The Red Sari

Title: The Red Sari – A Dramatized Biography of Sonia Gandhi

Author: Javier Moro

Publisher: Roli Books 2015 (First published 2010)

ISBN: 9789351941033

Pages: 429

Sonia Gandhi is the most powerful woman in India for the time being. Though her party lost miserably in the 2014 general elections under the electrifying presence of Narendra Modi, her sway on the masses have not eclipsed much. The election results were deemed to be a verdict more on the incompetence of the son, rather than the mother herself. There are people who support her, politically or otherwise, and there are still other people who oppose her on all fronts. But no one can deny the suffering which she had gone through, first in the act of having to carry the bullet-ridden body of her mother-in-law to the hospital in the back seat of a car, and then, having to receive the mortal remains of her husband whose body was blown to smithereens in a powerful suicide bomb explosion that the coffin could not be opened at all. The emotional reserve needed to wade through these twin seas of misery is immense, and no ordinary mortal can handle the situation with courage and perseverance. Whether you are politically with her or not, she is obviously a daughter-in-law of the country and demands compassion and respect for the elegance with which she managed to course the family of Nehru, Indira and Rajiv Gandhi through turbulent times. In 2004, when Congress was returned to power in the elections, she could have assumed prime ministership, the Congress politicians were offering it to her in a platter. And you know how some of the former prime ministers of India, like Charan Singh, Chandra Sekhar or Deve Gowda would have behaved in similar circumstances. But she refused the coveted position, the chair that turned out to be fatal to her husband and his mother. Renunciation is a virtue and it is infinitely so, when what you are renouncing is the most sought after position in a country. The book, which is a dramatized biography of Sonia Gandhi, is written by Javier Moro, a Spanish author who is also the nephew of Dominique Lapierre. Readers are well familiar with the absorbing narrative of Lapierre. Moro is not quite up to it, but shows hints of a very promising career. The book was originally written in Spanish under the title El Sari Rojo, which is rendered into English by Peter J Hearn. It is evident that the author’s personal interactions with Sonia Gandhi was very meager in the preparation of the book, judging from the description which is mechanical at times and shows signs of being collected from other books – definitely not plagiarism at all. However, the book offers some candid moments in the life of India’s most prominent family for public view.

Foreign authors who don’t know much about India often express grave doubts about the country’s resilience to sail past some bottlenecks like communal violence or an assassination or foreign aggression. They see India as congeries of numerous languages, religions and cultures. They are familiar with and alive to the fate of such a nation had that been situated in Europe which possessed the varied dichotomies Indians take for granted in their everyday lives. Judging from their European experience, they feel that India is so fragile that even a remote threat is portrayed as something that has the potential to founder the nation’s smooth sailing through the history of the world. This book is also not immune from the stereotypical point of view of foreign authors. Moro worries about the potential of the anti-Sikh riots in 1984 and the Punjab pogrom in the years after it, to have the vigour to upset the country’s unity. He seriously considers the possibility of a military coup in the country whenever the democratically elected government is weak from corruption or internal squabbles. He makes Indira Gandhi ask her army general when they will be taking over power! Similarly, he presents Sam Manek Shaw, the army chief starting his day by listening to a newscast from BBC. The root cause of such faulty analysis is the lack of exposure to the Indian spirit, that only a very few foreign writers like William Dalrymple has understood well. Moro alludes to the 1974 nuclear tests as the outcome of dire internal political necessity, and never for once spares a thought about the need of it for a growing regional power. For Moro, India was, is and will be a third world country burdened with disease, poverty, illiteracy and what not! The tacit indicator is that Indians have no moral right to be prominent in the world today unless they solve those problems first. Moro forgets that no country in the world has completely solved all these problems. What we can reasonably expect is to obtain considerable progress on those issues that afflict the country, while at the same time marching forward to attain the position among the world powers which is her right.

Most of the book covers the period of Indira and Rajiv Gandhi’s reigns and mostly ignores the time when Sonia was in power without responsibility, first in the tenure of Narasimha Rao and then twice under the spell of Manmohan Singh. Only a fleeting narrative is offered for these periods. Moro’s observations on Indian politics sometimes go wide off the mark. The book has no reference to Kargil that was a turning point for the Vajpayee regime that effectively ensured that Congress sit in opposition for five more years. He raises the ridiculous argument that the train at Godhra, Gujarat caught fire from an explosion of a gas cylinder kept inside it. This attempt to negate a brutal massacre that was witnessed by hundreds of spectators is a rather bold one at misinformation. The book ends with an epilogue that generates a hopeful expectation for the family loyalists that Priyanka Gandhi may be able to steer the party to its lost glory after the last elections in which Rahul Gandhi’s methods brought disaster to the party and its government. It is an open question whether Moro offers Sonia any favour when he asserts that her decision to assume party responsibilities herself and her acquiescence to her husband becoming the prime minister of India was dictated by the hope of getting more police protection on the face of threats the family was running. She is portrayed to be in mortal dread about attempts on the life of her dearest ones. The book contains a good bibliography and an index.

The book is recommended.

Rating: 3 Star