Sonia Gandhi, recognized as one of the most powerful women in the world today, turns 66 on Friday. Almost 15 years into the rough and tumble of politics, she continues to be an inward-looking and publicity-shy politician, a very unlike-Indian characteristic.
Variously described as ‘sphinx’ and ‘inscrutable’, Sonia has had an eventful life that has seen it all.
The quintessential housewife reluctantly agreed to join politics in 1997; in 1998, she was elected as the leader of the Congress. Since then, Sonia Gandhi has been the President of the Indian National Congress Party. She has served as the Chairperson of the ruling United Progressive Alliance in the Lok Sabha since 2004.
In September 2010, on being re-elected for the fourth time, she became the longest serving president in the 125-year history of the Congress party. Although Sonia is actually the fifth foreign-born person to be leader of the Congress Party, she is the first since independence in 1947.
Her halting English and awkward Hindi notwithstanding, Sonia is now seen by the people of this country as full-blooded Indian, in whose hands the nation’s cultural diversity is safe. This, despite her lack of thorough grounding in grass-root Indian political realities and the continued stigma of her being a ‘foreigner’. Read her full story in the following pages. More
