by Javier Moro
A logical effect of Sonia’s renunciation of power is that the prestige of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty has been reinforced. In 2006, at a Congress Party conference in Hyderabad, Sonia’s staunchest supporters called for a greater role for her son within the organization. The chorus of voices, now so familiar, was calling for Rahul’s presence. Sonia replied that she did not intend to influence her son, that he was free to choose his own path. And Rahul asked for time. But, in September, 2008, the torch began to change hands, when he was named as one of the secretaries general of the Congress Party, in a manoeuvre designed to mix youth and experience in the party leadership with a view to the coming general elections. Now Rahul is part of the managing committee, the organism that takes decisions in the Congress Party. For the first time in many years there is a number two in the organization who has the complete support of the number one. For months, Rahul has been going round the country galvanizing his followers and, just like his father, he is beginning to be careless about his personal safety. Several times the agents charged with protecting him have complained that Rahul gives them the slip or ignores their instructions. He realizes, just like his father, that it is impossible to make politics without mixing with the crowds. Many of the conflicts which emerged in the time of Indira and Rajiv have been solved or are on the way to being solved, but a public figure, especially if he belongs to “the dynasty”, is always in danger of being attacked by some fanatic or other. To look no further than February 2007, the police arrested a man armed with a pistol at a rally where Sonia was speaking in the city of Almora. It turned out that the man, an employee of the local Post Office, was not part of any conspiracy, he was simply suffering from mental problems.
Recently, the assassination of an old friend of the family in neighbouring Pakistan, has reminded them of the fragility of their existence. Benazir Bhutto died in a similar way to Rajiv. Both were out of power but were on the verge of regaining it. Both were careless of their safety in the interests of greater contact with the people. The Gandhis know that the attack on Benazir Bhutto is a reflection of what could happen to them at any moment, if they make the mistake of lowering their guard. Can Rahul have learned not to let himself be pulled along by a sense of destiny? His uncle Sanjay would still be alive today if he had been more cautious. His political manoeuvring to control the Sikhs created a monster that devoured his mother; neither did Indira take any notice when she was told to get rid of her Sikh bodyguards. Rahul himself foresaw what was going to happen to Rajiv… Will the members of this new generation have learned the lesson from their predecessors? For the moment Sonia is still there to remind them of it day after day, so that they never forget.
Priyanka is removed from politics and leads a quiet life in New Delhi, taking care of her husband and children. In February 2008, she made a trip to the south of India which put her in the limelight. She wanted to do it incognito, but she was immediately located by the Press. She had been thinking for a long time about visiting Nalini Murugan, the woman serving a life sentence for having participated in the plot to assassinate Rajiv. Almost twenty years have gone by since the attack in Sriperumbudur, but the suffering for the loss of a father does not stop with time. These are wounds which never entirely heal. Priyanka wanted to meet alone with the woman she helped to save from capital punishment when she got her mother to intervene to have the sentence commuted. Why did she go to see to her? “It is a purely private matter,” she declared to the Press, “a personal visit that is all my own initiative.” Both women broke down and sobbed when they came face to face in the shabby visiting room of the prison. After the visit it became known that they talked about their experiences in giving birth to their respective children, since both had to have Caesarean sections. They spoke about life more than death, which suggests that Priyanka has forgiven her. Are justice and forgiving not essential stages in reconciling oneself with a tragedy? At the end of the meeting, Nalini confessed to her brother that she felt “as if all my sins had been washed away by Priyanka’s visit.” Hinduism teaches that forgiveness is not a sign of weakness, but of strength. It is a manner of liberation, of finding peace. “My meeting with Nalini was my way of making peace with violence and the loss I have experienced.” That was Priyanka’s declaration, as concise and simple as it is heroic, and she finished as follows: “I do not believe in rage, or in hatred or violence. I refuse to allow those feelings to dominate my life.” The Gandhis have always known how to grow in adversity.
Sonia lives an isolated life in her fortress at number 10 Janpath Road, although Paola, her mother, spends the winters with her. Every Sunday she can be seen at ten o’clock Mass in the Nunciature church. Apart from her children, Sonia has only a few close friends around her, the same ones she had when Rajiv was alive. It is not easy to see her, except at official engagements. She does not mix with the jet set of New Delhi and neither does she frequent diplomatic circles. She meets with Congress Party ministers and other coalition leaders as often as they require. On average, as president of the party and leader of the coalition in power, she can come to see some thirty people a day and may examine dozens of reports. Her small office at the Congress Party Committee headquarters is always full of poor people who have come to ask for help. Her secretary has instructions to attend them all.
Faithful to the custom that she inherited from her mother-in-law, she tries to fast one day a week and she does yoga exercises every morning. The woman who one day confessed that she felt uncomfortable dressed in Indian style has today become an elegant lady who only wears saris. She is still fascinated with textiles and traditional handicrafts as well as antiques. She would like to have more time in which to read. She takes advantage of her holidays, which she takes in June every year, to rest at the house of an old friend of the family, the journalist Suman Dubey, in Kosani, in the foothills of the Himalayas, and that is when she catches up on her backlog of reading. She likes those mountains which remind her of the Alps of her childhood and she dreams of building a house of her own, somewhere she can flee to escape the pre-monsoon heat with her children and grandchildren. The trips she makes abroad are usually official ones or to give a lecture. Now she is clearly less tense. She has declared that she is “comfortable” in politics, in spite of the fact that the words of Benazir Bhutto could be hers: “I have not chosen this life. It has chosen me.” Perhaps she does not control her own life, but she has the life of the country firmly in hand. Even her opponents admit that she does not put a foot wrong. Both her detractors and her followers agree in recognizing her skill in managing the rules of a government in coalition, something which neither Indira nor Rajiv found necessary to learn at all. Sonia has been able to develop a harmonious relationship with some close political collaborators, a relationship based on mutual loyalty. Indira could never have had a relationship like the one that links Sonia with Manmohan Singh. The poor are Sonia’s greatest concern. Perhaps it is the result of her Catholic upbringing, or because she bears very much in mind that she was born into a humble family in the Asiago Mountains, but she is still hurt by the contrasts in India. Was it not Indira who said that everything that could be said about India, and its opposite, was true? Bombay has the biggest slum district in Asia and the largest concentration of child prostitutes in the world, but it has just become the fourth city on the planet in its number of billionaires—one of them gave his wife an Airbus for her 44th birthday. How can one get used to these differences? How is it possible that the State is incapable of building latrines in the slum districts, or of supplying chalk to the schools or syringes to the rural dispensaries and yet the space programme is considered as good as that of any Western power, or perhaps even better? The day she gets used to that will be the day she has to leave politics.
Thanks to Sonia, the “poorest of the poor”, as she calls them according to the expression popularized by Mother Teresa, another European woman who left her mark on India, have a faithful ally. An ally who keeps them in mind all the time, every day and at every
moment, whether she is in power at the top, or out of power.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
I feel especially indebted to five books which have been particularly useful to me:
Adams, Jan and Whitehead, Philip, The Dynasty—The Nehru Gandhi Story, Penguin Books, 1997.
Frank, Katherine, Indira: The Life of Indira Nehru Gandhi, Harper Collins, 2002.
Gandhi, Sonia, Rajiv, Viking-Penguin, India, 1992.
Jayakar, Pupul, Indira Gandhi: a biography, Penguin, New Delhi, 1995.
Kidwai, Rasheed, Sonia, Penguin, 2003.
Additionally:
Alexander, P.C., My years with Indira Gandhi, Vision Books, 2001.
———, Through the Corridors of Power An inside Story, Harper Collins.
Ali, Tariq, The Nehrus and the Gandhis, Pan Books, 1985.
Ansari, Yusuf, Triumph of Will, Tara-India Research Press, 2006.
Asaf, Ali Aruna, Indira Gandhi:Statesmen, Scholars and Friends, New Delhi, 1985.
Bhagat, Usha, Indiraji through my eyes, Penguin, India, 2006.
Bhanot, Arun et al., Sonia Gandhi, a biography, Diamond Books, 2005.
Carras, Mary, Indira Gandhi in the crucible of leadership, Beacon Press, 1979.
Chatterjee, Rupa, The Sonia Mystique, Virgo Publications, New Delhi, 2000.
Chatwin, Bruce, ¿Qué hago yo aquí? (What am I doing here?), El Aleph, 2002.
Dhar P.N., Gandhi, The Emergency and Indian Democracy, Oxford Uni. Press, New Delhi, 2000.
Frankel, Francine R., India’s Political Economy, Oxford India Paperbacks, 2005.
Gandhi, Indira, Letters to an American Friend, HBJ, New York, 1985.
———, What I Am, in Conversation with Pupul Jayakar, Indira Gandhi Memorial Trust.
———, My Trust, Vision Books.
Gandhi, Maneka, Sanjay Gandhi, Vakis, Feffer & Simons, New Delhi, 1980.
Gandhi, Sonia, Two alone, two together, Penguin, 2004.
———, Living Politics, Nexus Institute, 2008.
———, Rajiv’s World, Viking Penguin, India.
Gill, S.S., The Dynasty—A Political Biography of Premier Ruling Family of Modern India, Harper Collins Publishers, India.
Guha, Ramachandra, India after Gandhi, Harper&Collins, New York, 2007.
Khilkani, Sunil, The idea of India, Penguin, 1997.
Lapierre, Dominique and Collins, Larry, Esta noche la libertad (Freedom tonight), Plaza y Janés, 1975.
Luce, Edwards, In Spite of the Gods, Doubleday, 2007.
Malhotra, Inder, Dynasties of India and Beyond Pakistan—Sri Lanka—Bangladesh,
Harper Collins.
Masani, Zareer, Indira Gandhi, Hamish Hamilton, London, 1975.
Mehta, Ved, Portrait of India, Farrar, Strauss & Girould, New York, 1970.
———, Rajiv Gandhi and Rama’s Kingdom, Yale Univ. Press, 1983.
Mehta, Vinod, The Sanjay Story, Jaico Pub. Co., Bombay, 1978.
Moraes, Dom, Mrs Gandhi, Jonathon Cape, 1980.
Nanda, B.R., The Nehrus, The John Day Co., 1963.
Nath Mishra, Dina, Sonia the unknown, India First Foundation, 2004.
Nehru, Jawaharlal, An Autobiography, Oxford University Press, 2002.
———, The discovery of India, Penguin, New Delhi, 2004.
Nugent, Nicholas, Rajiv Gandhi—Son A Dynasty, BBC Books.
Paul, Swaraj, Beyond Boundaries, Viking, 1998.
Prakash, Surya A., Issue of Foreign Origin—Sonia under Scrutiny, Indian First Foundation.
Singavarapu, sir Dr. Ravi, Sonia Gandhi through a different lens, Fultus Publishing, 2004.
Singh, B.P. Varma and Pavan K., The Millennium Book on New Delhi, Oxford.
Singh, Darshan, Sonia Gandhi:Tryst with Destiny, United Children’s Movement, 2004.
Singh, Kushwant, Truth, Love & A Little Malice, Penguin, New Delhi, 2002.
Thapar, Raj, All These Years, Seminar Publications.
Torri, Michelguglielmo, Storia dell’India, Laterza, Rome, 2000.
Tully, Mark, No Full Stops in India, Penguin, 1991.
Vasudev, Uma, Indira Gandhi: Revolution in Restraint, Vikas, New Delhi, 1973.
Von Tunzelmann, Alex, Indian Summer, Henry Holt, New York, 2007.
Yunus, Mohammed, People, Passions, Politics, Vikas, 1980.
NOTES
CHAPTER 6
72 “Seeing them with their abject poverty, overflowing with gratitude, I felt a mixture of shame and pain,” he wrote, “shame at my easy, comfortable way of life and all the politics in the cities that ignores this vast multitude of half-naked sons and daughters of India, and pain on seeing so much degradation and unbearable poverty”
An Autobiography, by Jawaharlal Nehru (Oxford University Press, 2002).
77 “At first, weaving is very boring but as soon as you get into it, you discover there is something fascinating […]”
Taken from Two alone, two together, edited by Sonia Gandhi (Penguin, New Delhi, 2004), p. 404.
CHAPTER 8
97 Firoz was the son of a Parsee named Jehangir Ghandy, whose official biography attributes him with being a naval engineer, but other sources state that he was a dealer in alcohol, although there was no connection at all to Gandhi. At the end of the thirties he changed the spelling of his name to that of Gandhi, the name of a caste of perfume-makers, a common name among the Bania castes of the Hindus of Gujarat, where Mahatma came from.
Ali, Private Face of a Public Person, p. 35, note 11, quoted from Indian Summer, by Alex Von Tunzelmann (Henry Holt, New York, 2007), p. 86.
103 Nehru had once described his country as “an ancient palimpsest in which layers and layers of thought and daydreams have been engraved, without any of them having been able to erase or hide what had previously been written”.
Nehru, The discovery of India (Penguin, New Delhi, 2004).
CHAPTER 12
150 “No, Sam. Go ahead. I have the utmost confidence in you.”
Scene between Sam Manekshaw and Indira Gandhi, taken from Indira Gandhi: a biography, by Pupul Jayakar, op. cit.
CHAPTER 13
163 “We have been too soft on that damned woman,” he told Kissinger. “Look how she’s done that to the Pakistanis when we’d warned that old bitch not to get involved.” These were his exact words.
Quoted from India after Gandhi, by Ramachandra Guha (Harper&Collins, New York, 2007), p. 460 (from documents in Louis Smith, Foreign Relations of the United States, South Asia Crisis: 1971, Washington, D.C., Department of State, 2005).
CHAPTER 14
171 “You will see very quickly a child goes through millennia of human history, and unconsciously, and in part consciously too, will live within himself the history of his race.”
Quoted from Two alone, Two together, correspondence of Indira Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, edited by Sonia Gandhi (Penguin, New Delhi, 2003), p. 476.
CHAPTER 15
173 “Rajiv has a job, but Sanjay does not and he’s involved in an expensive venture. He is very like me when I was the same age—with the rough edges too—to such an extent that it makes me feel sad to see the suffering he has to go through.”
Correspondence of Indira Gandhi. Papers of P.N. Haksar (quoted from India after Gandhi, by Ramachandra Guha).
182 It was then, in that fleeting yet intense moment of happiness, that Indira decided that once her father had died she would give Firoz all her attention.
According to Uma Vasudev, Indira Gandhi: Revolution in Restraint (Vikas, New Delhi, 1973).
CHAPTER 19
214 “It must be terrible for you with your father in jail. I’m really sorry about it.”
Quoted from Sonia, by Rasheed Kidwai (Penguin, 2003), p. 34.
218 An anthropologist named Lee Schlesinger
“The Emergency in an Indian village”, Asian Survey, vol. 17, nº 7, July, 1977, quoted from India after Gandhi, by Ramachandra Guha.
CHAPTER 21
230 “VVIP!” he answered. “Shri Sanjay Gandhi!” The word Shri
here means something like “Excellency”
231 When he lost a sandal on the runway of the airport, it was the chief of the government of Uttar Pradesh himself who bent down, picked it up and reverently handed it to him.
Quoted from India after Gandhi, by Ramachandra Guha, p.508.
231 “I felt that Maneka was asking too much of Sanjay and that he wanted to involve her in any activity that would reduce the pressure on him,”
Quoted from Truth, Love & A Little Malice, by Kushwant Singh (Penguin, New Delhi, 2002), p. 286.
234 “Indira has been very brave. This is a great step she has taken.”
Quoted from Indira Gandhi: a biography, by Pupul Jayakar (Penguin, New Delhi, 1995), p. 314.
236 “Madam, what good is a river without any fish?”
Jayakar, Pupul, op. cit., p. 318.
CHAPTER 22
241 “When? When I’m dead?” Quoted from Indira Gandhi: Statesmen, Scholars and Friends, by Ali Aruna Asaf (Delhi, 1985), p. 41.
243 “I was unable to put a stop to my brother’s activities.” Indiraji through my eyes, by Usha Bhagat, op. cit., p. 239.
246 Once again Rajiv had thrown in her face that:“Sanjay and Dhawan are the ones who have brought you to this.”
Quoted from Indira Gandhi, the Emergency and Indian Democracy, by P.N. Dhar (Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2000), p. 355.
CHAPTER 23
259 While they chose a sari for her, Indira took some documents into the kitchen that she considered dangerous if they were to fall into the hands of the police or the Intelligence Agency. The cook made sure they were destroyed in an unusual way, using Sonia’s pasta-making machine as a shredder.”