The Soaring Mrs G

COVER STORY NEWSMAKER 2004 SONIA GANDHI IT WAS A COMPELLING SAGA IN POLITICAL EVOLUTION AS SONIA GANDHI EMERGED AS THE POWER ABOVE THE THRONE The Soaring Mrs G ■ By Prabhu Chawla Long before the tsunami that devastated the coastal life of India and other parts of Asia, there was a tidal wave called Sonia Gandhi. It too originated in a subterranean crack-up, deep under the saffron idyll, and the multiplying fury swept aside the pretence of infallibility. When the force receded, the political shore was littered with the wreckage of an arrogance called the Bharatiya Janata Party. Sonia, for so long an accidental Gandhi who symbolised stagnation, stood amidst the debris, shining and soaring, as the woman who brought back to life a party that almost every professional doomsayer—and its own disillusioned legion—thought was beyond revival. The leader rearmed was a foreign-born Gandhi, ready to redefine politics and dictate the governance of over a billion people. This Gandhi too earned a slice of history and is determined to shape it. In the last days of 2004, when the tsunami was not a metaphor but an awesome reality that took a toll of more than 12,000 lives across the southern shores of India, it was Sonia who took charge of disaster management. As the prime minister was getting the first reports of the tragedy at his residence at 3 Race Course Road, 3 km away at 10 Janpath, the lady was already working the phones and mobilising the relief force. On December 26, barely 15 minutes after the first killer wave hit the shores, cabinet ministers Mani Shankar Aiyar and Dayanidhi Maran were instructed by her office to leave for the worst affected areas, and the two continued to take instructions even while boarding the flight to Chennai. Meanwhile, an AICC official contacted the defence minister, who was in Kolkata at that time, and asked him to send defence personnel to the Andaman and Nicobar Islands and other devastated sites. And who boarded an air force plane, along with the defence minister, for an aerial survey of the horror? Not the prime minister of India but the president of the Indian National Congress. As the prime minister spent his time with files, she was there, among those who survived the wrath of water, extending a hand of solace, as a people’s leader who cares. She was the first to reach out. The prime minister got a first-hand experience of south Asia’s biggest natural tragedy days later. An extra-constitutional power centre? Or the moral imperatives of the supreme leader? The most powerful individual in the country draws her power not from any formal office but the collective submission of those who are in power. After more ABSOLUTE than a decade, Congressmen at last got a Gandhi who could REUTERS/KAMAL KISHORE POWER: Sonia postpone their redundancy and bring the Congress, the natural JANUARY 17, 2005 ◆ INDIA TODAY 55 COVER STORY NEWSMAKER 2004 SONIA GANDHI AP PHOTO/ELIZABETH DALZIEL ruling party of India, to its rightful place imperfection, had already evolved into in Indian politics—the vital centre and the reader of the popular mind. on the left side of history. “We are all in She reached out to the India that awe. We cannot afford to defy her. We was hardly shining. As the boisterous endeavour to be in her good books. rulers felt the intimations of immortal- There is no second centre of power,” ity when they experienced the eruption says an AICC member. That is, there is of party workers, she gave herself to no duality of power but its singular the masses. True, she was not a prime manifestation in Sonia, who, apart ministerial candidate; and she was from being the president of the not always a perfect picture of confi- Congress, is the chairperson of the dence. She was, most often hopelessly, ruling UPA as well as the National fighting against an artificially bloated Advisory Council (NAC) for the Common entity called the BJP. She opted to be Minimum Programme, which sets the persistent, smarter and cleverer: she agenda. Despite the disparate coalition sought out the right allies in the right partners and their conflicting ideas of places, that too at a time when the India, she, for all practical purposes, is BJP was losing allies. Past enemies the agenda as well as the arbiter. became friends; and she compensated for her own disadvantage among certain castes and communities by Power and Sacrifice choosing partners who had the backing No mean achievement for a woman of those sections. Suddenly, Sonia was whose first steps as the leader of India’s acceptable to leaders like M. Karuna- Grand Old Party were less than nidhi, Laloo Prasad Yadav, Vaiko, Ram tentative. She had nothing except that Vilas Paswan and Shibu Soren. Much to mystique of the surname and the the disappointment of some of her local mounting desperation outside the leaders, she “surrendered” to the doorstep. Life in India’s first family may traditional anti-Congress forces. Prag- AP PHOTO/MANISH SWARUP have introduced her to the passions matism diluted principles, for she had RITE OF PASSAGE: Sonia became the most powerful by renouncing power and choosing Manmohan as prime minister and privileges of power. More intima- the hidden agenda of victory, victory And Sonia triumphant was a more prime minister. Her party made consti- In 1999, when she failed to get “272” to tely, she saw—and lived through—the somehow. What was at stake was more engrossing event. She became the most tutional history by authorising her to form the government, Sonia told tragedy that stalked the family. So, than the viability of the Congress as a powerful by renouncing power. nominate the leader of the House. For friends she would not be the prime Sonia as Congress president in 1998, political force. It was the viability of a That was the story telecast, the story of the first time Independent India was minister. Sonia has long ago perfected the culmination of a long to-be-or-not- Gandhi in the politics of India. sacrificial rite. “In a strange way, she given a prime minister who had no the art of saying “no” at the most to-be vacillation, was an uncertain So all the more reason that has defined what is Indian. She intention of becoming an elected mem- strategic moments. beginning. As she progressed, the party the leader—caricatured as a leader has pulled off an Indian idiom—renun- ber of the Lok Sabha. Sonia’s choice al- couldn’t keep pace with her, in spite of without a chance by the residents of ciation with an understanding of tered parliamentary parameters. And till, determined to erase the the fact that the leader’s pace was far make-believe—should keep her cool. power. She has pulled off a terrific self- the Sonia Gandhi-Manmohan Singh impression that she was the from being too fast and too furious. She Sonia refused to be provoked by the portrait out of the jigsaw puzzle of partnership marked a new concept of power that matters, she has reached the kinetic stage during the constant demonisation. She did not images that surround her,” says Shiv power-sharing in politics. She is the Sbeen making it a point to visit the 2004 general elections. And it went have any time for the tasteless pun of Visvanathan, social anthropologist. power above the throne, which re- prime minister’s residence and has largely unnoticed, for the most notice- Ram rajya versus Rome rajya. She was The flashlights did not illuminate the mained conspicuously apolitical. “Last asked him not to see her in her office able spectacle those days was the busy choosing the right candidates and real script, though. From the very time round, when Sonia was almost for consultations. When Manmohan dancing hubris of the ruling party. A ensuring their victory. As the BJP beginning, she gave enough hints to prime minister, Indians were not ready advised his colleagues to refrain from leader larger than the party. The retreated to the myth of an India suggest that she would not be the prime for her. She was just Rajiv Gandhi’s seeing him off at the airport before his second leader on yet another rath Shining, she came out with the simple minister of a coalition—after all, she wife. A stint in the opposition and her foreign visits, she led the ministerial yatra. The party president alliterating intimacy of “Congress ka haath, aam was not even a prime ministerial parliamentary performance gave her team to his house. But critics say this his way to irrelevance. The Generation aadmi ke saath”. And no foreign haath candidate. After the victory, while political legitimacy. After this election, is a pretext, and temporary. Next taking refuge in the fantasy of that was—her humiliated tormentors meeting the allies, she did not reveal when she stepped aside for Manmohan According to them, her involvement in India Shining. The BJP had taken India would realise later. Sonia on the stump any prime ministerial agenda. Singh, she got popular legitimacy,” says the NAC is an indication of her future for granted. Bigger mistake: they had was single-minded aggression. The gag Cohabiting with the Laloos and Sorens Dipankar Gupta, sociologist. intent. Pulak Chatterjee, joint secre- POWER OF NO: Sonia announces taken Sonia for granted. And Sonia, too would change, from “Honey I and Pawars was never an option. Her After all, post-Renunciation, she is tary in the PMO, reports to both the she will not be the prime minister once the reluctant leader who read out shrunk the Congress” to “Honey I Gandhi-Nehruvian education in politics tyag murti (the goddess of sacrifice) in prime minister and the party presi- in the Central Hall of Parliament ghost-written speeches to laughable shrunk the BJP”.

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