India's young Gandhi says mum Sonia is his hero
(Agencies)
Updated: 2004-05-20 15:08

The head of India's Congress party, Sonia Gandhi, won praise from one of her biggest fans -- her son, Rahul --after she renounced her claim to become the country's prime minister.

"My mother isn't a Gandhi by blood...but yesterday she became one. I wouldn't be able to act the way she did," 34-year-old Rahul, who made his political debut in this election, told The Hindustan Times newspaper.

Italian-born Sonia, who married into India's first family more than 35 years ago, stunned the world when she walked away from the prime minister's post in the world's largest democracy, saying she was listening to "her inner voice".

Despite impassioned pleas from her colleagues, the 57-year-old Sonia did not reconsider her decision.

Sonia said she wanted to spare a Congress-led government from damaging attacks over her foreign birth, although local media speculated that fears she would become the target of militant nationalists also played a part.

But Rahul, who was elected to parliament from the family borough of Amethi in northern India, scoffed at the suggestion.

"Had we been so worried, we'd have locked her up in a room. Threats like these are as common to us as the clothes we wear everyday.

"I've seen my grandmother take oath as prime minister in 1980 and my father in 1984. I didn't feel as proud then as I felt yesterday."

But many analysts say Rahul and his sister, Priyanka, feared for their mother's life after their father, former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi, was killed by a suicide bomber during an election campaign in May 1991.

Millions of Indians still remember a grief-stricken Sonia and Rahul standing pensively as the flames from Rajiv's funeral pyre leapt into the sky.

It wasn't the first violent death in the Gandhi family, often called India's Kennedys + Rajiv's mother, Indira, was shot and killed by her own security guards in 1984.

But Rahul, who worked as a financial consultant in London before returning to India to start a computer consultancy firm, said his mother never wanted to be prime minister.

"After the elections, on the day I collected my certificate (of winning the election), I asked my mother whether she wanted to be prime minister and she told me that she didn't." 

Close

Today's Top News     Top World News
Authorities to monitor price shifts before rate decision         Official: China can feed its own people         Shanxi mine blasts kill 24, trap 23 others         Experts: Mainland has seen through Chen         US attacks wedding party, kills 41 Iraqis         New photos depict Iraqi prisoner abuses	India's young Gandhi says mum Sonia is his hero       US allows UN council to rebuke Israel on Gaza       India's new coalition allies jockey for key jobs       US attacks wedding party, kills 41 Iraqis       Israel presses Gaza offensive despite world outcry       Bomb found near Greek Games site