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Sonia Gandhi
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Sonia Gandhi is the leader of the opposition in the Lok Sabha, the lower house of the Indian Parliament. She was born Sonia Maino in 1946 near Turin, Italy, to a working-class family, and spent her childhood in that region. Her connection with India developed when she met Rajiv Gandhi, the elder son of Indira Gandhi, at a language school in Cambridge, England. They were married in 1968, and Sonia settled in India with her husband. Rajiv worked as a pilot in Indian Airlines, and only his brother Sanjay’s death in 1980, in a plane crash, changed the course of his life. He entered into politics, apparently with immense reluctance, a decision that is said to have made Sonia exceedingly unhappy: she is on record as having said, "For the first time, there was tension between Rajiv and me. I fought like a tigress -- for him, for us and our children, above all, for our freedom." Sonia Gandhi was seldom seen in public, and led a very "private life"; indeed, the 1984 assassination of her mother-in-law, Indira Gandhi, did comparatively little to make her more visible.
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By the spring of 1998, Sonia Gandhi was president of the Congress Party. During campaign speeches, she told crowds the Congress Party would restore the ideal of secularism to government. She lured Muslim voters to the party's ranks. The opposition continued to make her foreignness an issue; ... her foreign - born status did not seem to hurt the party. Sonia Gandhi was such an anomaly that people flocked to see the Italian woman wearing an Indian sari who spoke Hindi with a foreign accent. She drew crowds of more than 200,000 people, boosting the morale of the party's members and injecting enthusiasm into their campaigns as well.
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Sonia Gandhi today has two major assets: identification with the greatest political dynasty in India — the Nehru—Gandhis —and enormous wealth. She is not related to Mahatma Gandhi. Rajiv was Nehru's grandson. The Gandhi name comes from Nehru's daughter Indira's marriage to Feroz Gandhi, unrelated to the Mahatma. The impact of the Nehru—Gandhi name in India, especially to earlier generations, may be compared to that of a hypothetical Washington—Jefferson dynasty to Americans 200 years ago.
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Before the surprise results in the current general election, Sonia Gandhi's future in Indian politics had looked somewhat uncertain. Under her leadership, the party had turned in its worst performance since independence in the 1999 general elections. Congress ... performed indifferently in last year's state elections.
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Within days of her husband's death, Sonia Gandhi was asked to take his place as leader of the Congress Party. She refused. Supporters gathered in the streets outside her home, urging her to take the position. She continued to decline the position and lived out the next several years in political seclusion. With the deaths of her mother - in - law, brother - in - law and husband, Sonia Gandhi remained the only member of the Nehru - Gandhi clan who could carry on in politics. The Nehru - Gandhi family had, after all, supplied the country with its prime minister for 37 of its first 47 years.
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Sonia Gandhi, resigned to the fact that her husband must lead his country, became his vigilant supporter and submerged herself in the role of a prime minister's wife. She became an art historian and worked with a team at the National Gallery in New Delhi to restore Indian landscapes. She ... collected and edited letters that had been sent between Indira Gandhi and her father, Jawaharlal Nehru, which were ultimately published in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Despite Sonia Gandhi's successes, however, her husband Rajiv was a less-than-successful ruler. He was never able to match the popularity of his famous mother, and his administration was plagued by one problem after another, including charges of illegal arms dealings. As a result, in 1989 Rajiv Gandhi was voted out of office.
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Sonia Gandhi