ORBASSANO, Italy, 15 May 2004 — Italy greeted Sonia Gandhi’s triumph with a mixture of pride and apprehension yesterday as her family rejoiced in the return of India’s most powerful political dynasty and recalled its tragic past.
The people of this quiet suburb of Turin will always claim her as their own, even if she has long traded the political innocence of her espresso days for the political tumult of India.
Mayor of Orbassano Carlo Marroni said he had sent a telegram of congratulations. “We are proud of her victory,” he said. “If she becomes prime minister, we will have a party.”
As the dust settled on an election battle a world away, the media briefly laid siege to her childhood home, but family members at the mustard colored three-story house were keeping a low profile yesterday.
Gandhi’s mother Paola, recently returned from India, lives here, but the doorbells by the garden gate, under the overhanging rose bushes, went unanswered.
Italy’s newspapers trumpeted her and the Congress party’s triumph in India’s elections, but for at least one member of her family, the Gandhi name casts a long and fearful shadow over this verdant little town.
“We are worried and it’s pointless to hide it, we fear for her life,” said Gandhi’s niece, Aruna Vinci.
“But auntie is an exceptional woman. She’ll face up to anything, whatever happens, and remain in India, continuing to believe in her mission,” she told the daily La Repubblica.
“Sonia is an admirable woman. They wiped out half her family, and despite that, instead of returning to Italy, she stayed there with her children, because now she feels (like) a true Gandhi. She’s a foreigner, but is accepted by the Indians. And the vote demonstrates that,” she added.
Sonia’s victory will not change the life of her family in Orbassano, though.
“We’ll go on as before, as we have always have, even when Rajiv was in government,” said Aruna, daughter of Sonia’s elder sister Anuska.
Throwing discretion to the winds, Gandhi’s aunt, Dorina Maino, told Italy’s national Ansa news agency that her niece “has got herself into a nice mess”.
Gandhi’s husband Rajiv, scion of India’s political first family, was assassinated in 1991 when they had been married for 23 years, and Maino disclosed that her Italian relatives had tried to persuade her not to run for office.
But, the aunt went on, “I hope this great victory will help her get over the death of her husband. He was a marvelous boy and we all wish her success in her new venture,” she added.
Born in 1946, Sonia Maino, daughter of a middle class builder, married into India’s most powerful family in 1968. Her mother in law, India’s Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, was assassinated in 1984.
The girl from Orbassano then became India’s first lady when her husband and Indira’s son, Rajiv, took over on his mother’s death.
A reluctant politician, Sonia Gandhi took over the leadership of the Congress Party in 1998.
The family’s local newsagent, Giuseppe Tognin, was proud of Gandhi’s political pluck but also fearful now that she was a political target.
“She’s a great woman, and her victory is a great thing for Orbassano. But we hope she doesn’t end up like the others, like her mother-in-law and her husband.
“Of course, it’s on our minds, given what’s already happened. Let’s hope history doesn’t repeat itself.”
“Gandhis never seem to die in their beds,” Pierluigi Sacci, a local tobacconist, said. “So, of course, there’s a lot of concern for her here, given what happened to the others.”
The 63-year-old remembers Sonia as “an outgoing, jovial girl, though I haven’t seen her for years now,” as he proudly displays a photograph of his wedding in 1965, with Gandhi and her elder sister flanking bride and groom.
It’s nearly 40 years and a world away in time since Sacci remembers a young Sonia as a “little girl who used to come in for a ‘gelato’ with her friends”.
Now, for business daily Il Sole 24 Ore, the local girl has become a champion of democracy. “In that strange country of sadhus and engineers, Hindus and Muslims, exists that priceless good for which we Westerners claim to be fighting in the Middle East — democracy.”
