Sonia Gandhi
Sonia Gandhi (, pronunciation: / /) (born
Edvige Antonia Albina Maino on
December 9,
1946), is an
Italian-born
Indian politician, the President of the
Indian National Congress and the widow of former
Prime Minister of India,
Rajiv Gandhi. She was the Chairperson of the ruling
United Progressive Alliance in the
Lok Sabha, until she resigned on the 23rd of March 2006. She was named the third most powerful woman in the world by
Forbes magazine in the year
2004. [
1]. However, that ranking has fallen sharply, by 2005, that Forbes no longer ranked her in the top 100 most powerful women. She was returned to
Parliament by a margin of over 400,000 votes in the recently held by-election for
Rae Bareilly.
Born to Stefano and Paola Maino, as
Edvige Antonia Albina Maino, in
Lusiana, a little village 50
km from
Vicenza,
Italy, she spent her adolescence in
Orbassano, a town near
Turin being raised in a
Roman Catholic family and attending a Catholic school. Her father, a building
contractor and former
Fascist suporter, died in
1983 [
2]. Her mother and two sisters still live around Orbassano.
In 1964, she went to study English at a language school in the city of
Cambridge. While doing this certificate course she met
Rajiv Gandhi, who was enrolled at the time in
Trinity College at the
University of Cambridge. They were
married in
1968, after which she moved into the house of her
mother-in-law and then
Prime Minister,
Indira Gandhi.
She initially disliked
Indian food and clothes, and caused controversy when she was photographed wearing a
miniskirt [
3]. It was not until
1983 that she acquired
Indian
citizenship. The couple had two children,
Rahul Gandhi (born
1970) and
Priyanka Gandhi (born
1972).
Despite the family's heavy involvement in politics (her mother-in-law
Indira Gandhi, daughter of
Jawaharlal Nehru, was Prime Minister), Sonia and Rajiv avoided all involvement - Rajiv worked as an airline pilot, and Sonia took care of her family. When Indira was ousted from office in
1977 and when Rajiv entered politics in
1982, Sonia continued to focus on her family and avoided all contact with publicity.
During Rajiv Gandhi's five years in office the
Bofors Scandal broke, and
Ottavio Quattrocchi an Italian business man believed to be involved, was said to a friend of Sonia Gandhi and had access to the Prime Minister's official residence .
Following her husband's
assassination on
May 21,
1991, there were calls for her to enter politics by members of the Congress Party. After her refusal, the party settled on the choice of
P V Narasimha Rao as leader and, subsequently, Prime Minister. She finally entered politics just before the
1998 national election. She officially took charge of the Congress party as its president in 1998 and was elected to parliament in the elections held in
1999. She was elected the
Leader of the Opposition of the 13th
Lok Sabha in
1999.
During her campaign, her opponents (mainly the
Bharatiya Janata Party) played up her foreign birth, her failure to take Indian citizenship for 15 years after her
wedding, and her lack of fluency in
Hindi or any Indian language despite her claim that she had "become an Indian in her heart the day she became
Indira Gandhi's daughter-in-law". In May 1999, Sonia Gandhi offered to resign from the Congress Party leadership after three senior leaders (
Sharad Pawar,
Purno A. Sangma and
Tariq Anwar) challenged her right to try to become India's Prime Minister, given that she was not born of Indian blood or soil.
In the
2004 general elections, Sonia launched a nationwide campaign, criss-crossing the country on the
Aam Aadmi (Ordinary people) slogan in contrast to the 'India Shining' slogan of the BJP-led
National Democratic Alliance (NDA) alliance. After her party's victory, she was tipped to be the next
Prime Minister of India. On
May 16, she was unanimously chosen to lead a 15-party
coalition government which was subsequently named the
United Progressive Alliance (UPA).
Parliament was, however, badly fractured, and despite being the largest grouping of parties in
India's parliament, the 15-party UPA was not able to secure a majority and had to depend on outside support from the
Left Parties to form a government. After a storm of controversy over her foreign origin, Gandhi declined to the leadership of the
Congress Parliamentary Party in the Lok Sabha, the position that would have indicated that she was the party's nominee for Prime Minister. Her supporters hailed this as an act of renunciation while her opponents attacked it as a political move in which the ultimate aim was to gain an absolute majority for the Congress Party in Parliament, subsequent to which she would become Prime Minister.
At the time, several members of the
National Democratic Alliance - notably
Subramaniam Swamy and
Sushma Swaraj - claimed that there were legal reasons that barred her from the Prime Minister's post, and, indeed, from Parliament.[
4]. They pointed, in particular, to Section 5 of the Indian Citizenship Act of 1955, which they claimed implied 'reciprocity'. This was contested by others[
5] and eventually the suits were dismissed by the
Supreme Court of India.[
6] The Supreme Court of India also dismissed an attempt to prosecute her for falsely claiming to have graduated from
Cambridge University during the election [
7].
On
May 18, a day before her scheduled inauguration, in a politically shrewd move (as her critics say) or reasonable one (per her supporters) to avoid the pain of another costly agitation and division of the nation based on ideology, she suggested economist Dr.
Manmohan Singh for the Prime Minister's post. Dr.
Singh had served as
India's finance minister in a previous Congress party government headed by
Rao, and is considered by many as the chief architect of
India's economic reforms of the early 1990s. Moreover, the fact that he was not known to have any political ambitions and that he enjoyed a good rapport with Sonia Gandhi probably helped him to win the post. Sonia retained the post of the Leader of the Majority and the Chairperson of the
Congress Parliamentary Party. This arrangement enabled her to keep political control of the party and to deal with the political fire fights in the giant coalition government while leaving the management of the country in hands of
Manmohan Singh.
Jyoti Basu, the former
Communist chief minister of
West Bengal who was deeply involved during the meeting to decide the PM, said after the meeting that her children feared for her life and she was therefore reluctant to become PM.
Congress President Sonia Gandhi on
March 23, 2006 announced her resignation from the
Lok Sabha and also as chairperson of the
National Advisory Council. According to Indian electoral law, an elected person cannot hold an office of profit (meaning paid posts). She was re-elected from her constituency
Rae Bareilly in May 2006.
Despite her father's vehement opposition to her marriage to Rajiv, Sonia maintains close links with her family in Italy. Her son,
Rahul Gandhi had also won election to the Parliament from Amethi constituency in 2004, and some consider him to be the natural heir to the reins of the party, and possibly have a chance to become a Congress leader in the future. Priyanka Gandhi-Vadra did not contest elections, but is also often speculated about in the media. Sonia and her children are estranged from
Maneka Gandhi, the widow of Rajiv's younger brother
Sanjay Gandhi and her son
Varun Gandhi, who are both members of the BJP.
Sonia Gandhi has written two books:
Rajiv and
Rajiv's World. In addition, she has also edited
Freedom's Daughter and
Two Alone, Two Together (two volumes of letters exchanged between
Jawaharlal Nehru and
Indira Gandhi from
1922 to
1964).
* S. R. ET AL. BAKSHI (
1998)
Sonia Gandhi, The President of AICC South Asia Books. ISBN 8170249880
* Rupa Chaterjee (
1999)
Sonia Gandhi: The Lady in Shadow Butala. ISBN 8187277025
* C. Rupa, Rupa Chaterjee (
2000)
Sonia Mystique South Asia Books. ISBN 8185870241
*
Sonia Gandhi comprehensive website*
Indian National Congress*
Profile by
BBC News dated March 23, 2006
*
Sonia Gandhi's biography
