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| MEN & MATTERS | | Kaho na you are my Sonia | | B L KAK
'Kaho na you are my Sonia'. This expression, though borrowed from a Bollywood Hindi film, is these days used by more and more Congress members and supporters. They also include some Central Ministers and a battery of MPs. Sonia Gandhi is seemingly well-entrenched. And in recent times she has been found to have emerged as a picture of confidence.
Now-a-days nowhere in evidence is the nervousness she used to display every time she spoke in public. Catapulted into prominence with the assassination of her husband, Rajiv Gandhi, by Tamil militants in 1991, Italian-born Sonia was considered a greenhorn in politics. She had refused to tgake up the leadership of the party offered to her immediately after the assassination.
According to a book titled 'Sonia Gandhi: A Biography', she acccepted the leadership of the party only in 1998, when following its defeat in 1996 elections, the Congress party was down in the dumps and senior leaders were leaving in droves for the ascendant Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP). The 158-page book is authored by Arun Bhanot, Suraj Prasad Verma and Mahesh Sharma. The book has been published by a New Delhi-based publishing company, Diamond Pocket Books (P) Ltd.
It recalls that the exodus of leaders and workers from the Congress stopped with Sonia Gandhi's assumption of leadership, and so did the slide in its fortunes. Referring to the number of Congress-led States in the country, the book maintained that the emerge of Congress as a major player in the Assembly elections in the Muslim-dominated State of Jammu and Kashmir was considered quite a feat.
The book says: "Sonia is naturally, therefore, regarded as indispensable for the Congress. But at the same time she has been considered the party's biggest weaknes, the proverbial Achilies' heel. With her Italian birth, her strange accent, her obvious foreignness, her nervousness in public, her fumbling for words, her Christian faith--though she never fails to emphasise her new-found Hinduism--her inexperience in politics, her inability to understand the maddening complexity of India's caste politics and different caste configurations of every region, her reliance on a self-serving coterie of failed politicians, and so on, were all cited as reasons whey the Congress would never come to power in New Delhi under her leadership, even if it won in the majority of States".
The outcome of the 2004 parliamentary elections, however, made her critics set up and rethink. It was not just the confidence with which she delivered her election speeches or the extra bounce in her feet that caused deep unease in the ranks of the coaliton led by the BJP, but the content of her speeches and statements and the direction in which she steered her party. What alarmed her opponets was that Sonia was allowing regional leaders to grow and acquire the status that they deserve on the basis of their standing in the States.
The book has drawn a fine conclusion: She is clearly taking the party (Congress) away from the style of functioning of her immediate predecessors that proved its undoing. The high command is still there, of course, and decisions are still left to her, but she is far more accommodating of the local sentiment and ground realities. Conclusion number two: Though she appeared to be diffident, Sonia is intrinsically far more confident and far more aware of her leadership potential than even her mother-in-law, Indira Gandhi, who had been given the sobriquet of 'Iron Lady' and 'Goddess Durga' in 1971 by then Oppositon leader, Atal Behari Vajpayee, after she dismembered Pakistan and created Bangladesh.
Authors of the book are not incorrect when they talk of Sonia trying to copy Indira Gandhi's style. Indeed, there have been reports in the media about how Sonia Gandhi watches for hours videos of Indira Gandhi making speeches, and tries to copy her style and manerisms, not only in terms of public speaking, but also in terms of public appearances, the manner of wearing saris, walking briskly and so on.
"But the Congress and the country", the book insits, "has nothing to worry about as long as she is copying only Indira's style and manerisms, and not the content of her authoritarian politics". The question of Sonia's citizenship is strictly a legal issue. The book has regretted that the isue deplorably is being given rascist and xenophobic overtones. The Constitution of India does not differentiate between a citizen by birth and one by naturalisation as some other countries do. And since Sonia accepted Indian citizenshipas far back as 1983, this fact shouldhave helped dispel all doubts about her eligibility to contest the elections and aspire for the highest office of the land.
After the Supreme Court settled the mater, Sonia Gandhi canot be an Italian citizen, legally. Therefore, to allege that she retains her Italian citizenship would amount to slander. The Indian Constitution does not bar a naturalised citizen from holding high offices. On the other hand, the Constituion of America, a land of immigrants, has a provision that only those born iun the US can become Presidents, Vice-Presidents, and the Chief Justice.
History bears testimony to the fact that persons of Indian origin had become Prime Ministers and Presidents of other nations. Mauritius: Kassam Uleema as President, Anirudh Jagannath and Navinchandra Ramgoolam as Prime Minister. Trinidad and Tobago: Noor Hassan Ali, President, Basdeo Pandey, Prime Minister. British Guyana: Cheddy Jagan, Prime Minister. Fiji: Mahendra Chandhry, Prime Minister. France: Napolean, a Corsican by birth, became Emperor of France. Germany: Adolf Hitler, an Austrian, became the Fuehrer.
It is also a fact of history that even for the Congress presidentships, Indian nativity was not the most relevant issue since Allen Octavian Hume, Wedderburn, Anie Besant and Nellie Sen Gupta, all foreigners, had served as presidents of the party.
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