Looking at Sonia Gandhi leading rallies in various states for the Congress party in recent days and the aura she has over the crowd reminded me of some things I read about her back in 2014 before Modi became Prime Minister in the book India’s Broken Tryst written by Tavleen Singh. Tavleen Singh is close to the top political leaders of all the major political parties. One evening, Jaswant Singh invited her to a private gathering at his house. What she thought was some cocktail party was a political conclave with top BJP leaders like L.K. Advani, Arun Shourie, Atal Behari Vajpayee and Arun Jaitley present there. They were all discussing the upcoming general elections. She writes:
When the question of Sonia Gandhi as a potential opponent came up, I said something to the effect that she did not even speak Hindi so she could hardly be treated as a serious opponent. Vajpayee looked at me quizzically for a moment and then said, ‘She doesn’t need to speak Hindi. All she needs to do is hold her hands together in a namaste and stand on stage with her head covered and she could win.’
In Sriperumbudur at her first political rally I saw what he meant. The streets of the small rustic town were decorated that day with large garish cutouts of Sonia Gandhi with her head covered and her hands in a namaste. The colours used to paint her sari and the backdrop against which she stood were bright green, shades of luminous pink and electric blue, but the most striking thing was how white her skin was made to look. Her skin was given a pearly sheen that made it look surreal in its whiteness. At the grounds where the rally was being held there were more posters and more cutouts, shining in the harsh light of the day. I arrived early in the hope of talking to ordinary people. It was January but it was as hot as a summer day in Delhi. The white sky and the humid air, though, did not bother those who had come to listen to Sonia Gandhi. A small crowd gathered round as I started to ask questions with the help of a Tamil interpreter. When I asked if they thought it would be wrong for India to get a prime minister who was born Italian, they said this did not bother them at all. They translated proudly for me a song playing in the background that said, ‘You have white skin so you are God.’
When ‘God’ arrived in a dark green Tamil sari with a maroon border, a wave of hysteria washed through the crowd. Sonia’s hair was carefully groomed and the dark green made her skin look whiter still in the sunlight that made an interesting contrast with the sea of dark faces in her audience.
In another episode, she recalls the conversation between her and Vajpayee at a weekly programme called ‘Ek Din, Ek Jeevan’ hosted by Tavleen Singh herself aired on Star Plus:
Very deliberately I asked what I believed to be the most important question of this interview. ‘Your main opponent,’ I said, ‘is an Italian woman. Do you have any problems with this?’
‘No problems at all,’ he replied with an enigmatic smile. Afterwards, when the camera was turned off I asked why he had not expressed some small measure of concern if nothing else. He could have said, I pointed out, that it was shameful for the political party of India’s freedom movement to be led by someone who had not bothered to get an Indian passport till her husband became a candidate for prime minister. He said that he believed that if he said something like this it would help Sonia Gandhi rather than harm her.
It turned out that Sonia Gandhi led the Congress successfully to victory in the 2004 and 2009 General Elections. Vajpayee’s fears are true: Her nationality and citizenship did not matter when people were voting, no one really cared (except a few, obviously). Seeing Sonia Gandhi on stage again, leading the Congress in the recent rallies, must certainly bring back the Vajpayee fears to the current BJP. She is a force that cannot be ignored nor easily destroyed using the rhetoric of nationality, scams, corruption, family politics, etc- there are outdated narratives for people today. She is a force the BJP have to reckon with.
Whatever the result of the state assembly elections this year and the upcoming 2024 General Elections, Sonia Gandhi’s trajectory in Indian politics presents a unique case of study for social scientists.
rishvanth.com 
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