Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
The Sonia Years
The Italian daughter of a builder from Orbassano near Turin in northern Italy, Sonia Maino
was born on 9 December 1946. After school in Italy, she went to Cambridge in Britain to
learn English in a city language school. Friends who were at Cambridge University at the
time have told me they remember her as 'nice and unassuming' - part of a 'temporary stu-
dents' social circle in the city that understandably tried to break into the university crowd
and meet boys'. She succeeded, meeting her future husband in a Greek restaurant in Janu-
ary 1965, soon after she arrived. They married in 1968, with no thought that either of them
would end up in politics.
From such a background, it is scarcely surprising that she stayed mostly in the shadows
immediately after Rajiv's death in 1991. It soon became clear, however, that she and her
advisers were dabbling in politics from behind the high walls of her central Delhi home at
10 Janpath, and she became increasingly available to be feted by important visitors from
home and abroad, though she spoke little when she met them. She slowly shed her image
of a shy widow and her gradual emergence was encouraged and used by various Congress
factions to undermine Narasimha Rao's prime ministerial authority, despite his successful
economic reforms.
In 1996, Rao lost a general election, and the Congress floundered in opposition with
weak leadership. Gradually, Sonia Gandhi was sucked further into the party's maelstrom
and, late in 1997, consulted friends about whether or not she should get fully into politics.
She was reminded by one of them about a letter that Nehru had written to Indira, telling his
daughter that she should either get into politics fully or get totally out because being half in
get in came quickly after that conversation.
Her aim, she said when she made the move at the end of December 1997, was to save
the party from collapse, which of course was necessary to ensure that her late husband's
dynastic legacy at the head of the party was protected till it could be passed on to their
son, Rahul. She became a member of parliament and then party president in March 1998,
ousting Sitaram Kesri, an ineffectual but wily elderly politician, at a time when the party
needed a fresh image for an imminent general election. Kesri knew his time was up but
clung to his post till Sonia's courtiers engineered a coup. This rescued the directionless and
badly led party - and possibly the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty - from collapse. In the general
election, she campaigned energetically, addressing large crowds at nearly 100 meetings, of-
