Tangible things like wealth, land and other property go to the men in South and Southeast Asia. Yet quite clearly, political charisma is not a tangible object that can easily be handed down. For the dead male hero to be remembered, his followers need a symbol–something that is intrinsically without value so that emotions can be invested in it. A flag is one kind of symbol, and in patriarchal Asian societies so are women leaders. A male political successor will always be compared with his ancestor and found wanting; there is not a single instance of a son replacing a charismatic father in any of the countries where women have succeeded in doing so. A woman, however, escapes such comparisons and can make an ideal political symbol. Indira Gandhi, Sonia’s mother-in-law, was a trail blazer in this respect. She was the first woman to be elevated to the top slot after the death of her father, the charismatic Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru.
Sonia herself symbolizes the legacy of her husband, Rajiv Gandhi, whose political career was cut short by assassins. The fact that Sonia cannot speak but from a written script, or that she is not a particularly gifted leader, is of little consequence. As a symbol, she is not expected to have any worthwhile qualities of her own. This is why her party’s warring regional satraps, who do not cede an inch to any of their rivals, can accept Sonia. Ancestor worship becomes the duty of the hour and duels can be deferred to another season.
Instinctively, Sonia perhaps realizes that her cachet is her intrinsic worthlessness. So far she has played the symbolic role rather well. Her speeches are usually about her husband and/or her mother-in-law. She has stood up on countless public podiums to extol the virtue of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty to which she belongs by marriage. Not once has she publicly announced any significant ideological inclination that is her own. This is how she has succeeded in instilling unity in the Congress party when it was on the verge of extinction.
With such traits no garden-variety political aspirant could have survived. For Congress sympathizers, and those searching for a symbol, it is of little consequence that Sonia is Italian or Catholic. What matters most is that she can be the rallying point to save the party. Of course, she also must be an Indian citizen and publicly respectful of Hinduism. She took her citizenship in 1985, after nearly 20 years of marriage, only when her husband was contesting elections. She visits Hindu temples, extols Hindu saints and godmen and even made a point of publicly refusing the Catholic sacrament during Mother Teresa’s funeral ceremony.
All of this makes her an ideal figurehead. For Congress party leaders, the choice was a practical matter. The party may be under a cloud, but it is a very old organization with millions of votaries all over the country. Though it was trumped in the last elections by the Bharatiya Janata Party, Congress remains the most broadly based organization of them all. If somebody with real power had emerged, then perhaps the call, “Bring Sonia and save the nation” would not have reached its current stridency.
It is not, then, as if Sonia’s rise can be explained solely in terms of India’s much-vaunted accepting, tolerant and eclectic disposition. The Congress party’s opponents, for their part, are obviously unimpressed by Sonia’s symbolic stature and constantly highlight her lack of attributes. This is why every now and again they insist on sensationalizing her Italian origins. George Fernandes, the Defense minister, was recently photographed holding a placard that urged Indians not to disgrace themselves by choosing a foreigner as their next prime minister. The placard exhorted Sonia to go back to Italy.
Yet if there is one attribute that Sonia truly possesses, it is her European coloring. As Indians are neither white nor black, but brown, they are insecure, even schizoid, about where they fit in with popular notions of racial types. When 19th-century European Indologists first floated the idea that India’s Vedic past was Aryan, the notion filled many Hindu hearts with pride. Even Bankim Chatterjee, a leading Indian nationalist, was overjoyed to count himself among the Aryans. Esthetically, Indians opt for the Caucasian model. They feel somewhat uncomfortable among Europeans, yet long to be mistaken as one of them.
The deification of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty was easily accomplished if only because every member of this family is light-complexioned, certainly by Indian standards. The descendants of other illustrious nationalist leaders, including Mahatma Gandhi and Sardar Patel, India’s first Home minister, lost out on public adulation as they were not as “fair” as Nehru or his daughter Indira. By this light, Sonia is the fairest of them all. Many qualities contribute to political success. But in India, charisma gets a head start if it grows from the right symbols.
