Babri, Bofors to anti-Sikh riots: How Sonia’s memoir navigates Congress’s uncomfortable past | Political Pulse News

In a way, Belonging: A Journey of Love comes across as two books, one a candid and warm account of her personal life told lucidly and the other a cautious and cagey retelling of her political career. These two aspects stand in stark contrast to each other. The personal account, including details of her middle-class upbringing in the Italian town of Orbassano, seems to be a conscious attempt to establish her as an ordinary, vulnerable woman like any other and not an entitled outsider. For the first time, she has also spoken about her battle with cancer.

However, Sonia, the longest-serving Congress president, is circumspect and guarded when it comes to politics. There are uncomfortable silences, selective tellings, and perhaps one-sided accounts.

Emergency

Sonia reveals that Rajiv was in favour of Indira resigning as Prime Minister and facing fresh elections after the Allahabad High Court ruled her election to be invalid. However, the PM agreed with her younger son Sanjay who was not in favour of her resignation.

Sonia, in fact, tries to absolve Indira of the excesses of the Emergency era, putting the blame on Sanjay. She says it was undeniable that Sanjay “had a significant role in decision-making during the Emergency period, despite lacking a constitutional locus standi for some of his political interventions”.

There is repeated mention of Rajiv approaching Indira to flag complaints. “Rajiv had felt that his mother was pressured by Sanjay’s strident approach to political issues, and we could see that it came from her feeling politically cornered and alone. He used to report to her complaints or feedback from passengers that he’d hear during his journeys as a pilot, but she’d listen quietly, without offering a comment … On one occasion my mother-in-law rebuked Rajiv for being naive in believing the reports he was bringing to her,” she writes.

Sonia also recounts a conversation that the family had — including Sanjay’s wife Maneka, whom Indira believed “was egging him on in his activities”, the Congress leader writes — following the 1977 Lok Sabha elections in which the Congress was routed.

“In one family discussion that took place in Sanjay’s room, Rajiv said vehemently, ‘I cannot forgive you, Sanjay — you have brought Ma to this pass.’ My mother-in-law, upset and agitated, assented: ‘What Rajiv said is true, Sanjay! How many times you gave orders without my knowledge.’ Maneka intervened, and my mother-in-law, raising her voice, challenged her to deny it.”

However, Sonia makes no mention of the role Sanjay played in the Congress’s return to power in 1980 in a landslide win.

1984 riots

Sonia’s retelling of the anti-Sikh riots that followed Indira Gandhi’s assassination in 1984 comes across as tendentious. Rajiv had famously remarked that “when a big tree falls, the earth shakes”. Sonia, however, quotes Rajiv appealing for peace in his television broadcast.

“One thing I am certain of: Rajiv himself, just and compassionate to his core, could not in any way have authorised those heinous acts on innocent men, women, and children. His instinctive, immediate response at a moment of extreme personal affliction bears that out. But while his heart held no bigotry or rancour, there is no denying that he was thrust into a moment of the country’s history when effective governance had foundered and barbaric acts followed,” she writes.

The Congress leader admits that the governance system in the country underwent “a time of cataclysmic upheaval in which the structure of government had come under strain — perhaps even broken down”.

“It is also evident that some in charge must have looked the other way as enraged crowds sought vengeance, and in some instances even stoked passions, adding fuel to the fire—as described in eyewitness accounts,” she writes.

Bhopal gas tragedy and Bofors

Sonia is silent on the Bhopal gas tragedy and Union Carbide CEO Warren Anderson fleeing the country, something that the BJP raises to this day to target Rajiv. On Bofors, there is no mention of Ottavio Quattrocchi, the infamous Italian businessman whose alleged proximity to the Gandhi family remains a political hot-button topic even now. She merely mentions the charges of bribery hurled at Rajiv, his explanations, and the Delhi High Court’s 2004 verdict dismissing all charges against Rajiv. “But appeal followed appeal against that judgement, and ‘Bofors’ remains a handy buzzword for our opponents, particularly during elections,” she writes.

Shah Bano and Babri

Sonia makes it a point to note she was agitated over the Shah Bano issue. “I argued with him (Rajiv) and questioned him: ‘The papers are accusing you of sacrificing Muslim women’s interests. What’s going on? Why are you letting this happen?’ He replied that he was trying to deal fairly with a complicated situation. ‘Wouldn’t I defend women’s rights—don’t you know me?’” he said in a slightly irritated tone.

The Congress leader says her husband explained that he was seeking a way to address the problem of Shah Bano and other women like her without putting in jeopardy the entire edifice of Muslim Personal Law. “The compromise he accepted did in fact strike a balance between religious beliefs and gender justice, and it also gave Muslim women a more fair and reasonable portion than the pitiful monthly amount of Rs 179.2 awarded by the court to Shah Bano…,” she writes.

While some Congress leaders in the past have noted that the Rajiv government allowed the locks of the Babri Masjid to be opened — setting off a chain of events that culminated with the rise of the BJP — Sonia writes that the Faizabad district court in February 1986 “suddenly altered the status quo and ordered the unlocking of the gates” after within an hour the mosque gates were opened “with suspicious speed” and a crowd of worshippers were let in. The Congress was in power at the Centre and in Uttar Pradesh at the time.

Narasimha Rao and Sitaram Kesri

Sonia also sidesteps the questions about her ties with Congress veterans P V Narasimha Rao, who, after Rajiv’s assassination, became the first non-Nehru-Gandhi PM to last a full term, and Sitaram Kesri, whom she replaced as Congress president.

She writes that despite attempts to paint their relationship as adversarial, the only time she clashed with Rao was when she publicly expressed her dissatisfaction “with the slow progress into the investigation of the assassination” of her husband. After Rao’s death in December 2004, his body was not allowed inside the Congress’s then headquarters at Delhi’s 24, Akbar Road and the former PM’s cortege waited on the pavement outside the main gate. The book makes no mention of all that.

While Kesri faced an unceremonious exit from the Congress in 1998, Sonia glosses over the episode, saying that the Congress Working Committee had unanimously decided that a change of leadership was necessary and Kesri “was made to step down”. After taking over on March 14, 1998, “on an impulse I drove directly from the meeting to his house, greeted him, and bent down to touch his feet, as one does as a mark of respect to elders”. The veteran Congressman “was taken aback”, Sonia writes, but gave her his blessing “with tears in his eyes”.

The Rahul episode

In the book, Sonia is also silent on one controversy that hobbled the Manmohan Singh government that had faced one scandal after another. In 2013, Rahul Gandhi publicly junked an ordinance brought by the government overriding a Supreme Court ruling and allowing convicted lawmakers to retain their seats.