Sonia Gandhi

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Sonia Gandhi (2011)

Sonia Gandhi (सोनिया गांधी), b. Edvige Antonia Albina Maino , (born December 9, 1946 in Lusiana , today: Lusiana Conco , near Vicenza , Italy ) is an Indian politician . The native Italian is the widow of the murdered Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi . From 1998 to 2017 she was President of the Indian Congress Party . She has held this office again since August 10, 2019.

Life

Sonia Gandhi is the daughter of Paola Predebon and Stefano Maino, an entrepreneur. Her parents moved with her from Lusiana to Orbassano in Piedmont , where she spent her entire youth.

She completed a three-year foreign language course in English and French at the Istituto Santa Teresa in Turin , which she completed in 1964. She then completed a language course at the Lennox Cook School in Cambridge . There she met Rajiv Gandhi in 1965 , the son of the Indian politicians Indira and Feroze Gandhi and the grandson of the first Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru . The couple married in 1968.

Sonia Gandhi was originally against Rajiv becoming a politician in 1980 after the accidental death of his younger brother Sanjay Gandhi . In 1981 her husband was elected to the Lok Sabha , the Indian House of Commons, for the Indian Congress Party. When Indira Gandhi was assassinated in 1984, Rajiv Gandhi became the new Prime Minister. Sonia Gandhi took Indian citizenship that same year.

After the murder of her husband during a speech during the election campaign for the upcoming parliamentary elections on May 21, 1991 by a bomb attack by the rebel organization Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), which was fighting for the establishment of an independent Tamil state in Sri Lanka , she withdrew the following years largely withdrew from the public and only acted as president of the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation. She began to become politically active only cautiously, despite repeated calls from leading politicians in the Indian Congress Party to succeed her husband in the office of party leader. On March 14, 1998, she finally took over the leadership of the Indian Congress Party as the new chairman and was also proclaimed a candidate for the office of Prime Minister.

Not least because of her surname, she managed to attract masses of people and thus revitalize the Indian Congress Party. In the 1999 elections she won a seat in the Lok Sabha and became an opposition leader. Since then, her political critics have accused her of being unsuitable for higher political offices as a native foreigner with no fluent knowledge of Hindi and the lack of appropriate qualifications. Her opponents often mockingly call her Antonia Maino alias Sonia Gandhi .

In conversation with Bill Clinton in March 2000

In her election campaign she repeatedly questioned the supposedly within reach vision of a Shining India ("Radiant India") and pointed to the broad sections of the population who could not benefit from the boom of recent years like the Indian middle class. Sonia Gandhi, like the Indian Congress Party as a whole, opposes the often overflowing Hindu nationalism. Many of her less privileged voters see her as the outsider who ultimately achieved her goal through patience, perseverance and adherence to the traditional rules.

After the Indian general election in May 2004 , which brought the Congress party an unexpected victory, she was initially acted as Prime Minister. On May 18, 2004, she surprisingly renounced this post in favor of Manmohan Singh , but remained chairwoman of the ruling party alliance United Progressive Alliance (UPA). On May 28, 2005, she was re-elected as President of the Indian Congress Party. On March 23, 2006, however, she resigned her mandate in the Lok Sabha after she had been criticized - not only by the opposition - for a paid public sideline job as chairman of the National Advisory Council, which is currently illegal for members of parliament. She ran for re-election in her constituency of Rae Bareli on May 12, 2006 and won it in the by-election. She was also re-elected to the Lok Sabha in the parliamentary elections in 2009 , 2014 and 2019 .

Sonia Gandhi has a son and a daughter. Her son Rahul Gandhi was elected to the Lok Sabha in 2004 and has been President of the Indian Congress Party as her successor since December 2017. However, in view of the party's defeat in the parliamentary elections, he resigned and his mother took over the party leadership again on August 10, 2019.

Her daughter Priyanka Gandhi was her campaign manager several times.

Publications in English

  • Sonia Gandhi: Freedom's Daughter: Letters Between Indira Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru 1922-1939: Letters Between Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi, 1922-40. Hodder & Stoughton Ltd, 1989, ISBN 0-340-43042-7 .
  • Sonia Gandhi: Two Alone, Two Together: Letters Between Indira Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru 1940-1964. Hodder & Stoughton Ltd, 1992, ISBN 0-340-50287-8 .
  • Sonia Gandhi: Rajiv. Viking 1994, ISBN 0-670-84607-4 .
  • Sonia and Rajiv Gandhi: Rajiv's World: Photographs by Rajiv Gandhi. Viking 1995, ISBN 0-670-85917-6 .
  • Sonia Gandhi: Jammu and Kashmir 1949-1964: Selected Correspondence Between Jawaharlal Nehru and Karan Singh. Viking India, 2006, ISBN 0-670-99937-7 .

literature

  • Rupa Chatterjee: Sonja Gandhi. The Lady in Shadow. Delhi 1998. ISBN 81-87277-02-5
  • Ravi Singavarapu: Sonia Gandhi Through a Different Lens. Fultus Corporation (July 7, 2005). ISBN 1-59682-059-4

Web links

Commons : Sonia Gandhi  - Collection of Images

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ http://digilander.libero.it/lusiana/lusiana.htm . Sonia Gandhi and Lusiana with a photo of the house where they were born (Italian)
  2. ^ "Sonia Gandhi was born Edivge Antonia Albina Maino to Stefano and Paola Maino on December 9, 1946, in Lusiana, a tiny town of fewer than 3000 inhabitants nestled quietly in the crisp air of the verdant lower Alps of northeast Italy" (Rani Singh , “An extraordinary life, an Indian destiny”, Part I, From Italy to Britain. Books.Google).
  3. ↑ a b CWC meeting: Rahul's resignation accepted, Sonia Gandhi becomes Congress interim president. August 10, 2019, accessed November 12, 2019 .
  4. ↑ Javier Moro : The Red Sari. Pp. 22-27.
  5. ↑ Members bioprofiles: Gandhi, Smt. Sonia , 17th Lok Sabha.
personal data
SURNAME Gandhi, Sonia
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Maino, Edvige Antonia Albina (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Indian politician
DATE OF BIRTH December 9, 1946
PLACE OF BIRTH Lusiana , Italy