Why we love to hate Sonia Gandhi

“A good politician is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar,” quipped satirist HL Mencken, summing up the popular view among disgruntled citizens everywhere. We love to hate our leaders, be it in the United States, South Africa or right here at home. But some politicians are loathed more than others, inspiring an incandescent, outsized rage that seems puzzling and irrational. Sonia Gandhi is certainly one of them. Even cancer cannot buy her temporary respite from her incensed critics. “Stay in USA and don’t come back. You are the cancer of India and there is no cure for you,” writes one commenter on a news report of her surgery. And this is relatively mild compared to the obscenities routinely hurled at her on other sites. Gandhi has long been a polarising figure in Indian politics – much like Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi. Both have a number of “I Hate” Facebook pages dedicated to them, and countless other sites dedicated to their vilification. But there is one key difference. Where Modi is loathed for what he did – or didn’t do – during the 2002 Gujarat riots, Sonia is primarily hated for being who she is: Italian, all-powerful, and a Gandhi. Being a foreigner is clearly Sonia’s first and gravest sin – a fatal flaw that forced her to refuse the prime ministership back in 2004 – the first democratically elected leader in India to do so. “If Sonia Gandhi becomes the Prime Minister of this country I will definitely resign from the upper house. I will fight as I have vowed not to wear coloured clothes, tonsure my head, sleep on the ground and eat chickpeas," threatened BJP’s Sushma Swaraj. The RSS pracharak Govindacharya announced a Rashtriya Swabhimaan Andolan (National Self-Respect Movement) calling upon political leaders to renounce positions of power and join the fight against Sonia to regain India’s freedom and restore its atma gaurav (self-respect). Part of this gut-level dislike for Sonia is a genuine regret at the bankruptcy of Indian politics – and that of the Congress Party – that we had to turn to a foreigner-turned-Indian citizen to lead our nation. But to her shriller critics, she is no less than a foreign agent, the physical embodiment of that perennially evoked spectre of the “foreign hand”. [caption id=“attachment_55174” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“At least part of Sonia’s problem is that she is one of a kind. AFP Photo”]  [/caption] Uma Bharti, for example, once claimed India’s security would be threatened because a person of foreign origin would have access to India’s confidential files. Rabid commenters inevitably tell her to leave the country. Others claim she’s a tool of the CIA, Italian mafia, et al, claims that have now come to encompass her “half Italian” son, Rahul. There is no evidence for any of these conspiracy theories, but they remain in circulation to offer justification for hating Sonia because she is not a natural-born Indian – and the leader of the ruling party. According to Rasheed Kidwai, even Sitaram Kesri, the wily old Congressman, said after Rajiv’s death, “The days of rajas and maharajas are over. Foreigners must go back. I have fought thousands of angrez and what is a petty Italian!” To this day, Sonia’s foreign origins remain the easiest aspersion to cast, as when Baba Ramdev recently declared, “She is the daughter-in-law of India, she doesn’t understand her mothers and sisters.” It’s convenient and inarguable – her Italian-ness being something she cannot refute. At least part of Sonia’s problem is that she is one of a kind. We are not – unlike, say, the United States – a nation of immigrants, even though our constitution is far more liberal, allowing naturalised citizens to hold our highest office. Barack Obama’s presidency has been bedevilled by Birthers questioning his citizenship, but Americans are more familiar and comfortable with immigrants in high office – Arnold Schwarzenegger being the biggest example. Sonia’s second sin is that she is the flesh-and-blood embodiment of dynastic politics, and in a way that her husband never was. Rajiv came to power on the crest of a sympathy wave, a reluctant politician and dutiful son. His anointment to the throne was almost part-and-parcel of the funeral rites for his mother. Continues on next page Unlike Rajiv, who accepted his mother’s mantle, Sonia decisively turned it down when he was assassinated, with a brief statement: “The tragedy that has befallen me and my children does not make it possible for me to accept the presidentship of the Congress.” And when she did lead her party to victory in 2004, she had more political experience than her greenhorn husband, having been president of the Congress party since  1998, when she campaigned across 150-and-odd parliamentary constituencies only to taste defeat. The Congress party won just 142 seats, losing even Amethi to the BJP. Of course, turning to the wife in the absence of the husband – either due to death or incarceration, as in the case of Lalu Prasad – is hardly unusual in Indian politics. As pointed out by Patrick French in his book India: A Portrait, we remain a nation emboldened to lineage, and women have been equal opportunity beneficiaries:

In total, 12 of the seats in Uttar Pradesh in 2009 were won by women; three were political widows, three were wives, one was a daughter, two were daughters-in-law, one was a movie star, one was the wife of a senior police officer and one, Annu Tandon, was the wife of a top executive at Reliance, India’s largest and most powerful private company.

South Asia boasts of its women heads of state but all of them — Indira Gandhi, Sheikh Hasina, Benazir Bhutto, Chandrika Kumaratunge, Sirimavo Bandaranaike and Khaleda Zia — were the daughters or widows of powerful men, and most of them, beneficiaries of bereavement. Here again, it is Sonia’s Italian origins that make her ascension suspect and in some ways unforgivable. As a foreigner, she is suspected of caring only about herself and her own. She is not in politics to serve the country, the naysayers claim, but the interests of her family, be it by protecting their personal, ill-gotten wealth or paving a smooth path for Rahul to the throne. Since her entry into politics – which in turn propelled the Congress back to power – Sonia has been charged of a third sin: an undemocratic lack of accountability. There are two centres of power, Singh’s cabinet and Sonia and her National Advisory Council,  and it’s continually a matter of Capital gossip as to what decision emanates from where. Did Madam approve the government’s crackdown on Baba Ramdev or did the PM greenlight it?  No one knows the answers but the rumours swirl thick. Over the course of the past seven years, Sonia has become, to her critics, a shadowy Machiavellian figure who pulls all the strings, makes the real decisions, while hiding behind Manmohan Singh who is seen as her puppet. She holds no official post in the government and therefore doesn’t need to face questions from either the media or the Parliament – and yet wields tremendous power. As one Congress leader told Patrick French, “The Congress party is a Mughal court, and no one can do anything unless the Gandhis say so.” And Sonia is clearly its queen. The creators of the “Sonia Gandhi – Hate Group”  sum up the charge in these words:

She is such a coward as she does not want to become PM — which involves Responsibility and Accountability, but still wants all the power in her hands. The very essence that she has some puppets and controls them disgusts me a lot and she is making a mockery of everything what democracy stands for.

This then is where the Sonia haters reach a logical impasse. If there had not been such fierce opposition to her becoming the Prime Minister, she would have indeed been forced to be responsible and accountable. She would have been judged on her vision, policies, competence, and ability to lead. Her successes and failures would have been clear to see – and punished or rewarded, accordingly. And yet the prospect of a foreigner running the country was/is unbearable to her opponents. And they bear part of the responsibility in installing her in her current position – all-powerful, yet above the fray. The bottomline is that the Gandhis remain the single most important factor in the Congress party’s success at the polls. And a great number of Indians don’t care about Sonia’s Italian origins, whether because they see her as a Gandhi, a dutiful wife/bahu, mother to Priyanka and Rahul, or simply a good woman. They vote for her in great numbers, over and again, including the 2006 by-election in Rai Bareli which Sonia won by a record margin of 4.17 lakh votes. She is the leader of the Congress party, whatever that says about the health of the grand old party. To insist that she should simply go away is unrealistic and, well, undemocratic. What we can hope is that time will offer its own cure for the Congress party’s lopsided, untenable arrangement. With health concerns sidelining Sonia, Rahul Gandhi may be finally be forced to cede his perennial prince-in-waiting position, and take charge of the party – and therefore direct responsibility for its fortunes in 2014. Democracy is best served when the leader of a ruling party is also its Prime Minister, and we can only hope 2014 will accomplish the same, irrespective of who wins the gaddi. Written with inputs from Sandip Roy.