GANDHI, SONIA

GANDHI, SONIA (1946–), Congress Party leader, widow of Rajiv Gandhi. Sonia Gandhi, the widow of former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi, who was assassinated in 1991, entered politics in 1998 after being persuaded by the Congress Party to lead the organization during that year's general elections. She was elected to Parliament in 1999 from Jawaharlal Nehru's Rai Bareilly constituency, adjacent to Rajiv Gandhi's rural constituency in Amethi, Uttar Pradesh. Rajiv and Sonia Gandhi's son, Harvard-educated Rahul Gandhi, now holds this Parliamentary seat. The Congress Party lost to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)–led coalition in the 1998 elections, and then again in 1999, following the collapse of the BJP coalition in a successful vote of no-confidence. In the April 2004 general elections, riding on the Gandhi name and visibility, she led the Congress Party and its allies back into office. Her victory generated strong passions among extreme Hindu nationalists because of her foreign origins and Christian faith. Concerns about causing deep political divisions in India, and fears of assassination, as in the cases of her husband and her mother-in-law, Indira Gandhi, prompted her not to assume the office of prime minister.

Sonia Maino Gandhi was born in 1946 in the small Italian town of Orbassano, near Turin. Her father was a building contractor, and she was raised as a traditional Roman Catholic. She met Rajiv Gandhi in England, where she had gone to study English at a school in Cambridgeshire, while he was studying engineering at Cambridge University. Sonia and Rajiv were married in 1968. They returned to New Delhi and moved into the residence of Rajiv's mother, Indira Gandhi, who was then prime minister of India. Thereafter, she adapted to the Indian way of life to become part of the Nehru-Gandhi political family, learning Hindi, wearing saris, and adjusting to Indian culture and cuisine. Their daughter, Priyanka, was born in 1970, and their son, Rahul, in 1972.

Sonia Gandhi refused to accept the office of prime minister following her successful 2004 election campaign, wisely remaining president of the Congress Party. She chose the former finance minister under the earlier Congress government, Dr. Manmohan Singh, an Oxford-educated economist, to assume the position of prime minister. He became India's first Sikh prime minister. Sonia Gandhi remained the political power behind the prime minister shaping key Congress government policies.

Raju G. C. Thomas

See alsoGandhi, Indira ; Gandhi, Rajiv ; Singh, Manmohan

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bakshi, S. R., et al. Sonia Gandhi: The President of the AICC. New Delhi: South Asia Books, 1998.

Gandhi, Sonia. Two Alone. New Delhi: Penguin Books, 2004.

Rupa, Chatterjee. Sonia Mystique. New Delhi: Virgo Publications, 2000.

Sanghvi, Vijay. Congress Resurgence under Sonia Gandhi. New Delhi: Kalpaz Publications, 2004.