May 18, 2004. Copyright, 2004, Graphic News. All rights reserved

Sonia Gandhi declines to take up the family mantle
By Joanna Griffin

LONDON, May 18, Graphic News:  Sonia Gandhi, who once confessed there had been a time when she was unable even to locate India on the map, looked poised this week to complete her extraordinary transformation from shy girl in a small town in Tuscany to prime minister of the worldÕs most populous democracy.

But it now appears that Mrs Gandhi has now decided not to take the post, despite her recent election success. Political opponents and other critics spoke out strongly against her becoming prime minister because of her foreign origins, and she is thought to have concluded that painful national divisions could be avoided should another candidate take the top job.

In the wake of the Congress partyÕs shock victory over the Bharatiya Janata party (BJP) in parliamentary polls, Mrs Gandhi, 57, had told loyalists that her party would lead a new coalition government that would be Òinclusive, secular and unitedÓ. The victory over the BJP signalled not just a defeat of the BJPÕs Hindu nationalism but a new era for Indian politics.

The credit for this dramatic turnaround belongs largely to Mrs Gandhi. Since taking the party reins in 1998, she has steered Congress out of the political wilderness and won back the support of millions to whom the Gandhi name never really lost its lustre. Congress, absent from power for almost a decade, is now expected to join forces with left-wing parties to form a government.

Born in 1946 to a builder and his wife in Orbassano, near Turin, Italy, Sonia met fellow student Rajiv Gandhi at Cambridge in 1965. Three years later the couple moved to India to live with his mother, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, and Sonia and her mother-in-law hit it off instantly.

Not all her efforts to assimilate were quite so successful: it has taken her years to speak fluent Hindi. But the Roman Catholic-educated girl willingly swapped her minskirts for saris and spent the 1970s and early 1980s adapting to her new role in the family which had dominated national political life since independence. In 1983 she became an Indian citizen.

A year later her life took another unexpected twist when Indira Gandhi was assassinated. Ignoring his wifeÕs pleas to shun politics, Rajiv became prime minister and then lost at the polls in 1989. In 1991 the former airline pilot was killed by a Tamil suicide bomber while campaigning for a return to power. Sonia became a recluse, apparently sickened by the intrigue and dangers of Indian politics.

If the younger Mrs Gandhi had any political ambitions of her own, she hid them well for a while. A biographer quoted her as once saying she would prefer her children to beg than to go into politics. In 1998, however, the Congress party persuaded her to become its leader and to many it must have seemed a matter of time before the Gandhis would be back in business.

If, as a politician, her grasp of theory was a little off, her instinct was spot-on. Realising that economic boom under the BJP had not changed the lives of millions of people in rural areas, she travelled to small communities and appealed to the poor to give Congress another chance.

Her success rested on her ability to present herself as a trusted relative -- she is said to have adopted Indira GandhiÕs campaign style and was regularly greeted as hamari bahu (daughter-in-law) -- while communicating that she represented a new start. The BJPÕs vitriolic attempts during the campaign to present her foreign birth as a problem appeared to have backfired. ÒI never felt they (ordinary voters) look at me as a foreigner,Ó she said on television. ÒBecause I am not. I am Indian.Ó

But she now says that it is in the best interests of the country if she steps down, fearing that a Congress-led coalition would be weakened were she to remain at its helm. However, her son Rahul, 33, won a seat at the polls and daughter Priyanka, 31, was active in the campaign, so it would seem that a revival of the countryÕs first political family may be still just a question of time.
/ENDS