Sonia Gandhi, the Italian-born widow of one Indian prime minister and the daughter-in-law of another, is most likely to be remembered as the woman who said no to her adopted country's top elected job.
Gandhi stunned the nation and members of the Congress Party Tuesday by turning down the job of prime minister, belying the expectations of party workers who unanimously voted for her last week. The week has been a one of surprises for the party, which found itself as the single-largest entity in India's 543-seat Parliament, easily winning over the ruling Hindu Nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party in the just-concluded elections.
The BJP was considered a shoo-in for another five years in office. The country's economy was growing at more than 7 percent, foreign exchange reserves were at an all-time high, the stock exchange was booming, and there was an influx of foreign direct investment. Additionally, India's relations with neighbor and rival Pakistan were at their best, bolstered by outgoing Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's peace overtures toward Islamabad, and the country's ties with rival China had never been better. When Vajpayee called for elections in January, a full nine months before his term ended, all the polls showed his party and its allies retaining a comfortable majority in parliament.
But they hadn't taken Gandhi into account. Written off as a foreigner, who spoke heavily accented Hindi and worse English, Gandhi revitalized a party that had been written off by the pundits less than six months ago. Congress, the party of the Indian independence movement, had dominated Indian politics since the country became free of British rule in 1947. But over the past decade, it was seen as the symbol of all that was wrong with Indian politics. It was old, its leaders were corrupt and, worse still, inefficient. Gandhi's leadership was criticized. Many said Indians would never accept a foreign-born prime minister. The party was crumbling and seemed destined to stay out of power for the foreseeable future.
Vajpayee then called for elections.
Gandhi single-handedly transformed the fortunes of the party. She traversed 40,000 miles over the past two months, addressing rallies, big and small, and invoking the memory of her mother-in-law, Indira Gandhi - prime minister from 1966 to 1977 and again from 1980 to 1984 - as well as Sonia's husband, Rajiv Gandhi. Both were victims of assassins. She cobbled together pre-election alliances with leftists, communists, and parties that represented Muslims, Christians and the lowest strata of the country's notorious caste system. She did not respond to sometimes-vitriolic criticism of her foreign origins by top BJP leaders, preferring to stay above the fray.
At each of her appearances, she touted the failures of the BJP to those the government's economic policies had forgotten. True, urban India was shining, as the BJP's campaign slogan had said, but to the vast majority of Indians, food, water, electricity and a home were still luxuries. The "India Shining" policy, it seemed, had forgotten nearly three-quarters of all Indians. It looked like Gandhi's campaign would at the least give Congress a respectable number of seats in Parliament.
And then India voted.
When results were declared last week, Congress and its allies had won 145 seats, and the BJP 138. Together with its leftist allies, however, Congress captured more than 300 seats. There would be a Congress-led government, most likely with Gandhi at its helm.
There were protests, of course. The BJP and its allies said they would never tolerate a "foreigner" as prime minister and threatened demonstrations and a boycott of her swearing-in ceremony. Some urban Indians were miffed, too, but on the whole, the people seemed to have chosen the heir to the Gandhi mantle.
On Tuesday, however, Gandhi stunned the nation by turning down the job.
"Today, my deepest instincts tell me that I should decline this post with all humility," she told her party's newly elected lawmakers. "You have reposed your faith in me, and that prompted me to reconsider my decision. But I am convinced that I should rely on those values that have always guided me, and I have not changed my decision."
In a country that does not see many political sacrifices, Gandhi's decision caused a shockwave.
Born Sonia Maino on Dec. 9, 1946, near Turin, Italy, Gandhi met her future husband, Rajiv, while both were students at Cambridge. They were married in 1968.
The couple returned to India and had two children, Rahul and Priyanka.
Gandhi became an Indian citizen in 1983 (she could not have done so before that as per Indian law) and preferred to stay out of the limelight despite her mother-in-law's position. After Indira Gandhi's assassination in 1984, Rajiv Gandhi won the elections in a landslide and became India's new prime minister in 1985, reportedly against his wife's wishes.
Rajiv Gandhi himself fell to assassins in 1991 and the Nehru-Gandhi family's almost five-decade hold on Indian politics seemed to have come to an end.
Gandhi stayed out of the political limelight for the next seven years, watching from the sidelines as Congress slid from a once-proud political institution - that had produced three prime ministers, including the nation's first, Jawaharlal Nehru -- to something that represented everything that was wrong with the country. After much pressure, she became head of the party in 1998.
Gandhi was elected to Parliament in October 1999 and became leader of the opposition. Congress' performance in the 2004 election made her a natural choice for prime minister, but in the end she turned down the job.
