The Hindu : Opinion / News Analysis : Salute to Sonia

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, May 19, 2004

Opinion

Opinion - News Analysis

Salute to Sonia

By Harish Khare

Respected Soniaji,

Over the last three years I have used this space to make a critical appraisal of the pluses and minuses of your leadership. I have been forthrightly expressing the view that as long as you remained the prime ministerial aspirant, the Congress was unlikely to make it back to power at the Centre. Many a Congressman, predictably, took umbrage at this line of argument.

However, on January 7, in a piece called "Opposition can still do it," I had argued that the objective conditions were not entirely against the Congress but there was the "Sonia factor." And concluded: "The Congress party's collective imagination runs dry in even acknowledging that Ms. Gandhi could be a source of weakness in the battle against the BJP. The onus is ultimately on Ms. Gandhi herself — whether she still cares enough for the Nehruvian legacy and whether she is willing to jettison her power ambitions in order to preserve that legacy."

And, somehow, and wisely enough, you and the Congress shied away from projecting you as the prime ministerial candidate against Atal Bihari Vajpayee in the 2004 Lok Sabha battle. You maintained this deliberate diffidence even when the BJP leaders tried to provoke you with their low rhetoric.

However, before the campaign ended I had written that you had waged a valiant campaign on behalf of the Congress and you had emerged as a taller leader. A day before the counting began, I had written: "a 150-plus tally will legitimise her leadership of the party, though not ipso facto validate her claims to the prime ministerial chair." On the day the votes were being counted and it looked that the NDA had been voted out, I was asked on Doordarshan whether Ms. Gandhi would be the next Prime Minister. I had replied: "neither emotionally, nor politically, nor intellectually is she prepared to become the Prime Minister of India." I could have added that neither was the country mentally prepared to have you as Prime Minister.

Like most political reporters, I am also somewhat familiar with the collective and individual psychology of the Congress leaders and knew that as soon as the results started trickling in, they would be building an inexorable pressure on you to take up the prime ministerial mantle. The predictable happened.

By not listening to these voices and by heeding your own inner voice you have performed an act of great renunciation. Those who advised you to stay away from the prime ministerial chair are your true friends and well-wishers.

Unlike the BJP establishment, which till May 12 morning was arrogantly asserting that Mr. Vajpayee would form the government whatever be the Lok Sabha numbers, you have identified yourself firmly with this land's ancient tradition of tyaag (renunciation). You have deprived the Sangh Parivar's small minds of an issue that they hoped to use to keep divisiveness alive. You have proven wrong all those critics who saw you as a power-hungry person. More than that, you have restored the faith of the people of this country in the nobility of politics and public service.

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