'Amazing Grace,' announced a leading newspaper’s banner headline on 19 May, 2004, words that went on to become a sort of catchphrase to describe the "sacrifice" made by Sonia Gandhi who had heeded the call of her “inner voice”. Whatever propelled her decision to not become prime minister, in one single stroke, she had become a deity of renunciation, personifying the biggest human trait that Indians value.
Natwar Singh. Image courtesy PIB
There were live images of wailing senior Congressmen in the Central Hall of Parliament as Sonia told the Congress Parliamentary Party, "Today my inner voice is telling me that I should politely refuse to accept the post of Prime Minister.” The drama that followed outside her residence and at the Congress headquarters made many in the country, regardless of whether they had voted for the Congress, review their opinion of her. Even her most bitter critics accepted that the move was most graceful, dictated by circumstances or otherwise.
The emotional outpouring and Sonia’s handling of affairs with a certain coolness, steadfastly supporting Manmohan Singh, was a powerful image. All other stories, why she refused to become Prime Minister, her citizenship issue, her family's fears that if she became prime minister she could meet the same fate as her mother-in-law and husband, all these were discredited.
Now, what Natwar Singh, her one time confidante, has done is to torpedo that image, partially demolish her claim to renunciation and sacrifice, and also portray her son and heir Rahul Gandhi as a timid young man who forced his mother not to accept the challenge of shaping the fate of the nation only because of his own panic. He may have become the Congress’s vice-president only eight years later, but he took decisions on her behalf even when he was hardly in active politics.
Sonia Gandhi has now promised that she will write her own book and 'reveal the truth'. Expectedly, for Congress party leaders, it’s a free for all situation, whereby one could choose strong words and phrases to berate Natwar Singh. There are no clues yet on just when Sonia will write her book. Was it a light-hearted comment to politely get away from the inquisitive media without responding to substantive questions or did she really mean it? Will she write a book while still serving as Congress president or do it post retirement?
Nobody knows. But first, it would be interesting to take a look at Barkha Dutt’s interview with Priyanka Gandhi for NDTV in April 2009 when she was campaigning in her mother's parliamentary constituency, Rae Bareli. Priyanka could be seen to be virtually endorsing what Natwar Singh said, that Rahul did not want Sonia to become PM because he feared that she could die if she accepted the post. And it was Priyanka who conveyed Rahul’s message, with a deadline of 24 hours.
In response to Barkha’s question, “You have seen what happened to your father and you have seen what happened to your grandmother, do you feel scared for your brother, your mother, yourself,” Priyanka says: "No, I don’t. I don’t feel scared for them at all... But I did have this one moment of terror in 2004 when I peeped into her office and I saw this bunch of, you know, Lalu ji and everybody surrounding her and saying that you have to be Prime Minister, I had this one moment of complete terror. And I burst out crying. I didn’t realise that I was afraid. I burst into my brother, I was like is she going to die..you think you are not scared but you are scared of losing someone else you love..”
Taken in the context of what Natwar Singh has written in his book and said in his pre-release interview to Headlines Today, Priyanka’s response becomes very revealing.
That 'renunciation’ formula helped Sonia again in March 2006 when the “office of profit” issue threatened to culminate in her disqualification as an MP. In a surprise move, she resigned from Lok Sabha, only to be re-elected from Rae Bareli before Parliament could open for the next session. The UPA government would later make relevant amendments in the office of profit statutes.
Natwar Singh obviously has chosen his timing well. For the last nine years he has been persona non grata, going from the second most powerful person in the UPA government in its first year, from somebody who could call Sonia by her first name to a humiliated, haunted man thrown out of the Congress after his name figured in the Volcker report. But for the past few days, he is making headlines, the difference being that this time around, he is having the last laugh, at least for now, having put Sonia and Rahul in the dock.
At the age of 83, with the Modi government firmly at the centre and son Jagat Singh now a BJP MLA from Rajasthan, he has nothing to lose now. He knows that the Congress is down. Sonia’s Mother India frame has already been left tattered in these elections. The country may have rewarded her for that renunciation in 2009, but no longer reposes faith in her.
Natwar has said he wrote his book, One Life Is Not Enough, because he did not want to take his “bitterness to the funeral pyre” but he has virtually bombed the dynasty’s aura. He has used a range of adjectives to describe Sonia, from “authoritarian” and “capricious” to “Machiavellian” and “secretive.”
The first controversy on why Sonia refused to become PM -- that president Kalam raising citizenship issue thus making her nominate Manmohan Singh – was debunked by Kalam but continued to be a talking point because there were other versions also. Interestingly, a senior BJP leader, now an important minister, had met President Kalam same day, May 17, 2004, when Sonia had met him to stake claim to form government.
Kalam had spoken to that BJP leader about the various petitions including that of Subramanian Swamy he had received and said he was looking into the matter. Swamy in his petition to President Kalam had said the Citizenship Act did not allow Sonia to become PM. “In particular Ms Gandhi is subject to proviso under Section 5 of Citizenship Act, a reciprocal disqualification to be Prime Minister of this country since she is Italian,” Swamy said in his petition dated May 15, 2004 to Kalam adding that the President’s power to invite anyone who enjoys support of majority of elected members is not “unfettered”.
On this subject, Kalam wrote in his book later: “While this communication was in progress, I had a number of e-mails and letters coming from individuals, organizations and parties that I should not allow Mrs Sonia Gandhi to become the prime minister of our country. I had passed on these mails and letters to various agencies in the government for their information without making any remarks. During this time there were many political leaders who came to meet me to request me not to succumb to any pressure and appoint Mrs Gandhi as the prime minister.” He added, “If she had made any claim for herself I would have had no option but to appoint her.”
Natwar Singh's narration of events of 17-18 May 2004 is an insider’s account. Given the current political mood, it would be easily acceptable to most, until Rahul or Sonia come out with a more substantive counter. It is, after all, not an ordinary event that Sonia and Priyanka went to his doorstep with a very personal request, a full nine years after he was shown the door from the government, from the Congress party and from key positions that he held in the first family foundations.
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