Cover Story: Congress; Stepping Down to Conquer

The issue of Sonia Gandhi's Italian origin throws up an unexpected crisis. But by resigning from her post, the Congress president takes the moral high ground to establish supremacy over the party and repackage herself for the elections.

For Congressmen with unusually long memories, it was an evening comparable in the scale of devastation to a January morning 22 years ago when the J-Bomb exploded on Indira Gandhi. Then, it was the venerable Jagjivan Ram and the ambitious H.N. Bahuguna who emerged from the shadows to tell India its best-known secret: that the Emergency lacked popular legitimacy. On the evening of May 15, it fell upon the Maratha strongman Sharad Pawar, the impish former Lok Sabha Speaker P.A. Sangma and the taciturn Tariq Anwar-one Hindu, the other Christian and the third a Muslim-to bring out into the open what the Congress had all along feared but never dared admit: that the nationality of Sonia Gandhi could recoil on the party.

The analogy doesn't stop there. Just as the Congress rebels of 1977 were fiercely denounced for lending credibility to the destabilisers, the Pawar-Sangma-Anwar troika was demonised by the busloads of arguments outside 10 Janpath for being the BJP's Trojan horse. It wasn't entirely an ill-founded charge. For a whole year, the saffron army had been squeamish about going to town over the threat of Rome Raj. An odd VHP functionary here and a tempestuous George Fernandes there may have believed that the real theme of the coming election would be "Be Indian, vote Indian" but there was still some hesitation in the non-Congress mainstream. Even Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee had expressed his misgivings over making Sonia's Italian origins the issue.

For a Congress steeped in the dynastic tradition, Sonia seems the only meal ticket to electoral success

The May 15 letter not only forced the concern into the open, it made it respectable. "It is not possible that a country of 980 million," said the well-drafted, poisoned dart, " ... can have anyone other than an Indian born on Indian soil to head its government." For the Congress establishment, what was particularly galling was that the letter was prompted by a move, earlier that day, to answer the BJP's whisper campaign with an unequivocal declaration that Sonia was going to be the party's prime ministerial candidate. Not only did the calculations go awry but the Congress Working Committee (CWC) meeting witnessed the novel spectacle of the so-called unquestioned leader being told that she was an electoral liability. "We don't know," the outspoken Sangma told Sonia, "if you have two passports and two nationalities ... Madam, how can we defend you when we don't know you?"

The Congress does not tolerate challenges to the leadership. Pawar, Sangma and Anwar broke the rule and were demonised

The theme was picked up by Pawar. It found more diplomatic expressions in Rajesh Pilot who requested that any decision on leadership be deferred until the newly-elected MPs met. For Sonia, hitherto untutored in the rough edges of politics, it was a devastating experience. She began the meeting by telling the CWC "I will not be intimidated" by the BJP's malicious campaign and ended up discovering its echo within a family enterprise. "What is wrong with the BJP campaign?" asked Sangma, "It is a genuine concern."

Sonia didn't think so. Hurt, angry and disappointed at the same time, she sat in silence for half an hour after the meeting and then penned a resignation letter. She was particularly shaken by the unwillingness of the stalwarts to rise to her defence. "How can they keep quiet when my origins and loyalty are being questioned?" she is reported to have said. "They want me to work for them, help them win elections but not take the prime minister's post. Have I even asked for a ticket?"

In two days time, the sense of betrayal was fine-tuned into a formidable strategy that was to lead to a complete reversal of fortunes. Instinct or calculation, Sonia's resignation speech was a masterpiece in emotional bulldozing couched in diplomatic prose. "Certain of my colleagues (have) expressed views to the effect that my having been born elsewhere is a liability to the Congress ... In these circumstances, my sense of loyalty to the party and duty to my country compel me to tender my resignation from the post of party president." With these words, she walked across the AICC lawns to 10 Janpath, accompanied by adviser R.D. Pradhan and followed by four wailing women and Sitaram Kesri. The octogenarian former president who was deposed by Sonia last year in a ruthless palace coup, held her tightly, his eyes moist. "Mere rehte kaise jaaogi (How can you leave as long as I'm here)?" he implored. Kesri's long-term attendant fell at Sonia's feet, moved as much by his master's emotions as by utter incomprehension.

It was the first clip of a Bollywood-style tear-jerker. For the next few days, Delhi's Akbar Road was witness to a very Indian tamasha as Congressmen rediscovered their skills in emotional overkill. From Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Digvijay Singh who snatched paper from Sonia's secretary Vincent George's printer to scribble his resignation to the young man who climbed a jamun tree and said he wouldn't get down till Sonia withdrew her resignation, the Congress experienced a prolonged spell of community wailing. Resignations, attempted self-immolations, sit-ins, hunger strikes and letters in blood-every trick in the agitprop armoury was used to get Sonia to relent.

At one level it was all very contrived. Nurtured in a tradition of doublespeak and hero worship, the Congress was doing what it is instinctively familiar with. At another level, however, the emotional outpouring is very real. Not having known any other leader outside the Nehru-Gandhi family for most of its post-Independence existence, Congressmen are genuinely apprehensive of a future bereft of the one brand name that has seen them through times good and bad. More important, it is the only political brand name that has an undoubted appeal. Sonia's Italian origin may well be a relative liability in a presidential campaign where the opponent is Vajpayee but the Congress doesn't have any other alternative. With Sonia as the prime ministerial candidate, the party may well lose but without her it will be completely wiped out. It was this realisation that brought her into politics in December 1997 as the main campaigner for Kesri's Congress. She couldn't prevent a poor showing but Congressmen believe that without her it would have been a rout.

Sonia is only too aware of her symbolic importance to the Congress. As she meets wailing women from Meerut and Rohtak who say their home fires haven't been lit since the day she walked out of the CWC, there is a sense that she can't really abandon the family firm. A sense of noblesse oblige dictates that she must live up to her duties as the Gandhi family bahu. "The party needs me," is her constant refrain to those non-political friends who tell her that politics is a dirty game for knaves and scoundrels.

Yet, unlike Indira who breathed politics, Sonia is very much like Rajiv-someone who has been forced into it. She pleaded with Rajiv to stay away from public life, saw Indira gunned down before her eyes, lost the only love of her life eight years ago in Sriperumbudur and watched her children lead unreal, over-protected lives. A housewife who valued her privacy fiercely, she has entered an arena she is not naturally at ease with. This inexperience showed when she unsuccessfully bid for the top job after the fall of the Vajpayee Government and cut a sorry figure. Sonia may have native shrewdness and even cunning but she is not instinctively political. She neither speaks nor comprehends the language of politics.

Yet, in a curious sort of way, her response to the Pawar revolt has been entirely political. Gauging the disquiet in the leadership over her style of functioning-Pawar wouldn't have become a rebel if she had given him a place of dignity-and finally comprehending the innate duplicity behind the language of flattery, she has turned adversity into advantage. By holding out to the pressures on her to resile from her resignation, Sonia has forced the Congress to come crawling to her. Until May 15, she thought she was the unchallenged boss. When she realised that wasn't the case, she deftly allowed the Gandhi brand image to overwhelm all opposition. Whether as the formal head or an extra-constitutional authority in the party, Sonia has established her total control over the Congress. She has shown she is bigger than the party and that, at the end of the day, it's her party. The AICC session on May 25 will be her real coronation.

On the image front too the resignation has done her no harm. There is a culture of hypocrisy in Indian politics that values denial, sacrifice and asceticism. When Sonia took to politics and preached the virtues of the long haul at Pachmarhi, she projected herself as a politician who wasn't impatient for power. The fortnight between Vajpayee's defeat and the dissolution of Parliament shattered that image. When she walked out of Rashtrapati Bhavan to announce the support of 272 MPs, she came across as a greedy, power-hungry individual who was not averse to cutting sordid deals. That was the day her foreignness became an issue. Last week, at one fell stroke, she regained some of the public esteem. She has successfully added self-sacrifice to her family's record of sacrifice.

The danger arises if she succumbs to temptation and is persuaded to return as Congress president and its prime ministerial candidate. The resignation drama will immediately then be seen to have been cynically stage-managed to extract the maximum political mileage. Indira would have got away with it because she epitomised power and ruthlessness. For Sonia, still struggling with prepared texts, these are mismatching liabilities. Despite the family label, her appeal remains fundamentally non-political and born of emotions. With a secretive style and unfamiliar background, her public image is still in the stage of evolution. With the foreigner controversy still rankling, a wrong note can prove very costly.

Perhaps Sonia knows that this may be a wrong time to bid for power. In December last year, she was topping the popularity charts because of the Vajpayee Government's initial mismanagement. Now, the prime minister is way ahead in the polls and the Congress gives the impression of being in utter confusion. The theatrics outside 10 Janpath notwithstanding, the Pawar rebellion and Sonia's resignation was a case of dirty linen being gleefully washed in public. For a party that seeks to make stability its selling point, the past week has been a nightmare. Sonia has won a lot of personal sympathy but she may not have added to the Congress' political appeal. Compared to the BJP which seems to have got its coalition act together and is preparing for a presidential-style campaign with Vajpayee, the Congress looks distinctly tacky.

Which is why good political sense deems that Sonia will probably not blink. She may use the AICC to instal a new Congress president of her choice. The names of P. Shiv Shanker-a backward-caste loyalist from Andhra Pradesh-and Manmohan Singh-an intellectual with a good public image and no political base-are being mentioned. For the moment, the Congress will not name any prime ministerial candidate but Sonia will have her say over nominations and be the party's only real campaigner. Blessed with a new halo, she will again draw the crowds and may even offset some of the sympathy for Vajpayee. The question is: will it get the Congress votes?

As a prime ministerial candidate, Sonia ran the risk of losing her mystique in the event of defeat. As the Congress' undesignated prime mover, she can exercise complete authority and yet stay away from the line of nationalist fire. If the Congress wins, the crown will be naturally offered to her. If she turns it down, she will become both a deity and the real power behind the throne. For Sonia, self-denial holds out a promising future. Even a happy ending.

SONIA'S NATIONALITY
UNANSWERED QUESTIONS

In-Law: For Sonia's supporters, it's enough that she is from the Gandhi family

On May 12, Delhi-based lawyer P.N. Lekhi moved a public-interest petition before the Delhi High Court saying Sonia did not satisfy the definition of an Indian citizen as outlined in Article 5. This Article holds that "at the commencement of this Constitution" anybody "who was born in the territory of India"; or whose parents were; or who had been living in India for five years prior to the day is a citizen of India.

The Constitution's framers had reckoned only with natural-born and not addressed the issue of naturalisation. This lacuna was filled by the Citizenship Act, 1955. Thus Lekhi's contention is that the Constitution doesn't really recognise, non-natural citizens thereby making them ineligible for public office.

While the petition is being heard, several questions are being raised about Sonia's nationality.

How did Sonia's name figure in the voters list even before she had acquired Indian citizenship?

Did she or someone in her family or the then government short-circuit procedures in applying for Indian citizenship?

Did she surrender her Italian citizenship and passport before acquiring an Indian one?

Does she hold dual citizenship?

Thus far, the only response has been silence. The fact, however, is Sonia married Rajiv Gandhi in 1968 and became an Indian citizen in 1983. Yet, in 1980 her name figured (see document) in the voters' list as a resident of 1 Safdarjang Road, Delhi, voter No. 388, polling station 145 of the New Delhi constituency. If it was not a clerical lapse, an enumerator could have inadvertently included her name along with the Gandhis. Curiously, however, Sonia's age-she was 35 then-is recorded correctly.

In Form 6-the application for inclusion in the electoral rolls-an aspiring voter has to make the declaration: "I am a citizen of India." A false declaration is "punishable under section 31 of the Representation of the Peoples Act, 1950". After a media furore, Sonia's name was deleted from the voters' list in 1982. Yet her name returned in the revised rolls for the local municipal elections of February 5, 1983 as voter No. 236 in polling booth 140. Contemporary newspapers report Indira and Rajiv voted at the Tughlaq Road booth. There's no mention of Sonia.

As the wife of an Indian and a resident of this country, Sonia was eligible for citizenship in 1973. She exercised that right only on April 30, 1983. Section 19 of the Citizenship Act makes clear that "if he/she is a citizen of any country, he has renounced the citizenship of that country in accordance with the law ... and has notified such renunciation to the Central Government." While Italy allows its citizens to hold dual nationality, India does not.

The Foreigners' Regional Registration Office presumes that since Sonia figures in its records as an Indian citizen, she must have renounced her Italian citizenship and given an undertaking to this effect. It is now for Sonia or the government to make public such an affidavit. That will end all controversy.

-Sayantan Chakravarty