The making of the matriarch

Sonia Gandhi is, arguably, the most misunderstood politician today. Whether in the Congress party or among her political peers, there is no comprehension of the total person she really is.

Talk to any reporter who has been around since the Emergency and you will get an entertaining account of Atal Bihari Vajpayee's salad days or L K Advani's growth and development as a politician during the rath yatra or even Sitaram Yechuri's career as a student leader in Jawaharlal Nehru University.

All these accounts will be redolent of the smells, tastes and flavours of the era, the individual leaders' likes and dislikes, allowing you to make a judgment of their responses in a given situation.

Not so Sonia Gandhi. "She's so Indian, she doesn't eat a meal without achaar," gushed one Congress politician. "She still can't make an impromptu speech in Hindi. God knows what will become of us," moaned another, wringing his hands.

Sonia Gandhi's personality appears to lie buried under the combined burden of years of the Nehru-Gandhi family's compulsion to run the Congress party, the natural wile of a politician and her own reserve.

Rasheed Kidwai's book doesn't tell us whether Gandhi has a sense of humour, how she responds under pressure, what books she reads or who her Gods are. Does she listen to Verdi or Maria Callas or Amjad Ali Khan? Can she tell jokes?

What colours does she like? He can't be blamed for this. He explains at the beginning that the book is not an authorised biography. This is because Gandhi herself was not very forthcoming about herself.

Kidwai's book, therefore, is a carefully researched, well-documented account of the circumstances surrounding Sonia Gandhi's ascendance in politics, the play of politics around her and the process of learning she underwent when she took the plunge into politics. But how she really felt and reacted and what she really thought, is missing from the account.

We know that her speech in 1995 at Amethi on Rajiv Gandhi's birthday was the first signal that she wanted to take things in her own hands. She told citizens of Amethi that she was sharing her pain with them at the delay by the government in finding Rajiv Gandhi's killers. The prime minister was P V Narasimha Rao and this was the first overtly political action by Sonia Gandhi.

But on whose advice did she take the plunge? And if she was going to, why didn't she do so a few weeks earlier when leaders like Sheila Dixit, Arjun Singh, N D Tewari and others split the Congress and invited her to take up the leadership of the Congress?

The book goes on to track her education in politics. Long silences as she listened and learnt appear to have played a big part, especially relating to issues like economic reforms, where she turned to her guru and teacher Dr Manmohan Singh.

As she herself won the Bellary and the Amethi Lok Sabha seats and the Congress party felled the BJP in state after state, we learn how Sonia Gandhi's confidence in herself grew and how her political judgment matured.

Unfortunately, the book has very little on the relationship between the Congress President and the state satraps, a relationship that in the politics of the Congress, has always been a defining one.

Gandhi continues to believe in non-interference in the affairs of Congress chief ministers "" unlike Rajiv Gandhi who messed around with them so much that he succeeded in making enemies out of friends, and Indira Gandhi, who was perpetually paranoid about chief ministers and their designs, and ever ready to listen to dissidents (in one year in the mid-1980s, Indira Gandhi changed chief ministers nine times in Andhra Pradesh, leading to the development of the Telugu Desam on the slogan of Telugu pride).

Kidwai tells us about Sonia Gandhi's vision for the average Congressman: that he must believe in women's empowerment, gender equality, environmental awareness, clean water, and so on. But how was this to be brought about? What did Gandhi do about it?

The picture that emerges is that of a matriarch, who, having decided she has a job to do, goes about it briskly and without emotion, having mentally dissociated herself from the process and concerned only about her final destination. But that, we know, cannot be the truth.

Gandhi must have agonised over steps she was about to take, argued with herself about the merits and demerits of a course of action and may be even have applauded herself for having taken the right decision. But then, how would Kidwai know?

The temptation, in writing a biography where the principal has not spoken to the author, is to err on the side of caution and turn it into a hagiographical account of the individual's life and times.

Mercifully, while Kidwai does not hide sneaking admiration for Sonia Gandhi, he has consciously avoided the trap of a Sonia-is-India India-is-Sonia type of biography. The book deals with individuals and the impact they've had on Sonia Gandhi and in the process goes deep into the politics of leadership in the Congress, something that has fascinated students of political sociology.

Among the biographies of Sonia Gandhi, Rasheed Kidwai's book is the best. It is contemporary and tries to demystify Gandhi. Only a reporter who has covered the Congress party's affairs for long years and is familiar with the stratagems that Congress leaders use to spread disinformation, can undertake the task.

This is an extremely useful volume for those who want to understand the growth and evolution of a new leadership in the Congress. But we do need another book, Rasheed, which should be titled: 'Sonia, Unplugged'.

SONIA
A Biography

Rasheed Kidwai
Penguin Viking
Pages: 240
Price: Rs 399