Sonia Gandhi, 4th in a dynasty to rule India

NEW DELHI:  Sonia Gandhi spent decades as a woman behind the scenes. Shy and Italian-born, she ran the household for her mother-in-law when Indira Gandhi was Prime Minister, choosing menus and managing the servants. She did the same for her husband when he became prime minister, after his mother’s assassination. Now, more than a decade after he too was slain, Sonia Gandhi is poised to become the latest in a long line of Gandhis to govern this sprawling nation. With the ruling Hindu nationalist alliance conceding defeat, a suddenly resurgent Congress Party and its allies appear set to take over the government — with Sonia Gandhi, 57, the most likely prime minister.

“The process of government formation will gather momentum” in coming days, Gandhi told reporters last night, after results were announced from parliamentary elections. Gandhi, who won her own seat, refused to say if she would become prime minister. It’s certainly not what she expected when she arrived in India in 1968, a 21-year-old bride who didn’t care much for Indian food. “I had a vague idea that India existed somewhere in the world with its snakes, elephants and jungles,” she once wrote of her early days with husband Rajiv Gandhi at Cambridge University. Those days are over. She’s been an Indian citizen since 1983 and a member of Parliament since 1999. She speaks fluent, if Italian-accented Hindi. Thousands of people turn out for her speeches.

But while Congress is likely to lead the next government, it still needs an alliance with other parties — and whether all would accept a foreign-born prime minister isn’t clear. Party officials insist she’ll get the post. “She will be the prime minister — 100 percent,” said Ghulam Nabi Azad, the Congress Party’s general secretary. Gandhi’s Italian ancestry has long been her political weak point. During the campaign, her opponents hammered on her “foreignness” and political inexperience. But she dismisses such attacks, telling New Delhi Television in a rare interview that being born Italian means nothing to most voters. “I never felt they look at me as a foreigner,” she said. “Because I am not. I am Indian.” Also, whether intentional or not, she reminds many Indians of her mother-in-law: the way she wears her sari, her habit of striding ahead of aides.

To many Indians, she remains a “videshi bahu” — or “foreign-born daughter-in-law.” To supporters, it’s a term of endearment, a link to the dynasty that remains wildly popular through rural India. To critics, it’s a reminder of her birth, and the power she gained through marriage. Some of Congress’ success came from anger with the Bharatiya Janata Party, which led the ruling alliance. Analysts had predicted an easy BJP victory, as the party campaigned on a surging economy and what they called “Shining India.” But for every new Indian software millionaire, there are millions of rural poor with no electricity. For them, the Gandhis have always been heroes.

Gandhi’s son Rahul also made his political entry yesterday, winning a parliamentary seat in Amethi, the family’s political stronghold. But it was her daughter Priyanka — a young mother who wasn’t even running for office — who became a star, drawing huge crowds while campaigning for her mother and        brother. Sonia Gandhi, a woman who had long tried to stay out of politics, was thrust to prominence with her husband’s 1991 assassination. Seven years later, Congress officials desperate for a prominent name to help rebuild their stumbling party coaxed her into taking the party leadership. Slowly, she became a presence in politics. But she remains shy to the point of near-reclusiveness, and while she now campaigns diligently and makes regular speeches, she almost never gives interviews or news conferences. Her critics call her inexperienced and inaccessible.
But she’s always desperately guarded her privacy.

She wrote in a memoir that she “fought like a tigress” to keep the family’s privacy as her husband’s mother pulled him into politics. Raised in a middle-class Roman Catholic family outside Turin, Italy, she met Rajiv Gandhi at Cambridge, marrying into the dynasty that had dominated Indian politics, and the Congress, since independence from Britain in 1947. Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Prime Minister, headed India from 1947 until his 1964 death. He was followed by his daughter, Indira Gandhi, whose often iron-fisted rule defined two decades of Indian life. Indira Gandhi was killed by her own bodyguards in 1984, and Rajiv Gandhi, an airline pilot, reluctantly stepped up. Riding a wave of sympathy, he easily won the following election. But he lost the prime minister’s post in 1989 and was killed two years later while campaigning.