The Importance of Being Sonia

Why the Congress cannot do without her. And why that presents her with yet another political challenge

A few weeks ago, while Sonia Gandhi was still recuperating after her treatment abroad and Congress leaders were speaking in multiple voices on the Anna movement, a party veteran said in a private conversation that she is like a conductor whose mere presence elicits consonant notes of a discordant orchestra, but the moment she leaves the scene, the orchestra lapses into cacophony.

Cacophonous, the Congress had indeed become during Sonia Gandhi’s five-week-long absence from the country. The party and its government looked increasingly helpless, and often clueless, in the face of one crisis after another. The Congress President, who had left the country on 2 August, returned home on 8 September—only to find a party almost at a complete loss for cohesion and coherence. Take a look around. Factionalism has taken a turn for the worse, and conspiracy theories are doing the rounds. Fingers are even being pointed at some senior Cabinet ministers for their mishandling of the crisis created by the Anna Hazare-led agitation against corruption.

It all started at the beginning of the Monsoon session of Parliament—mere days after Sonia Gandhi left India for treatment of an undisclosed ailment—with the tabling of a CAG report on suspected irregularities in the organisation of last year’s Commonwealth Games in Delhi. The report dealt a blow to the image of the Union Government, already under pressure over charges of corruption in the allocation of 2G spectrum to telecom firms in 2008.

Sonia Gandhi’s absence was put in stark relief by the party’s utterances. Congress spokesperson Manish Tewari, addressing the media on 14 August, alleged that Hazare was “neck deep in corruption” and that he needed to be “shown his place”. If the party had a hard time trying to live that down, worse still was the way the Manmohan Singh Government responded to this political crisis through its key managers: Union Ministers P Chidambaram and Kapil Sibal. Haunted by Hazare’s earlier indefinite fast in April, when the Government was forced to back down, the duo is said to have played a vital role in the decision to arrest the social activist this time round.

Accordingly, Hazare was detained on 16 August, early morning, but instead of containing his influence, it led to an escalation of public protests. Though he was released that very evening, it endowed him with the halo of a ‘freedom fighter’ put behind bars. It was only after the Congress lost all control of the scenario that Chidambaram and Sibal were replaced by Pranab Mukherjee and Salman Khurshid, seasoned forecasters of crowd response. Manish Tewari, too, was later made to apologise to Hazare for his remarks. Party insiders now say it was Rahul Gandhi who secured the release of Hazare and persuaded his party colleagues to refrain from tarring Hazare (or any of his teammates) in person.

In making that claim, Congress insiders bolster the belief that Sonia Gandhi’s absence was not just glaring but grievous, and that they would have handled the crisis better had she been around. The sighs in New Delhi have been in evidence for a while. “All of us are missing her,” Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said on 20 August, the 67th birth anniversary of the late Rajiv Gandhi, “We pray to God that she recovers soon and guides us once again.” On his part, Congress spokesperson Janardan Dwivedi said, “Whatever has happened has happened. Now, the situation should be handled more carefully.” He was replying to a question on whether Sonia Gandhi could have made a difference, given the widespread perception of Congress ham-handedness in handling the Anna challenge.

The big question, therefore, is: why is the Congress so hand-strapped without its president? Why, in her absence, does it muddle the slightest attempt to go beyond routine politics? Why does her mere presence count for so much?

That brings into the picture Sonia Gandhi’s leadership style as much as what is referred to as the ‘Congress culture’. Arguably, her role in the party, as compared to that of her predecessors from the Gandhi-Nehru family, has been far more nuanced, marked by the subtlety of silences more than the definitiveness of directives. While Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi always led the party and government from the front, Sonia Gandhi has preferred to lead only electoral campaigns this way, receding backstage thereafter on matters of governance. It has helped preserve for her an image of being ‘above the fray’, in a sense, and this has helped uphold the authority she wields within the party.

According to party insiders, she presides chiefly over high-level party meetings and uses senior Congress leaders to do most of the talking. This way, she exercises her influence indirectly, with her coterie left with the operative aspects of detail. Her reliance on back-channel communications to resolve issues confronting the party and her coterie’s role in these have clearly established that power within the party emanates through proximity to her. For all its drawbacks, this keeps the party together (at least in her presence): it leads to competition among Congressmen to do her perceived bidding, which in turn ensures not just discipline in the ranks but a unity of direction for all.

In terms of impact, the authority she wields is as crucial to her ability to play conductor to a ‘discordant orchestra’ as her being the main representative of the ruling family. The remarkable harmony that she manages to achieve thus is indeed unique, especially in a party as vast and diverse as the Congress.

On many dramatic moments in the past, Sonia Gandhi has successfully renewed her authority through what is in its own way a moral force. Glimpses of this were first seen in 1991 when he declined to lead the party, in the face of fervent pleas, in the aftermath of her husband Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination. Then again, in May 1995, when leaders like ND Tiwari and Arjun Singh openly revolted against what they saw as PV Narasimha Rao’s bid to snatch the party away from the Gandhi-Nehru family, she gracefully refused to lend support to any breakaway faction, opting to stay neutral—and away from politics.

When she finally decided to speak up, her decision had an aura of moral authority to it. She broke her silence in the winter of 1997, not to lay claim to the party’s leadership, but to help rescue it from what was clearly a crisis of survival. She offered herself modestly as a campaigner for the party in the general election of 1998. Back then, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was on the ascendant, making the Congress, marred by infighting and desertions, look like a relic of history.

Moreover, Sonia Gandhi did not announce her decision at a public rally or press conference. It came in the form of a cryptic note issued by her secretary V George on 29 December 1997: ‘A large number of Congress workers from all over the country have requested Mrs Sonia Gandhi to take active interest in the affairs of the Congress party which is at the moment passing through a very crucial phase. On 17 December 1997, the Congress president [Sitaram Kesri] conveyed to Mrs Gandhi the unanimous request of the extended Congress Working Committee to campaign for the party at this difficult moment. Mrs Gandhi has acceded to these requests. Details for putting this decision into practice are being worked out by the AICC.’

Though it took some time for Sonia Gandhi to reverse the party’s downslide and increase its tally in Parliament, the Congress did start behaving like a coherent organisation the moment that announcement was made. The cohesion got a fillip once she took charge of the Congress, after her managers staged an inner-party coup against Sitaram Kesri in March 1998. The party suddenly had a new sense of purpose. Voices of disgruntlement were quickly quietened. In May 1999, Sharad Pawar, PA Sangma and Tariq Anwar challenged her right to lead the country on account of her foreign birth. In response, Sonia Gandhi offered to resign as party leader, resulting in an outpouring of support for her and the expulsion of the three rebels, who went on to set up the Nationalist Congress Party. Her leadership has not been challenged since.

However, if Sonia Gandhi’s moral stature as a reluctant leader needed broader consolidation (across the political spectrum), the moment presented itself in the Congress’ electoral victory of 2004 and her appointment of Manmohan Singh as Prime Minister of India. After an against-the-odds campaign to seize power from the BJP, this renunciatory moment was an occasion of high emotion for her party and sundry supporters.

It had the effect of a popular endorsement of her claim to supreme authority within the arena of Indian politics. So, on 23 March 2006, when she announced her resignation from the Lok Sabha and also as chairperson of the National Advisory Council (under the office-of-profit controversy), the impact was no surprise. In one stroke, it ended all speculation that the Government was planning an ordinance to exempt the NAC chairperson from the purview of office-of-profit provisions. Soon, she was re-elected by a margin of over 400,000 votes.

Congress spokesperson Abhishek Manu Singhvi is only too keen to point out that Sonia Gandhi, despite having the opportunity to become Prime Minister, renounced it not once or twice, but thrice. “The first time was the sure-shot certainty in 1991, when the entire party went to request her. But she turned it down. The second time it happened [was] when that incident of ‘272’ occurred [in 1999]. That time, people assumed that she had gone to the President to claim power for herself, but if you see the shots of those days very carefully, you will find Manmohan Singh with her. So, who knows, that time also she wanted the Congress to get power but not herself. And then, of course, there was the classic incident of 2004. It sounds very difficult [to believe] in today’s cynical world. It’s a truth that very few people in the world, forget India, can match.”

Congress Working Committee member Mohan Prakash talks of the initial disadvantage she faced in taking over the party. “Nehru got the legacy of the Freedom Movement. Indira Gandhi got the Nehruvian legacy. And Rajiv Gandhi received the legacy as well as the organisation kept powerful by his mother. Sonia Gandhi, on the other hand, took over the Congress when it was extremely weak in Parliament. The legacy and organisation that was bequeathed to her was that of Sitaram Kesri.”

Few remember that when Sonia Gandhi first decided on taking an active interest in the affairs of the Congress, observers unfamiliar with the party’s inner dynamics could scarcely believe she could achieve anything. The restoration of the Congress from a terminally ill party to a political outfit leading the country’s destiny was no minor feat.

Arguably, all this has come to define Sonia Gandhi’s leadership style, and her stature is such that her mere presence or absence from the scene means a lot to the party’s performance. It is not surprising, therefore, that in the little over one month that she was indisposed, the entire party seems to have got riddled with factionalism, differences of opinion and a woeful lack of direction.

Though it is likely to be another month before Sonia Gandhi resumes active leadership of the Congress, she faces the formidable task of restoring the image of the party left bruised by the experience of the past month or so.

There is a widespread belief within the party that the party’s electoral prospects have been hurt considerably by the confusion that prevailed while she was away.

Among the issues of prime concern are how to reinstate the authority of the Manmohan Singh Government and rekindle the revival possibilities of the Congress in the populous Hindi belt. On both counts, the party has suffered immensely and undeniably, of late. The mishandling of the Hazare challenge has put the party’s bonhomie with the fast-expanding Indian middle-class at risk. So much so that the twice-trounced BJP has spotted an opportunity in the Centre’s ‘alienation’ of the middle-class. The BJP is raring to exploit the popular anger triggered by Hazare’s anti-corruption agitation, and veteran BJP leader LK Advani’s latest idea of another rath yatra is aimed exactly at that. What seems even more alarming to many Congressmen is that the BJP has started gaining at its cost in the important state of Uttar Pradesh. The Congress had seen a dramatic revival in the Hindi belt during the last Lok Sabha election. This could peter out. Also, UP is a crucial component of Rahul Gandhi’s strategy for a broadbased party rejuvenation that could give him the political stature to be PM someday.

Sonia earned it the hard way, from the point she ‘fought like a tigress’—in her words—to keep Rajiv from joining politics, to the point she found herself in that very arena, fighting again to keep the party and its legacy intact. Now that the Congress is in disarray again, she has another task at hand. And in this battle, the state of her health will also have an unavoidable bearing on the outcome.

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