I walk up Sonia Gandhi’s driveway, past guards toting Uzi machine guns, and can’t help thinking that when I came to interview Indira Gandhi (Sonia’s mother-in-law) on the eve of her great comeback and massive electoral win in 1980, I walked up to her front door and knocked. There were no guards and only one servant to let me in. Only four years later, however, Indira would be assassinated by two Sikh bodyguards as revenge for ordering the army’s attack on Sikh freedom fighters holed up at Amritsar’s Golden Temple.
I am ushered into Sonia’s office. She barely acknowledges my presence. “Buon giorno,” I say. There is no reply. I have been warned that she is cold. She doesn’t offer me a hand, but walks over and asks me to sit down.
Sonia is the Italian-born widow of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, who was cruelly blown to smithereens by a female Tamil terrorist, a member of the now-defeated Tamil independence struggle in neighboring Sri Lanka. (It was the Tamils who invented both the suicide bomber and its female variant.) Since 1998, Sonia has held the presidency of the Indian National Congress Party, though she rejected the offer of the post of prime minster in 2004.
“Do you mind if I begin with a personal question?” “Yes,” she says.
I pause, then continue: “Wasn’t it difficult to decide to go into politics, knowing the dangers and the terrible toll it has taken on your family?”
“I am at peace about that,” she replies. “I have thought it through.” Then she suddenly interjects, “I hope this isn’t an interview. I just want us to get to know each other a bit.” I remind her, perhaps a bit defensively, that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh (also a leader of the Congress Party) had arranged the introduction and said I could conduct an interview.
We continue, but I put down my notebook and lapse into a gentler, more conversational style. “Why did the pull of politics overcome your inhibitions?” I ask.
“[The] Congress [Party] was in disarray. It couldn’t win an election. And we need to keep India as a secular state, encompassing all religions.” (In this present election, Congress has admirably done just that, bringing in Muslims and Sikhs in very large numbers, as well as the usual Hindu voters.)
I ask her about her own religious beliefs; though long having adopted Indian customs, Sonia is a Roman Catholic. Much as with her mother-in-law, the murdered Indira Gandhi, she replies, “I’m not religious. My parents are not particularly religious, although my mother sometimes goes to church. “
“So on what basis do you make moral decisions in family life or in politics?” I ask.
“I suppose Catholic values are at the back of my head.”
I push on. “What about nuclear weapons? You are one of those with your finger on the button.” She grimaces. A God-spare-me kind of look. Clearly, with moderates like Sonia and Manmohan Singh in charge of the nation, the Pakistanis must know that the Indian government will never threaten to use its nuclear weapons.
(The question of disarmament, however, is one on which I can never seem to get a straight answer.)
“Zbigniew Brzezinski has recently given me his latest book,” I offer. “I realize from that how none of us have thought seriously about nuclear disarmament.” I also mention Robert McNamara’s book, which firmly advocates total nuclear disarmament for the superpowers—unilaterally for the United States, if necessary. (McNamara was formerly a hard-line secretary of defense in the administrations of John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson.) “It is a marvelous book,” I say. “You’d be inspired reading it.”
“Yes, I like the man,” says Sonia. “He’s been here a couple of times for seminars we organized at the Rajiv Gandhi Centre.” I tell her a little about the book and offer to send it to her. She says she’d enjoy the chance to read it. Then, being friendly for the first time, she asks me how my recent lecture fared.
Only then do I notice that her lips are less pressed. She looks me in the eye. I notice the grey strands in her hair. She is no beauty, but she has charm and a quiet dignity. She doesn’t play the queen bee (although she certainly is India’s premier female politician, flying as high as it is possible).
On the few occasions I interviewed Indira Gandhi she could sometimes be a little coquettish. But not Sonia—she is straight as a die. Nevertheless, charmed by this brief moment of warmth, I couldn’t resist telling her about one of my interviews with her mother-in-law, when Indira entertained me with delightful stories about Henry Kissinger and Peter Sellers.
Indira told me about the 1968 film, The Party, where Peter Sellers, playing an Indian actor, ends up cavorting with a beautiful Indian lady in a swimming pool. It was brought to her by the censorship board, so sensitive was the subject matter for a prudish Indian audience. “Wasn’t the film a little blue?” I had asked her.
“So what?” replied Indira. “I couldn’t stop laughing. People can make up their own minds.”
Sonia asks me to send her my interview, published almost three decades ago. But today, I know Prime Minister Singh is waiting to see her. She moves her hands ever so slightly and I know my time is up.
Jonathan Power is a syndicated columnist and a contributing editor of Prospect magazine, London. His most recent book is Conundrums of Humanity (Martinus Nijhoff, 2007).