Sonia Gandhi Leaves the Stage
In 1994, Sonia Gandhi published a book of photographs from her private life with her late husband, Rajiv Gandhi. It included a dozen pictures from their trips to Italy, where she had grown up in the suburbs of Turin. Here she was in a speedboat in 1980, wearing crimson-framed sunglasses and a matched paisley shawl. Here was their son Rahul, just seven or eight years old, on a beach pushing goggles off his face into his hair.
What made the book, titled Rajiv’s World, so unusual then was the photographer: Rajiv Gandhi, the former prime minister of India killed in a suicide bombing. What makes the book unusual today is how much it shares of the interior life of Sonia herself—before she transcended her origins to become India’s most powerful politician.
This week, Sonia Gandhi as president of the Indian National Congress, a position she had held since 1998, longer than anyone before her. She is succeeded by her son, Rahul Gandhi, the to lead the party.If he one day becomes prime minister,
