Commentary / Janardan Thakur

The 'Sonia card' has become a big joke

Time and again, those claiming to know the 'mind of Sonia Gandhi' said the lady would eventually 'join politics'. Some said she was interested in becoming the Congress president. We now know she wasn't. Others said she was interested in contesting the Lok Sabha election. We now know she wasn't. She did go to Amethi, but not to become a candidate in the election. Yet others said she was out to topple Rao, but if Rao was toppled the lady certainly played no part in it. Or if she did play a part we are not aware of it.

One suspects that Sonia Gandhi has all along had a very clear idea of what she wanted and how to get what she wanted. She needs security for herself and her family, she needs status, and she needs to keep the skeletons in her husband's cupboards from spilling over, for that would ruin her own future, and the future of her children. Maybe she wants to keep the seat warm for a probable inheritor of the Nehru-Gandhi mantle on the political stage. The fact that Sonia has not entered active politics does not mean that she is a stranger to politicking. As one commentator put it. Nobody who has been in 'that household can be (a stranger to politicking), unless he/she is daft.'

At one point it was rumoured that Sonia Gandhi could be inducted into the Congress Working Committee, and that she was 'not averse' to the idea. Why she should have wanted to be on the working committee was a little hard to understand. What could she have achieved or get as a member of that body that she could not just being Sonia Gandhi? There were, of course, many other Congress leaders who had craved her presence in the CWC, but what was there in it for her?

Congressmen have a habit of deluding themselves. They ought to know by now that the lady is not interested in securing things for others. Captain Satish Sharma may be in hot water but does she care? All that matters to her is Sonia Gandhi and her family. The secret of her political clout in the Congress was her refusal to step into the political arena. Only by not playing the Sonia card could she maintain its value. She was simply not interested in waging a proxy battle for disgruntled Congressmen, as both N D Tiwari and Arjun Singh learnt to their cost.

On that day when Singh and Tiwari were cobbling their own little Congress at the Talkatora stadium, Sonia Gandhi knew too well with which her side her interests lay. Despite her allergy towards Narasimha Rao she never allowed a complete break in her relations with him. What Sonia Gandhi needs most for the protection of her interests in the country is a government that is at least not openly inimical to her. She cares little whether such a government is headed by Narasimha Rao or by H D Deve Gowda.

What she dreaded most was a BJP government at the Centre, and the day Vajpayee fell one of the biggest smiles was perhaps on the face of Sonia Gandhi. Deve Gowda she would not have known from Adam. but that did not matter. The fact that the new prime minister went to 10, Janpath (to seek her blessings?) set most of her fears to rest.