Sonia is radiant. There is so much commotion that the MPs have to stand in line to shake her hand or, even better, to exchange a comment or so that is sufficiently witty for her to remember it… everything may come in useful in the future. Among the last waiting his turn is a young man, dressed in a white kurta and wide trousers, her son Rahul, who has been revealed in these elections to be a promising leader of the youth of the party. Sonia smiles at him affectionately as he stretches out his hand to her, just like the others.

  However, the veterans and those closest to Sonia are worried because in all her speech there was not a single word about her role in the new coalition. When they suggest that she should go to the President of the Republic the next day to formally request permission to form a government, Sonia wriggles out of it by saying that the block on the Left has still not confirmed its support, which is really just an excuse. The fact is that she wants to use all the time available to think about it.

  After spending a whole day at home with her children weighing up the situation, on Monday, May 17th, she gets her closest allies together. She has something important to say to them. They can see it coming and they are not wrong: “I think I should not accept the post of Prime Minister.” She does not say it categorically, as though her decision were firm, she says it as if she wanted to judge the reaction. “I do not want to be the cause of division within the country,” she adds, leaving them all uncomfortable and disconcerted. And she goes on to suggest a Solomon-like solution, which causes some annoyance: her idea is that she should go on as president of the party. . and that Manmohan Singh should be Prime Minister. It is a revolutionary idea because it means a two-pronged leadership, an experiment in the art of government.

  A deep silence greets her words. Sonia goes on, “He is honourable, he has an excellent reputation as an economist and he has experience in administration… I am convinced he will be a great Prime Minister.” But the suggestion leaves them cold. It is well-known that Manmohan Singh has no charisma. He is a serious man, a technocrat, not a politician. “It’s like saying this victory has served for nothing. The coalition will not hold together without a Gandhi, without the only leader capable of keeping such different groups together,” says one of her people. Neither does the idea dazzle the more veteran leaders, some of whom have been members of the party for fifty years. Manmohan Singh has barely been a member for fourteen years: he is a newcomer. Furthermore, he is a Sikh, a representative of a minority which hardly comprises 6% of the population of India. It would be the first time that a non-Hindu took on that post since Independence. How will the Hindu majority take it?

  “The people have voted for a secular India, where religion must not influence politics,” Sonia reminds them.

  But above all it is the fact of not having a Gandhi in the key position what worries her people — a lot. At this point, the mystique of the name counts for more than everything else. “It will be the shortest government in history,” some predict. Others will not give up and ask her to think again. Even the two party members who complained in private of having “an uneducated Italian housewife” as leader beg her to agree to be Prime Minister. In one week, she has gone from being a plain “housewife” to being “a friend, a guide, the nation’s saviour.”

  In the afternoon, Manmohan Singh arrives at number 10 Janpath Road, wearing his eternal blue turban, with his white beard, his little black eyes full of intelligence and his resemblance to a fragile bird. It is hard for him to make his way through the crowd of MPs and followers who have come to the call of those meeting with Sonia, and who block the entrance. There are so many people that they do not fit inside the house. They wait in the garden or in the street, in the blazing sun with a temperature of forty-three degrees in the shade, for their leader to make a decision. For Sonia the situation is familiar; she has the impression of having lived through this already, when they were pressurizing her to accept the presidency of the party. But if before it was difficult to say no, now that it is power that is at stake, it is practically impossible. However much she tries to argue, they do not accept her decision. They do not understand how she can refuse the position with the most power, which is the dream of all politicians. It is unacceptable to them, in spite of knowing that for Sonia power has never been a goal in itself. They know that she is in politics out of personal commitment, because fate wanted it to be that way. “It would be a disaster for the party, for the coalition, for the country…”, they say again and again. “Sonia, don’t abandon us.”

  Facing a real rebellion in her ranks, Sonia asks them to give her all the time available to her. But the situation becomes so inflamed,
the opposition so strong—one of them threatens to set himself on fire bonzo-style if she turns down the job—that Sonia becomes alarmed and capitulates. Two hours after having suggested that perhaps she would not accept the role of Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh comes out into the garden and announces in his bird-like voice: “Mrs Gandhi has agreed to meet with the President of the Republic tomorrow morning.” Phew!… A murmur of approval sweeps through the crowd. The announcement relaxes things. Those who begin to leave do so convinced that the pressure has worked, that their criteria have overcome. In the end the leader has agreed to take on her responsibility. The Congress Party will be in power again, at the hand of a Gandhi. History is repeating itself. The crowd goes home peacefully.

  For Sonia, the problem is how to get those who venerate her and all those who expect everything of her to swallow that bitter pill. How to get them to see reason? How can they think that she can govern this country on her own? The opposition will give her no quarter: every day they will throw the matter of her origins in her face. Some madman will end up killing her, she is convinced of it. Besides, she does not have much experience either and would soon be burned out.

  What she needs is to be alone. In her room, she opens the windows before she goes to bed. She breathes the hot air in deeply. Touch wood she does not have an asthma attack. All her childhood she slept with the windows wide open, in spite of the cold. Today she again feels that old distress. It is a feeling of drowning that comes back every time she has to take an important decision. Every time that she feels unbearable pressure on her.