With the 2004 Lok Sabha polls approaching, Sonia Gandhi went about forging alliances.
She reached out to Sharad Pawar, who had left the Congress five earlier earlier, the left parties – CPI, CPI(M), Forward Bloc, others – “calling on every possible ally” she could to defeat the BJP.
Sonia Gandhi, writing in her memoir ‘Belonging: A Journey Of Love’, opened up about the intense moral and emotional conflict she faced when the Congress party considered an alliance with the DMK in the years following Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination.
Writing in her memoir ‘Belonging: A Journey Of Love’, Gandhi opened up about the intense moral and emotional conflict she faced when the Congress party considered an alliance with the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) in the years following Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination. Recalling the political landscape of the early 2000s, Gandhi notes that the moment appeared right for opposition forces to unite against the BJP-led government. It was the right moment to make contact, since of all the forces needed to come together to challenge the BJP, the DMK was the most important party in the south,” she writes.
Because it was the only viable way to take on the BJP in Tamil Nadu, responding to the memoir, DMK leader TKS Elangovan said Sonia Gandhi had allied with the DMK. The Jain Commission’s report in 1997, which held a DMK leader responsible for tacitly supporting the Tamil assassins, had even prompted the Congress to withdraw support from the IK Gujral government.
Yet the idea of partnering with the DMK filled her with deep unease, she says. “For me the most challenging personal assignment was to bring into alliance the DMK, whose leader M Karunanidhi was said to be unhappy with the BJP government. The 79-year-old former Congress chief says she could “sense that some of my colleagues from Tamil Nadu were keen on an alliance but did not know how to broach the subject to me”.
