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Sonia's toughest hour

Barely six months ago she was the toast of the town. After having led her party to creditable victory over the Bharatiya Janata Party in the state elections, she was quickly hailed as the beginning of the end of the BJP. Columnists, with me leading the chorus, were all quick to sing paeans in her praise. A new beginning, we had said; the new Mrs Gandhi, we went on; just what the Congress, and by extension the nation, needed, we concluded.

All this, mind you, was regardless of the fact that the general election at that time seemed aeons away. That Mme Gandhi had not had any interaction, direct or through the media, with the people she hoped/expected to rule. If there was a hint of the colonial in this studied detachment, the media, including me, did not think so. And when the chat rooms came alive with questions, some intelligent, some vituperative, of things like capability, eligibility, one chose the silent path out.

It was the magic of the sphinx, the mystery of the unknown, the hope of a possible interaction with the most elusive politician independent India has known, that kept the media interest alive in her. If any proof were needed of the media's power over public opinion, the Sonia Phenomenon proves it. That the reality was not what was sought to be portrayed became evident over just a day, a week after the A B Vajpayee government fell and the Opposition displayed its differences over forming an alternative government.

As Sonia riposted with the television camera crews outside Rashtrapati Bhavan, she did not merely send out the message that the Congress, despite earlier bravado to the contrary, just did not have the numbers with it to provide a stable government.

The image that the whole of India received, on the contrary, was that the prime minister-hopeful of Hindustan could not speak Hindi. Worse, her English was not the kind Indians are comfortable with, but of the kind that raises the hackles of ordinary Indians. Mind, this is no Mulayam Singh. A major part of my life was spent as a non-Hindi speaking Indian, and no regrets about it. But my complaint about Sonia is that someone who aspires to lead India should at least get her diction in one of the numerous languages spoken here right. And since her in-laws go back a long way to Uttar Pradesh, where the lingua franca is Hindi, I would expect her to be proficient in that language at least.

Any number of Hindi tuition by however accomplished a pundit may teach her the language, but it certainly won't rid her of that 'cute' European accent. No offence meant here, but if my colleague Chindu Sreedharan can do little about the Malayali lilt to his Hindi, I don't see Sonia succeeding in talking like a native.

Silence, in Sonia's case, was golden. Her speech, alas, tinny. So what does the Congress party, now that it is becoming increasingly clear that its prime vote-catcher may prove just a little inadequate?

There are lessons galore within the Congress party for the new Mrs Gandhi, and most of them date back to the original Mrs G. One would have thought that the ample time she had had so far, untrammelled by the trappings of elected office etc, she would have spent it mapping her mother-in-law's mind. Instead, what does she do? Orchestrate a tearjerker resignation drama that no one for a moment believed, and promptly took back her resignation after what she thought must have been a decent interval.

Public opinion, already alienated after her patent inability to replace the Vajpayee government with an alternative government despite a lenient President giving her the maximum leeway, could not have done a U-turn after watching that crass exercise in political chamchagiri. The Congressmen's desperation was evident, understandable, but to equate that with public affirmation is ridiculous. The little credibility Sonia Gandhi sought to infuse into her performance went for a toss with that hurt pride melodrama.

That was only about posturing. Talk about political sagacity, and the betrayal of Moopanar and Co, the cosying up to Laloo, the estrangement of Mulayam, all parade past in 70mm dimensions. In ordinary times, perhaps these could be glossed over as a greenhorn coming to terms with the art of realpolitik, but when viewed through the prism of Kargil they become more than chinks in Sonia's armour.

Not surprising, then, the state units of the Congress party don't seem overly enthused by the prospect of her campaigning. Pitted against the Kargil triumph, Sonia's pidgin Hindi is not going to win any new voter to the Congress's lost cause.

It will be very surprising if the Congress, with all its allies, crosses the magic figure in the forthcoming election. It will be even more surprising, if any among the BJP's burgeoning rank of allies is tempted to do another Jayalalitha on Vajpayee after the poll. The teams for the final battle are more or less in place: squeezed out between the two sides, the smaller parties are either being reduced to a state of irrelevancy, like the amoebic Janata Dal, or holding to their protectorate, like Sharad Pawar's outfit is doing.

Unlike the last time round, the smaller, independent parties are not going to be playing much of a role, post-election. I even daresay that the forthcoming election will throw up some serious surprises, the biggest of which will be the end of a series of hung Parliament.

Saisuresh Sivaswamy