(Photo courtesy the Outlook magazine)
The detractors of Sonia Gandhi, said to be ‘the real power behind India’s political throne’, have reasons to smile.
The country’s Supreme Court has reopened the old debate by asking the government for its opinion on whether a ‘registered’ citizen of foreign origin could hold constitutional posts like those of the President and the Prime Minister, says a news report.
In November last year, the Delhi High Court had said the Indian constitution does not differentiate between ‘natural’ and ‘registered’ citizens. Thereby implying that Indian citizens of foreign-origin too are legally eligible to hold constitutional posts.
It was in 1983 that Ms Sonia Gandhi acquired Indian citizenship.
Ms Gandhi’s detractors were lying low so long she kept away from politics following the violent assassination of, first, her famous mother-in-law (former Prime Minister Ms Indira Gandhi) and later her husband, Rajiv Gandhi. Her husband’s grandfather, Jawaharlal Nehru, was the first Prime Minister of free India.
In view of the dwindling fortunes of the 113-year-old Indian National Congress party, Sonia Gandhi was persuaded by the party men to jump into the political fray, and in 1996 she became a primary member of the party.
In May 2005 Ms Sonia Gandhi was elected President of the Congress Party, thus becoming the fifth member of the famous Nehru-Gandhi family and the eighth foreign-born person to become Congress President, and the third foreign-born woman, following Annie Besant and Nellie Sengupta.
Ms Sonia Gandhi, named the third most powerful woman in the world by Forbes magazine in 2004, was elected to the Lok Sabha (Indian Parliament’s lower house) with an impressive margin of over 400,000 votes.
Today Ms Gandhi is the Chairperson of the ruling coalition United Progressive Alliance in the Lok Sabha, and the leader of the Congress Parliamentary Party. She has survived the rough and tumble of the Indian politics and is a popular political figure now.
Born Sonia Antonia Maino, in Lusiana, a little village 50 km from Vicenza, Italy, Ms Gandhi spent her adolescence in Orbassano, a town near Turin, and was raised in a Roman Catholic family and attending a Catholic school.
She has a son, Rahul, and daughter, Priyanka, who have also begun to dabble in politics in a big way. They face no problems with regard to the citizenship issue as they were born in India.
Swaraaj Chauhan describes his two-decade-long stint as a full-time journalist as eventful, purposeful, and full of joy and excitement. In 1993 he could foresee a different work culture appearing on the horizon, and decided to devote full time to teaching journalism (also, partly, with a desire to give back to the community from where he had enriched himself so much.)
Alongside, he worked for about a year in 1993 for the US State Department’s SPAN magazine, a nearly five-decade-old art and culture monthly magazine promoting US-India relations. It gave him an excellent opportunity to learn about things American, plus the pleasure of playing tennis in the lavish American embassy compound in the heart of New Delhi.
In !995 he joined WWF-India as a full-time media and environment education consultant and worked there for five years travelling a great deal, including to Husum in Germany as a part of the international team to formulate WWF’s Eco-tourism policy.
He taught journalism to honors students in a college affiliated to the University of Delhi, as also at the prestigious Indian Institute of Mass Communication where he lectured on “Development Journalism” to mid-career journalists/Information officers from the SAARC, African, East European and Latin American countries, for eight years.
In 2004 the BBC World Service Trust (BBC WST) selected him as a Trainer/Mentor for India under a European Union project. In 2008/09 He completed another European Union-funded project for the BBC WST related to Disaster Management and media coverage in two eastern States in India — West Bengal and Orissa.
Last year, he spent a couple of months in Australia and enjoyed trekking, and also taught for a while at the University of South Australia.
Recently, he was appointed as a Member of the Board of Studies at Chitkara University in Chandigarh, a beautiful city in North India designed by the famous Swiss/French architect Le Corbusier. He also teaches undergraduate and postgraduate students there.
He loves trekking, especially in the hills, and never misses an opportunity to play a game of tennis. The Western and Indian classical music are always within his reach for instant relaxation.
And last, but not least, is his firm belief in the power of the positive thought to heal oneself and others.