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Web-only Exclusives
November 30, 2000

From Our Correspondent: Hirohito and the War
A conversation with biographer Herbert Bix

From Our Correspondent: A Rough Road Ahead
Bad news for the Philippines - and some others

From Our Correspondent: Making Enemies
Indonesia needs friends. So why is it picking fights?

Asiaweek Time Asia Now Asiaweek story

WILL SHE, WON'T SHE?

A Gandhi daughter plays cool and coy


HER FATHER WAS BLOWN to bits by a suicide bomber. Her grandmother was gunned down by her own bodyguards. A grim record by any family's reckoning, and one that makes it hard to fathom why Priyanka Gandhi would even contemplate playing the deadly game of Indian politics.

And yet there she is, on tour with her mother Sonia, putting her life in danger to help win an election (or at least prevent a humiliating rout). If it is difficult for mere mortals to understand why Priyanka would want to follow in her father's bloody wake, one need only attend a political rally to understand why the Congress party is thrilled to have her on board, maybe even more so than Rajiv's widow Sonia.

Truth be known, the mother is no performer, even if she has single-handedly raised the party's political fortunes. On the stump, Sonia is stilted and wooden, her face hard and grim. By contrast, the daughter (handsome if not beautiful) evokes a hipper image, maybe not veejay material, but eons away from the geriatric types who normally hog the podium.

"Are you going to vote for Congress?" Priyanka yells in Hindi. "Yes!" screams the crowd. "Louder, I can't hear you!" she says, and the people roar their approval. Sure, rock musicians have been whipping up crowds this way for years, but remember, this is India. And this is the venerable (if tattered) Congress.

Oh yes, and there is the all-important youth vote. A quarter of Indian voters are under 25 -- and a 26-year-old member of the Gandhi dynasty could help convince young people to mark their ballots. Party hacks are predictably enthusiastic. "She is young, attractive, her body language is fantastic and she has a wonderful way with young people," gushes Congress spokesman Vithal Gadgil. In addition, says social psychologist Ashis Nandy, "people have a feeling she is not yet deep into this dirty business. Anybody from the outside has a lot of appeal."

Plenty of Indians see in Priyanka (or want to anyway) glimpses of her formidable grandmother Indira, PM from 1967 to 1977 and 1980 to 1984. Priyanka even walks like Indira, they say; she is more bubbly, but she also possesses that special assertiveness that falls just short of being masculine. Supporters believe Priyanka's businessman husband Robert Vadhra is the perfect foil for a would-be prime minister. "He is very quiet," says Delhi school teacher Smita Bhargava. "All powerful women leaders such as her grandmother and Mrs. Thatcher have had such husbands."

None of this is to say that Priyanka will take up the Gandhi mantle. In 1991, shortly after her father was murdered and when she was still in college, Congress partymen elected her to the Youth Congress Committee. Apparently Sonia was not amused and told the party to take back the post. Three years later PM P.V. Narasimha Rao offered to make Priyanka president of the youth congress; both her father and grandmother had held the post. This time, Priyanka rejected the offer, and reportedly said: "When I join politics I'll call you."

The party will not give up easily. In a letter to Sonia, spokesman Gadgil wrote: "Priyanka's presence at election meetings received a major response. If she is inducted into the Youth Congress, it will electrify the youth and rejuvenate the Indian Congress." Neither mother nor daughter has yet responded.

-- By Arjuna Ranawana / New Delhi


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