Close to three decades ago, Sonia and Maneka Gandhi began a troubled relationship as daughters-in-law in Indira Gandhi's official residence. It is entirely fitting then that their latest bout is linked to Jawaharlal Nehru's official residence, Teen Murti Bhavan, which even amid the (admittedly fading) grandeur of the imperial city of Delhi presents itself as a proud monument.

Once home to the British commander in chief in India it became, after Independence, the house of the prime minister. When Nehru died in 1964, the future of the "noble mansion"-to borrow an expression the great man used in another context-worried some people.

As Raj Thapar, then publisher of Seminar, recalled in her autobiography All These Years (1991), "It was within 10 days of Nehru's death that Indira (Gandhi) rang Romesh (Raj's husband) one morning, sounding desperate. Meher Chand Khanna, the then housing minister, had apparently sent his minions to ask her if they could remove the furniture and that she plan to vacate the house as soon as possible. She was alarmed, 'What shall I do?' she asked, almost in tears. He told her to sit tight."

THE BIG THAW Top Two Tango

On November 19, the opening day of the winter session of Parliament, Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee walked up to the opposition benches in the Lok Sabha to greet Sonia Gandhi. She reciprocated the gesture with warmth and introduced Shivraj Patil, the Congress' new deputy leader in the House, to him. This unprecedented exchange of courtesies between the leaders of the country's two rival parties came a day after Vajpayee had divested Maneka Gandhi of the culture portfolio. The Congress insists Sonia had no direct role in effecting the change in Maneka's ministry. Nevertheless, party circles admit that Sonia recoiled at the prospect of sharing a platform with Maneka the moment the minister began vilifying the leader of the opposition after winning a defamation suit against Indira Gandhi's biographer Katherine Frank. The Congress president thereafter used a back channel contact to convey to Vajpayee that she would not like to attend IGNCA or other functions presided over by her estranged sister-in-law. Congress leaders believe the prime minister would have factored in Sonia's preferences while taking his decision. Officially, of course, the party has been maintaining that Maneka's wings were clipped because she was a thorn in the government's flesh. "In the beginning, Vajpayee needed a Gandhi in the government. Not any longer," says CWC member Kamal Nath. This is not the first time that Vajpayee has displayed an eagerness to accommodate Sonia's sensitivities. He has been humouring the Congress president for the past six months. During her June-end visit to the US, he enabled her to address a special session of the UN General Assembly on AIDS/HIV and also encouraged the American Administration to interact with her. There are other signs of the thaw: prickly issues have conveniently been put on the backburner. The CBI probe into the financial dealings of Vincent George, Sonia's private secretary, have slowed down, sources say. Notices to the Congress to vacate houses in the Lutyens' Bungalow Zone where they have overstayed have been put in the deep freeze. Janata Party President Subramanian Swamy's "chargesheet" against Sonia, asking the Ministry of Personnel to investigate antiques smuggling and other charges against her, have been long forgotten. On her part, Sonia has been striking a cordial note in all public engagements with Vajpayee. Six months ago such cooperation would have been unimaginable. In the aftermath of the Tehelka scandal, the Government went on the offensive. Elections to four state assembly elections were round the corner and the Government was determined that the Congress got no advantage. Law enforcing agencies seemed determined to bring to book Bofors payoffs accused Ottavio Quattrocchi, who is a Sonia associate. At the end of the budget session. Sonia felt so cornered that she shook with rage in the Lok Sabha. "They insulted my mother-in-law and my husband. Now my children and I are being called thieves," she complained to stunned Home Minister L.K. Advani. In his valedictory address, Vajpayee too had railed at abuses heaped at him in the House. Today, the adversarial relationship between government and opposition has not exactly ended. Instead, in seeking to alter his equation with the Congress, Vajpayee has attempted to make his own position unassailable. The Congress virtually holds him in awe and has in the past few months not made any frontal attack on him. It has instead turned its guns on Advani. As Sonia cosies up to Vajpayee, she gives him one more reason to believe why he alone can head the NDA Government. The rest of his term looks that much more secure. -Lakshmi Iyer

GETTING CLOSER: Sonia's party seems to be playing up the Vajpayee-Advani divide

To ensure Lal Bahadur Shastri didn't move in, the Nehru Memorial Trust or Fund was hurriedly created and "Teen Murti was dedicated to the nation and the 'people of India'". In sum, it stayed with the Family, the Congress. In the very year, the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library (NMML) was set up and took over much of Teen Murti Bhavan. The government-funded NMML and the private Nehru Memorial Fund (NMF) happily co-existed, with the Fund for some inexplicable reason being given five rent-free rooms. It was a nice single party arrangement.

On Thursday, November 22, 2001, the grip slackened a bit. The Prime Minister's Office (PMO) finalised the composition of the new society that would run the NMML for the next five years. A tortuous proxy war between Sonia and Maneka, Nehru's granddaughters-in-law, was beginning to tell.

The NMML is governed by a society of 33 members, 27 nominated by the government for five years and six ex officio representatives-including three secretaries to the government of India and, to confound incestuous confusion, one nominee of the Nehru Fund. From the old society, barely half a dozen-among them Asian Age Editor M.J. Akbar-had been given a new term. Sonia was no more the president nor N.D. Tiwari, veteran Congress politician, vice-president. They were only ordinary members, losing their jobs to Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and BJP MP T.N. Chaturvedi.

Old Nehru-Gandhi associates like Abid Hussain and H.Y. Sharada Prasad were no longer on the list, but Manmohan Singh (Congress) and Sikandar Bakht (BJP) were. They were joined by Penguin CEO David Davidar, Times of India's cartoonist R.K. Laxman and senior journalist Dileep Padgaonkar, Mammen Matthew, editor of the Malayala Manorama Group, and scientists Anil Kakodkar and M.G.K. Menon. Notable among those waved goodbye were Devendra Swaroop and K.R. Malkani, RSS-affiliated ideologues who had found a place in the society over the past two years courtesy mid-term resignations.

The list was not a victory for either the Congress or the BJP. Rather, it was the PMO dispensing old-style patronage. Nor did the unusually large media contingent seem to fit into the NMML's avowed purpose of promoting scholarship in modern Indian history. Nevertheless, Sonia's effective dethronement at the NMML-coming two years after she was removed as chairperson of the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts (IGNCA) and made an ordinary trustee-meant a minor truncation of a huge inheritance (see chart).

The PMO's decision also brought the curtain down on a week of riveting gossip. On Sunday, November 18, the prime minister had sacked Maneka as minister of state for culture-the agency overseeing the NMML and the IGNCA-and moved her to the insignificant department of programme implementation and statistics.

Maneka had gone to town telling everybody she had been booted out-after only 78 days in the ministry-because she was trying to free bodies like the NMML from Sonia's clutches. She implied that a deal had been struck between Vajpayee and Sonia, in which the Prevention of Terrorism Ordinance would be backed by the Congress if Maneka were removed. "It was quid pro quo for POTO," says Maneka.

Maneka came into the Gandhi household as Sanjay's bride in 1974. Sonia was already the established daughter-in-law, married to older brother Rajiv. The family bitterness intensified after Sanjay died in 1980 and, on March 28, 1982, Maneka left the prime minister's residence under, literally, the media's gaze. In 1984, after Indira's assassination, Maneka challenged Rajiv in the Amethi Lok Sabha constituency, running a sometimes crude campaign and taking the political rivalry beyond a point of return.