by Javier Moro
She turns off the air conditioning and leaves the window open. The breeze makes the net curtains billow, and they move like cotton ghosts. But it is a warm breeze, which brings no relief. A reddish mist lights up the polluted sky over the city. The dogs bark. In the avenue, some three-wheeled van with a broken exhaust pipe backfires.
Finally it all goes quiet, just as she was longing. These last few days her home has been like a madhouse. All that noise that has prevented her from hearing her inner voice. She needs silence to get in touch with herself, to listen to herself. To know what to do tomorrow. Or rather, how to do it.
50
Tuesday, May 18th is a day that the members of the Congress Party will not easily forget. Some two hundred MPs from the party are waiting in the chamber in Parliament, the same room that has witnessed the election of twelve Prime Ministers of India, for Sonia Gandhi to announce her decision.
When she makes her appearance, followed by her children Rahul and Priyanka, both with serious, hermetic expressions on their faces, some already fear that the news will not be good. Sonia has come without her portfolio which should hold the letters and messages of support that hundreds of leaders in the Congress Party have sent her to encourage her to take on the job. It is a tradition that the previous Prime Ministers have always followed. Perhaps she is deliberately breaking it, some dare to think, resisting the loss of the last shreds of hope. They are the optimists, the ones who think she will not be able to reject the job after so much pressure.
A deathly quiet comes over the room as Sonia, impeccable in a sienna-coloured sari, with her hair carefully combed back and falling over her shoulders, greets several colleagues, joining her hands at face-height as she makes her way to the microphone. She puts on her glasses to see her notes and tells them: “Since I reluctantly entered politics six years ago, I have always seen clearly—and I have stated it on several occasions—that the post of Prime Minister was not my aim. I have always been certain that if some day I found myself in the position in which I find myself today, I would obey my inner voice.” She pauses and the silence becomes more tense, if that is possible. Sonia looks up and gazes at her children and then at the rest of those present. “Today that voice tells me that I must humbly refuse that post.”
A violent earthquake could not have caused more of a commotion. A deafening roar fills the room. Sonia speaks louder as she requests silence with her hand in order to make herself heard. “I have been subjected to much pressure to get me to reconsider my position, but I have decided to obey my inner voice. Power has never been a temptation to me…” A chorus of laments and loud protests interrupt her. “You cannot abandon us now!” some shout. “You cannot betray the people of India…” exclaims Mani Shankar Aiyar, an old friend of Rajiv’s and an influential politician. “The inner voice of the people says you have to be the next Prime Minister of India!”
“I would ask you to please respect my decision…,” says Sonia firmly, but they interrupt her again.
“Without you in that post, Madam, there is no inspiration for us.”
A dozen MPs take turns to give their speeches, in which they invoke the example of public service of her husband and her mother-in-law. “You do the same!” they repeat. “You are up to it!”
For over two hours the heated confrontation continues between the irresistible desperation of the MPs and the immoveable determination of Sonia. The speeches go from reproaches that label her egoistic to a certain admiration for the unheard of gesture of refusing power. Some accuse her of turning her back on the mandate that millions of Indians have offered her. Sonia listens impassively to this horde of bereft people, with her jaw tight. In the end, the MPs present a joint resolution for her to reconsider her decision, but she, elegantly and with an ever enigmatic air, tells them that she does not think that is possible. “You have all expressed your points of view, your pain and your distress at the decision I have taken. But if you have confidence in me, allow me to maintain it.”
It is a matter of insisting, some of them think. Many remember the crisis in 1999, when she announced her resignation as president of the party. She ended up giving way after the leaders asked her to come back. The problem now is that time is running out. By law, a government has to be formed before the week is out. An MP from Uttar Pradesh reminds them that Sonia’s decision does have a precedent in the history of India: “Madam, you have set an example, just as Mahatma Gandhi did,” he said, referring to when the father of the nation refused to form part of the first government after Independence. “But that day Mahatma Gandhi had Jawaharlal Nehru. Who is the Nehru today?”
Sonia does not speak about Manmohan Singh, the ace card she has up her sleeve, although those closest to her know this is what she is going to play. When she goes out, leaving her MPs distressed and disillusioned, the Press crowd round her children: “As a recently elected Member of Parliament,” Rahul declares, “I would like my mother to be Prime Minister, but as her son, I respect her decision.” Priyanka is less diplomatic. When she is asked if it is true that she and her brother have influenced their mother with the argument that “we have lost a father, we don’t want to lose a mother,” “It is a family matter,” she replies with the honest truth: “We have never been masters of our own family. We have always shared it with the nation.”
The members of the Congress Party do not throw in the towel so easily. When she gets back home, Sonia finds a crowd calling for the same thing, that she should change her mind. They shout for it, some with tears in their eyes, others throwing themselves at her feet. All this adulation annoys her. It is like the other face of the hatred her detractors show for her. The one is as unhealthy as the other. As she goes into the house, she come face to face with another challenge, a mountain of letters from the members of the Work Committee of the Congress Party and other affiliates who announce their resignation if she does not accept the top job. Outside, in the street, a follower who is threatening to slit his veins right there is overpowered by the police. It seems as if madness has taken over in New Delhi.
But in this contest Sonia does not give way. Out of common sense, out of a deep personal conviction, because she is sure that her decision is the wisest one for the country, for the family and for her. Right until the last moment they try everything to bend her to their will: they beg her, they implore her, they make veiled threats, but Sonia has become stronger than them all and she does not succumb. Quite the opposite, she ensures she has the backing of other members of the coalition and that they will accept a Prime Minister who is not a Gandhi. She sets the rhythm and all of them, even the most sceptical of them, end up following. That strength is the reward for her triumph.
In addition she has the unexpected support of the Press, which seems to rediscover her and do their utmost to praise her: “Sonia rejects power and lights up hearts,” is the headline in the Asian Times. “She rejects power, and achieves glory,” says the Times of India. By saying no, Sonia’s popularity has rocketed. By “abdicating” she has introduced the notion of sacrifice into the vocabulary of Indian politics. And she goes from being leader of the Congress Party to being the leader of the nation. A real miracle.
Rashtrapati Bhawan, the former Viceroy’s palace, is the scene of a short ceremony which is, however, full of meaning, and which finally puts an end of the power crisis at the end of that turbulent week. On Saturday, May 22nd, after three days of stubborn resistance against the leaders of her own party, Sonia Gandhi witnesses the swearing-in of Manmohan Singh as Prime Minister, in the presence of the President of the Republic. It is a historic moment because it is the first time a Sikh has been named as head of government. The man has not slept a wink all night because a crowd of fellow Sikhs have been celebrating the event outside his residence. How things have changed since the Sikhs were persecuted like animals in the days following Indira’s assassination!
After swearing the oath, in a gesture that alludes to the agreement they have come to, Manmohan Singh approaches Soni
a and bows slightly. As if he wanted to make it clear that he governs, but she reigns.
It is a historic moment for another reason, charged with symbolism that clearly shows the diversity of India, its capacity for co-existence and its growing social mobility. Sonia Gandhi, brought up a Catholic, hands power over to a Sikh Prime Minister, a man known for his irreproachable honesty, born in 1932 into a very humble family in the western Punjab, an area that now belongs to Pakistan. And she does this is the presence of a Moslem President of the Republic called Abdul Kalam, an expert in nuclear physics, born into an extremely poor family. Less than a century ago, no one would have imagined that this could happen in the country where until recently a person’s birth and not his merits determined the course of his existence. And only a month ago, who would have predicted a ceremony like this between three representatives of minority religions?
In a few days, Sonia has caused a silent revolution, whose impact will be felt for years to come. With her refusal, she has demonstrated that politics is not always the equivalent of greed. She has also shown that a person does not become Indian just by an accident of birth. Being Indian is gained by loving the country, being committed to it and being strong enough to place the interests of the nation before one’s own interests. With her historic gesture, Sonia Gandhi has reminded Hindus that the real strength of their nation lies in its tolerance, in its traditional openness towards others, in its belief that all religions form part of a search common to all of humanity to find the meaning of life. It is one of life’s curiosities that it has had to be a Christian woman who has brought dignity and trust back to the vast majority of Hindus, those who have never felt they were represented under the previous government.
That night, Sonia returns home with the satisfaction of having done her duty. She has preferred to remain behind the throne, galvanizing the people but leaving power to her Grand Vizir with his turban and white beard.
She is finally going to be able to rest after this crazy week. But, before retiring to her room, she goes into the study to feel the presence of the man she still loves like she did the first day, or perhaps more, if love could be measured. With all the heat, the flowers in the garland round Rajiv’s photo have withered a little.
“I’ll change them tomorrow,” she tells herself.
She stays for a while looking at her husband’s picture. She shuts her eyes and concentrates intensely, until she can picture him in her mind. He seems so close to her that it is almost as if she hear his well-modulated velvet voice, with his impeccable English accent, murmuring loving things in her ear… She can almost smell his skin, with that smell of cleanness that is mixed with his own perfume of jasmine. And it carries her back into the past, to lost times, to her best memories, the ones that Sonia keeps in her heart because they are a treasure that they gathered together.
The reverie, pleasurable and painful at the same time, only lasts a short time, but it is very intense because the dead live on in the hearts of the living. When she reopens her eyes, she glances at the other photos. She has seen them millions of times, but today she wants to see them again, and again and again, perhaps because they remind her of the meaning of her life. Rajiv and his smile continue to cause a wrench in her heart, and that will always happen; Indira too, with her ability to laugh at herself, never forgetting a birthday or the illness of one of the children amid all her worries over affairs of State. Now more than ever, Sonia realizes that from Indira she has inherited the “mystique of the dynasty” and that she is applying everything she has learned from her: patience and tenacity, daring, courage and a sense of opportunity. . Her gaze comes to a halt on a small photo on the table in which Mahatma Gandhi can be seen with Nehru. In those sad days after her mother-in-law’s death during which she took refuge in her correspondence, as if in that way she could communicate with her, she also learned, without realizing it, something about the essence of political leadership. She found a letter from Mahatma Gandhi to Nehru, which was among Indira’s papers: “Do not be afraid, put your faith in the truth; listen to the needs of the people, but at the same time make sure you gain sufficient moral authority to make people listen to you; be democratic, but value the only aristocracy that really matters: nobility of spirit.”
It has not been an easy journey from the placid existence of a housewife content with her domestic life to the frantic centre of political activity. As she herself defines it, it has been a story of light and shadows, of mystery and the hidden hand of destiny. A story of inner struggle and torment, of how the experience of loss can bring deeper meaning to one’s existence. But, in spite of all the sadness, the humiliations, the difficulties and the bad times, tonight she feels more fulfilled than she has ever felt before. As though suddenly she understood something that she felt deep inside, but yet which escaped her, and has to do with her deepest raison d’être. “The family I first became committed to when I got married was restricted to the limits of a home,” Sonia would later write. “Today my loyalty is to a wider family, India, my country, whose people have welcomed me so warmly that they have made me one of them.” Sonia is honest when she says that she is no longer Italian. She is not Italian because she has gone from being part of the Nehru-Gandhi family to becoming the heir of the dynasty. And the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty is India.
EPILOGUE
Paradoxically, by renouncing power, Sonia Gandhi has become even more powerful. The people, who admire the ideals of altruism and renunciation which are so much part of the Hindu religion and philosophy, have moved from considering her as a political leader to venerating her like a goddess. And that makes her the most influential person in India. In the rest of the world, her stature continues to grow all the time. Forbes magazine classed her among the three most powerful women on Earth. Not bad for someone who has always despised power.
She is loved by the people not only because she performed the miracle of bringing back the secular character of a country that was dangerously adrift, not only because she set at the head of such a corrupt and chaotic democratic system a man of great intelligence, irreproachable integrity and deep experience, but because she has managed to connect with the man and woman in the street. The women value her sacrifice as a mother and wife. The men, the meaning of her struggle. They all admire her dedication to the ideals of the family. They understand the suffering she went through when she lost Indira and then when she was left a widow, in such a tragic manner, and lost such a fine, young husband who should never have found himself in the line of fire. They identify with her.
The grief at the loss of those most loved arouses compassion in those who suffer a life of deprivation every day, anonymously and in silence. If most families go through these domestic dramas in the intimacy of their own homes, the Nehru-Gandhis have always gone through them in the public eye, and in addition they have steered the destiny of the biggest democracy ever known. How not to feel fascinated by such normal characters who, nevertheless, live through such extraordinary circumstances? How not to feel interest in that family that is now divided and at opposite ends of the political spectrum, Sonia and her children devoted to the Congress Party, Maneka and Firoz Varun to the BJP? That is the very essence of what the great sagas of mythology are made up of, filling the imagination of the people since the dawn of time. For many of the inhabitants of the villages and countryside of India, the saga of the Nehru-Gandhis, which has gone on since the 19th century and looks as if it will go on well into the 21st century, is the bridge that links their feudal past and their democratic present and, hopefully, a future that will be even more prosperous. If before dynasties served to preserve social order, now they serve to reinforce the link between the inhabitants of the same nation. They help to unify the country, to cement it in the popular imagination. They have somewhat the role taken on by the ruling families in constitutional monarchies, such as the United Kingdom, the Scandinavian countries or Spain. Such is the case of the Bhuttos in Pakistan, the Bandaranaikes in Sri Lanka, or the Rehmans in Ba
ngladesh. It is a tradition deeply rooted in the countries of Asia, although it is not exclusive to that part of the world. In the United States, political dynasties have regularly produced senators, governors and presidents, as was the case with the Roosevelts, the Kennedys, the Bush family or the Clintons. In other countries, the family does not govern but the mantle has passed from father to daughter, as in the case of Aun San Suu Kyi in Burma. It is no doubt in Asia where political dynasties find the most fertile soil on which to reproduce.
In India, there are many who criticize the dynastic politics of “the family”, established by Indira, classing it as undemocratic, but that would be to forget that, although a large part of the electorate is illiterate, it does not mean they are ignorant. In modern dynasties in democratic countries, whether Kennedy, Bush or Gandhi, the position is not inherited automatically, it has to be won, as Indira did, and now Sonia. If, in the past, dynasties imposed themselves on their subjects, today it is the citizens who decide to continue to be governed by clans or families. What is the reason? For some it has to do with a certain feeling of nostalgia which urges the Indian people to recreate the governing class of the past with its hordes of Nabobs, Rajahs, Ranas and all the panoply of king-emperors and satraps. Others explain it with arguments in the terms of marketing: the surname is a trademark as recognizable as makes of toothpaste or detergent and that helps orientation in the morass of local politics. Others think that perhaps it is a reflex of protection from abuse of power, in the hope that those who are already at the top will be compassionate and magnanimous and will not spend their efforts on pillage and theft, a type of behaviour more given to newcomers.