Last September, Sciences Po University in Paris received with honors a man with a gray beard, dressed in a white cotton khurta. He was Rahul Gandhi, great-grandson of the Indian national hero, Jawaharlal Nehru; grandson of Indira Gandhi, the first woman to lead the country; son of Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi. 53 years old, single and, as he was introduced: “One of the most important voices in India”, Rahul has followed in his family’s footsteps and has been in politics for more than two decades. So has his sister Priyanka, who, they say, is very similar to his grandmother, Indira.
These are, in a nutshell, the Nehru-Gandhis: a pivotal political dynasty in a country holding general elections. Almost a billion people vote in a process that, given these figures, is done in stages. Since 2014, India has been led by the populist Narendra Modi, leader of the BJP, who represents the nemesis of the Congress Party, practically part of the DNA of the Nehru-Gandhi family.
“Thank you for inviting me. I would prefer to sit there, with the students, but… I have no choice,” Rahul said at Sciences Po. In a way, this tagline summarizes the fate of the family: neither his grandmother nor his father had a choice when it came to devoting themselves to politics. “There are times when life doesn’t let you choose,” Rajiv told his wife, Sonia, when Indira was murdered in 1984. Their surnames were too valuable for the Congress Party, which needs them to win elections. .
This saga begins more than a century ago, when Motilal Nehru, a prosperous lawyer from Delhi, decided to join Mahatma Gandhi and fight for an India free from British domination. Motilal did not see that moment, but his son, Jawaharlal, did. Like his father, Pandit (teacher) Nehru, he was dazzled by Gandhi and, after years of political battles, in 1947 he became prime minister of independent India.
Little is known about his wife, Kamala Kaul, mother of his only daughter, Indira, born in 1917. Indira was a shy child, who grew up in the beautiful Nehru family home in Uttar Pradesh. There she acquired the commitment of her family: “As a child, all my games were political,” she would remember. The fragile health of her mother and the imprisonment of her father and her grandfather marked a difficult childhood. She adored her father, although she disobeyed him when, at age 25, she married Firoz Gandhi, a handsome Parsi member of the Congress Party.
Two children would be born from the marriage: Rajiv and Sanjay. Due to Firoz’s infidelities, the couple was separated. Indira and her children lived with Nehru, a widower for years, in the prime minister’s official residence. The daughter served as first lady and, almost by osmosis, she learned the art of politics; a destiny that her father aspired for her. In 1959 she became the president of the party. In 1966, two years after her father’s death, she became prime minister of the world’s largest democracy.
It was then that Sonia Maino entered the family: a young Italian that Rajiv Gandhi had met at Cambridge, where she was studying English. Despite opposition from her family, Sonia married Rajiv in Delhi in 1968. Her mother-in-law, Indira, lent him the red sari, woven by Nehru in prison, which she had also married.
Sonia is the protagonist of The Red Sari (Seix Barral), the wonderful novel by Javier Moro, which reflects her long fascination with this saga. “It was hard not to be interested,” she tells the Magazine. “When my uncle Dominique [the writer Dominique Lapierre, author, among others, of The City of Joy], presented a book in India, Indira Gandhi always received it. I was at some of those presentations and I always noticed Sonia: that shadow who lived in the house of the first family in the country, highly criticized for her foreign origin.”
Moro knew there was a story to tell, but, at that time, there was no end. Sonia was a woman with an aversion to public life and in love with Rajiv, a happy Air India pilot. The couple had no political ambitions although, following tradition, they lived together with Indira. For this reason, they witnessed the tribulations of the charismatic prime minister, who ruled India, almost uninterruptedly, from 1966 to 1984.
The relationship between Indira and Sonia was excellent. The Italian, with a conciliatory nature, had become, as Moro describes, “the perfect Indian daughter-in-law.” The same did not happen with Maneka, the young and volcanic wife of Sanjay: Indira’s favorite son and who did like power. When, in 1980, Sanjay died piloting an acrobatic plane, her relationship with Maneka deteriorated to the point that Indira kicked her out of the house. The daughter-in-law took her son Varun. Today both are prominent members of the BJP.
Indira’s desolation over Sanjay’s death caused Rajiv, much to his chagrin, to enter politics to support her. Sonia was horrified, but her horror multiplied when, in 1984, Indira was murdered. Sonia accompanied her dying mother-in-law in her car that took her to the hospital. A few hours after the assassination, Rajiv became the sixth prime minister of India and the third member of the family to hold the position. “It’s my destiny,” he told his wife, to which she responded, heartbroken: “They will kill you.”
Indeed: Rajiv Gandhi died in an attack in 1991, at the age of 46. Shortly before, he gave an interview in which, with his well-known affability, he explained the love he felt for his wife and how he missed not being able to live “like a normal human being.” But the worst of his situation, he said, was for his children, Rahul and Priyanka: “If anyone has sacrificed, it has been them.”
However, both have followed the path of politics. First, as support for her mother, who, after many pleadings, joined the Congress Party. “And, in 2004, she won the elections!” recalls Javier Moro, who knew that he already had the end of his story: “Why did this woman, Italian, from a humble family, whose only ambition in life was to have a family, became the most powerful woman in India… It seemed like a story to me.”
A story that had more twists, because, to everyone’s astonishment, Sonia renounced power one day after her victory. “She thought: ‘They killed my mother-in-law, my husband… How long will it take them to kill me?’ What she does is appoint a very valid prime minister and she stays as president of the party,” says Moro. “His life is truly exemplary and incredible.” A political life, he adds, that cannot be understood without the close relationship with her mother-in-law: “Sonia spent 16 years in Indira’s shadow. “He learned everything from her and, when it was his turn to take on the unaffordable, he did so with amazing skill.”
Today, hopes rest with his son, Rahul, who heads the coalition that faces the ultranationalist BJP, which wants to end India’s secularism. The man honored at Sciences Po has been campaigning for months and, like his great-grandfather, his grandmother and his father did, he has kicked the country, with a message of unity, very different from that of his opponents: “The day I hate, I will leave the politics,” he said. Rahul is supported by his sister, whose personality, according to Rajiv Gandhi himself, is very similar to that of his grandmother.
“Yes, Priyanka has a lot of Indira. She would be much more successful than Rahul, who has not met the expectations that he raised,” agrees Javier Moro. The problem is her husband, accused of corruption. “As long as she continues with that burden, she has no chance.” Meanwhile, Rahul continues to apply his grandmother’s manual. “Although the results are not the same. At least, for now,” the writer clarifies, “because with the Gandhis… You never know!”
