ROME, January 23: Her tall silhouette draped in an elegant sari is a familiar sight in Italian dailies but even here in her homeland, Sonia Maino, the Italian, long ago became Sonia Gandhi, the Indian, widow of the assassinated prime minister Rajiv Gandhi and totally devoted to her adopted land.Few "foreign" personalities get as much display in Italian newspapers as Sonia, born 51 years ago on the banks of the Po in Orbassano, a northern town near Turin.This holds true today more than ever, with her role as the star campaigner for the beleaguered Congress party of her late husband, though she is not seeking office herself.Headlines call her the "Italian widow of Rajiv" or "Sonia, the Italian" as if to reclaim a small part of the woman who left long ago, but all quickly concede she is "now entirely Indian."Numerous articles have been devoted to her campaign for Congress, the party that ruled India for some four decades under the Gandhi-Nehru political dynasty and hopes Sonia and her name can now boost its flagging fortunes when India goes to the polls between February 14 and March 7.Ironically, the articles do not miss the chance to recall that had a young Sonia from the Piedmont mountain region meet Rajiv when he was studying at Britain's Cambridge University, she would probably have become "a secretary or, at best an interpreter," as the Milanese daily Corriere della sera put it.But fate had it otherwise and India's oldest party is now pinning its hopes on the woman who became an Indian citizen only in 1986, 18 years after her marriage, but who now bears the name of the family that has ruled India for most of its 50 year s since independence in 1947.Though her origins have earned her the resentment of Hindu nationalists who call her the "foreigner," there is no confusion in Italy. Here, Sonia is unequivocally Indian and has been since she married Rajiv on November 25, 1968, even if the papers cannot resist mentioning her Italian roots.Sonia herself has cultivated this image. Her contacts with Italy in recent years has been limited to a few vacations with her family, and Italian correspondents in India say they are the ones who have the most trouble obtaining interviews, according to journalists in Rome."For us in Italy, she has become Indian even though she has not renounced Italy. She is not like these Italian mothers who want their children to return to their country. Her family is Indian and she is careful not to mix the two things. She lives in another world," said one Italian who has made numerous trips to Italy.In the years that followed her husband's assassination on May 21, 1991, she was not present during official Italian-Indian meetings and she makes a point of not frequenting places where you are likely to find Italians, sources in Rome said.Typically, a few years ago when a hospital for children in New Delhi built by Italy in conjunction with the Gandhi Foundation was inaugurated, she stayed away.Similarly when Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi visited Indiatwo weeks ago, his official agenda did not include any appointment with Gandhi.
