5 august 2019 http://www.openthemagazine.com 25
Then, fate intervened—and intervened twice. Sanjay Gandhi
died in a plane accident and Indira Gandhi was killed by her own
security guards.
We have been told that Sonia Gandhi was fiercely opposed
to her husband taking up the prime ministerial job. But it was a
national call. only Rajiv Gandhi could succeed the assassinated
Indira Gandhi. Thereafter began Sonia Gandhi’s second round
of political education; this time, she got to have a much more
intimate knowledge of the trials and tribulations a prime
minister need necessarily endure.
more relevantly, Sonia Gandhi must have observed how, de-
spite a massive mandate, her husband could not get the better of
the Congress party establishment. Rajiv Gandhi’s days as ‘a rebel
and a reformer’ did not last long; he was spectacularly rebuffed
when he tried to challenge ‘the ruling orthodoxies’. Sonia Gandhi
was a witness to how, after his short-lived rebellion, Rajiv was con-
strained to make his peace with those very ‘power brokers’ he had
denounced so grandiloquently at the Bombay Centenary Session.
This must have been an absorbing lesson in the Congress realpo-
litik and the Congress leaders’ taste for intrigue and double talk.
In her turn, Sonia Gandhi was absolutely clear from day one
as the Congress president: she would not take on the Congress,
she would not try to reform this oldest political formation in the
world. For their part, the Congress leaders and cadres understood
that Sonia Gandhi alone could help them gain power and they
were perfectly happy to offer obedience and loyalty in return for
patronage and perks of office.
This was a mutually satisfying arrangement: the Congress
leaders did not have to make any kind of commitment about
issues of ideology. ‘pragmatism’ became the working principle
and ‘electoral victories’ the only yardstick of ‘political success’. As
long as Sonia Gandhi was able to work her presumed magic withas long as sonia
gandhi was able
to woRk heR
pResumed magiC
with the voteRs,
CongRess leadeRs
thRoughout the
CountRy weRe
Content to fall
in line; no one
botheRed to even
RegisteR that all
avenues of ‘inneR
demoCRaCy’ had
been Choked off
Photograph by rohit chawla