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Congress politicians were privately saying that Sonia Gandhi should step aside so that the
defeat in the general election could lead to her being challenged for the leadership, or that
dissidents would split the party, as had happened before. This was because no one - not
even the Gandhis - expected the Congress to win, so the debate was about how to react to
different levels of defeat. Leaders loyal to the dynasty said it was a 'semi-final' for the next
election that they could win, perhaps as early as 2006 if the new government did not last its
full term.
Such speculation was instantly swept aside when it became clear that the Congress and
its allies were winning. The party was euphoric, but the result was not primarily an en-
dorsement of the Congress, nor of the Gandhi dynasty. Sonia Gandhi had undoubtedly pre-
pared the ground by uniting and galvanizing her party, but the outgoing BJP government
had over-sold its election slogan of 'India Shining' and, with its regional allies also doing
badly, lost the election more than the Congress and the Gandhis won it. The result was a
stunning example of how India's electorate throws out national and state leaders when it
thinks that things are not as they should be - as it had done when it rejected Indira Gandhi
in 1977 after the Emergency.
By the time the result was announced on 13 May, it looked as if the dynasty's future
was assured - maybe even with Sonia Gandhi as prime minister because she had built
enough credibility since the 1999 debacle. The political significance of her Italian origin
had dogged her from the time she entered active politics, but the BJP had failed to capitalize
during the election campaign on the possibility of India having a foreign-born prime min-
ister. With the Congress about to form a government, however, the BJP stepped up its cam-
paign. Two BJP leaders threatened to resign from their political positions in protest, and the
party decided to boycott the presidential swearing in of a Sonia Gandhi-led government.
In the subsequent turmoil, Gandhi announced at an emotional meeting of her MPs that
she would not be prime minister, and she confirmed this a day later. Before the election,
she had dodged the question and said that, if they won, Congress MPs and coalition allies
would together choose a prime minister after the polls. Her decision, which brought tears
to the eyes of some MPs, was flagged as an act of
tyaag
or renunciation in keeping with the
highest traditions of India's culture, and she was seen to be combining this with wisdom
when she named Manmohan Singh as the prime minister.
However, praise for what she had done was tempered when those who watched politics
closely realized that she had not renounced political power at all. She had merely re-
nounced accountability by passing the difficult and accountable prime minister's job to
someone who would not challenge the dynasty. She had changed the party's constitution
so that, as the president of the Congress and its leader in the Lok Sabha, she would choose
the prime minister. She remained chairperson of the coalition, and headed a new Nation-
