Another Gandhi leads party to win

NEW DELHI - Sonia Gandhi spent decades as a woman behind the scenes. Shy and Italian-born, she ran the household for her mother-in-law when Indira Gandhi was prime minister, choosing menus and managing the servants. She did the same for her husband when he became prime minister, after his mother's assassination.

Now, more than a decade after he too was slain, Sonia Gandhi is poised to become the latest in a long line of Gandhis to govern this sprawling nation.

Early returns showed Gandhi's Congress Party and its allies with 220 seats to the 189 of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, or BJP, and its coalition partners, a result that no pundit or exit poll had come close to predicting.

With the ruling Hindu nationalist alliance conceding defeat and Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee resigning Thursday evening, a suddenly resurgent Congress Party and its allies appear set to take over, with Sonia Gandhi, 57, the most likely prime minister.

"The process of government formation will gather momentum" in coming days, Gandhi said. Gandhi refused to say if she would become prime minister.

It's certainly not what she expected when she arrived in India in 1968, a 21-year-old bride who didn't care much for Indian food.

"I had a vague idea that India existed somewhere in the world with its snakes, elephants and jungles," she once wrote of her early days with husband Rajiv Gandhi at Cambridge University.

Those days are over. She's been an Indian citizen since 1983 and a member of Parliament since 1999. She speaks fluent, if Italian-accented Hindi. Thousands of people turn out for her speeches.

But while Congress is likely to lead the next government, it needs an alliance with other parties - and whether all would accept a foreign-born prime minister isn't clear.

Gandhi's Italian ancestry has long been her political weak point.

During the campaign, her opponents hammered on her "foreignness" and political inexperience.

But she dismisses such attacks, telling New Delhi Television in a rare interview that being born Italian means nothing to most voters.

"I never felt they look at me as a foreigner," she said. "Because I am not. I am Indian."

Also, whether intentional or not, she reminds many Indians of her mother-in-law: the way she wears her sari, her habit of striding ahead of aides.

To many Indians, she remains a videshi bahu - or "foreign-born daughter-in-law." To supporters, it's a term of endearment, a link to the dynasty that remains wildly popular through rural India. To critics, it's a reminder of her birth, and the power she gained through marriage.

Some of Congress' success came from anger with the Bharatiya Janata Party, which led the ruling alliance. Analysts had predicted an easy BJP victory, as the party campaigned on a surging economy and what it called "Shining India."

But for every new Indian software millionaire, there are millions of rural poor with no electricity. For them, the Gandhis have always been heroes.

Gandhi's son Rahul also made his political entry Thursday, winning a parliamentary seat in Amethi, the family's political stronghold. But it was her daughter Priyanka, a young mother who wasn't running for office, who became a star, drawing huge crowds while campaigning for her mother and brother.

Sonia Gandhi, a woman who had long stayed out of politics, was thrust to prominence with her husband's 1991 assassination. Seven years later, Congress officials desperate for a prominent name to help rebuild their party coaxed her into taking the party leadership. Slowly, she became a presence in politics.

But she remains shy to the point of near-reclusiveness, and while she campaigns diligently and makes regular speeches, she almost never gives interviews or news conferences. Her critics call her inexperienced and inaccessible.

Raised in a middle-class Roman Catholic family outside Turin, Italy, she met Rajiv Gandhi at Cambridge, marrying into the dynasty that had dominated Indian politics, and the Congress, since independence from Britain in 1947.

The implications of the Congress Party's victory for the direction of the country will take time to emerge. Some business leaders have expressed concern that a change in government could slow economic reforms, although it was Congress, under the finance minister at that time, Manmohan Singh, that initiated those reforms in 1991.

The fate of peace with Pakistan - which had been predicated to an extent on the trust built in recent months between Vajpayee and the Pakistani president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, and their aides - also hangs in the balance.

"From the very beginning we've been supporting the prime minister's initiative vis a vis Pakistan. We have all along been saying a dialogue must be initiated with Pakistan," Gandhi said Thursday.

Pakistani leaders had openly said they would like to see Vajpayee's government re-elected, but were quick to downplay its defeat.

"For us, the most important thing is that the process for peace should continue," Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed said. "I am fully confident that the results of elections in India will not disturb the peace process."

The end of Hindu nationalist rule could bring other changes as well, such as the possibility of less culturally conservative policies in the face of the country's burgeoning AIDS crisis, and the end of efforts to introduce Hindu nationalist themes into educational curriculums.

- Information from the New York Times was used in this report.

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