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The process of making Sonia Gandhi learn Hindi and turn her into a public speaker entailed a lot of team effort, says Rasheed Kidwai’s book, Sonia: A Biography. an excerpt… SONIA tried to master Hindi from various sources before taking the plunge into politics. She had begun learning Hindi at home soon after her marriage. Indira had arranged for a tutor from the Hindi Institute at Green Park to teach her to read and write in the Devanagri script, and slowly, she developed a liking for the language. Her teacher found her a good learner, who seldom missed her homework.
‘I had no choice, so I learnt it,' Sonia said, pointing at the tradition of speaking only in Hindi at the dinner table since the time of Motilal Nehru. No one, including the head of the family, was permitted to break the tradition. It is one customs that is still practised at 10 Janpath. In the first few months that Sonia began to speak in Hindi, Sanjay would laugh each time she made a mistake, but Indira and Rajiv would quickly reprimand him and help her. Sonia took Sanjay's remarks sportingly. In 1980, a few days before his death, she managed to correct 'his' Hindi. Everyone present had a good laugh. Sonia also made it a point to try to speak to all her Indian friends in Hindi. Now, she initiates a conversation in Hindi with all those who hail from the Hindi heartland and speaks in English to those who come from across the Vindhyas. Once she was elected to Parliament, the process of educating Sonia gained momentum with partymen vying to take up the assignment. The party's former chief whip in the Lok Sabha, Prof P. J. Kurian, who had lost the election, took it upon himself to brief Sonia about parliamentary conventions and customs. Also assisting her were Madhavrao Scindia, Shivraj Patil, M. L. Fotedar, Margaret Alva, Prithviraj Chavan, Salman Khurshid, Arjun Singh, P.M. Sayeed, Mani Shankar Aiyar, Girja Vyas and Pawan Bansal. Sources close to Sonia
said that her first few months in Parliament were the most testing.
There were 500 pairs of eyes watching every movement of hers. The
press gallery, special gallery, visitor's gallery, As a Sonia aide said, "Madam is a reticent person and she hated the intense public glare. She did not want to give the impression that Congress leaders were helping her. There used to be intense relief each time Parliament got adjourned." Sonia was aware of the prevailing tension in the Congress Parliamentary Party (CPP) but saw little reason to panic. She told her associates that she needed time, recalling how Rajiv could not make a speech during his first year of Parliament (1981-82). Slowly, she began learning the ropes. She made her first speech as a member of the Lok Sabha on October 29, 1999, though she had spoken there on five occasions before to facilitate the Speaker and Deputy Speaker, second motions of their election and announce her resignation from the Bellary Lok Sabha seat. Sonia had won from both Amethi and Bellary, but, according to the law, she could keep just one seat. Bellary, an industrial town in Karnataka, gave Sonia a mandate in spite of spirited efforts by the BJP's Sushma Swaraj, who had taken pains to learn Kannada. There was constant media speculation that she would humble Sonia. But a day before campaigning ended, Priyanka arrived, and the entire township was out to see and hear her. Sushma did not wait for the verdict. She knew she had lost. For her speech, Sonia came prepared with reams of paper, printed in bold 30-point type with just a couple of sentences written on each sheet. Sonia began speaking amid catcalls, but Speaker G.M.C Balayogi was extremely considerate. At the back of his mind was his own experience as he, too, had faced a communication problem when he was appointed the Lok Sabha Speaker in 1998. (He was from Andhra Pradesh and not very fluent in Hindi.) With this presentation,
Sonia passed the litmus test. — WFS
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