Sonia, the most favoured mystery of Indian politics, the riddle of 10 Janpath, the enigma wrapped in an inherited khadi sari. Welcome, Mrs Gandhi. It was an overstretched transition in a party that was withering away.Sonia Gandhi, long-time abstraction, overwhelming absence, and, in the last few days of the election, a veiled vengeance that flew across the country, has reached the final stage of her evolution: the absolute leader of a party that has historically been subordinated to the surname she wears.Last weekend, she was marching into not exactly the meeting of the Congress Working Committee, as a successor to the old man who was pushed out in a hurry. She was breezing into the hall of funeral fragrance, to stake her claim (what other term, in this season?) to her, no, not her birthright, but her family right. In the moment of coronation, the old man lay outside in the wreckage of his own rusted ambition, croaking betrayal. And hailing the arrival were submission's prototypes - little leaders,their hearts beating to the anxious rhythm of save-me-Sonia. Sonia, Our Lady of Salvation, has answered the sepulchral cry of India's Grand Old Party. So another Mrs Gandhi for a Congress which was pretty close to the fin of its own private siecle.What does this moment define? Obviously, it reaffirms a truism: the Indian National Congress is genetically conditioned to be the party of the Leader, the only and only one Leader who looms over Every Congressman, the most identifiable type in the Indian political text. Sprouted out of the wetland of Dynasty, protected from the sunlight of mass politics by the canopy of Supreme Leadership, he lived in power for so long. One Gandhi was always above him, a Gandhi who could win an election for him, a Gandhi who could blunt his growth without an effort. The little leader of the Congress had accepted the permanence of the paramount leader. He continued to be the happy child of secondary life, the little power child who had never anticipated the tomorrow of an orphan.Two assassinations in the family blasted away his shelter, and he was out there in the sunlight, he who could never attain political manhood. Narasimha Rao's passive resistance and Sitaram Kesri's biology-defying athleticism almost ensured the end of the Congress century. But the First Widow was watching with that famous read-my-smile mystery.Today President Mrs Gandhi has every reason to stop smiling and laugh benignly at those who have convincingly exposed their deficiency of leadership. It was Rajiv Gandhi's widow who had made the Congress the second largest party in the election. Barring a solitary Sharad Pawar, the Congress in the last election was a party of leaders without a base or an idea. Their only stabilising slogan was Sonia. And Sonia's campaign was choreographed by the desperation of Sonia-seekers and the campaigner's own politically beguiling widowhood. The Congress regained its Gandhi. And this Gandhi has got her party. A defining moment in the fortunes of a family, of course. Still, thiscoronation throws up a question to a party older than this century: can an accidental Mrs Gandhi redeem a Congress whose idea has long ago been appropriated by parties parading out of the federal subways of Indian polity? Also, hasn't a nationally self-conscious India long ago marched past the Indian National Congress and the Family?
