|
 A Cabinet minister in the late BJP-government threatened to shave her head, wear white and eat only chana (gram) if Sonia Gandhi became India's prime minister. If for no other reason, Sonia Gandhi should have accepted the job.
I am trying to think hard if there is any precedent for what Sonia Gandhi did, some other instance when the crown was refused. The crown was hers by every right. She had the mandate and the numbers to form the government and India's poor had vested their trust in her. She chose, instead, to listen to her inner voice, a guardian angel's warning that all that glitters is not gold. In the fullness of time, we may learn much more about the compulsions that outweighed her aspirations, for it seems it was a personal decision rather than a political one.
It may well turn out to be a mother's instinct, that by becoming prime minister, she may have endangered the lives of her children, that some member or members of a lunatic fringe may have sought their vengeance not on her but more cruelly on her offspring. She had lived through the trauma of her mother-in-law and husband assassinated. She also might have been a target. This would not have deterred her but her stubborn refusal to heed to the entreaties, to the imploring pleas of her party workers, suggests some deeper concern.
|
News 
