Super Woman: Sonia Gandhi

Sonia Gandhi (born Edvige Antonia Albina Maino on December 9th 1946) is an Italian-born Indian politician and the President of the Indian National Congress, one of the major political parties of India. She is the widow of former Prime Minister of India, Rajiv Gandhi. In 1964, she went to study English in the city of Cambridge where she met Rajiv Gandhi, in 1965, at a Greek restaurant where she was working as a waitress to make ends meet. Sonia and Rajiv Gandhi married in 1968, following which she moved into the house of her mother-in-law and then Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi. Rajiv entered politics in 1982 after the death of his younger brother Sanjay Gandhi in a plane crash on June 23, 1980. Sonia was invited by the Indian National Congress to take over the Congress, after her husband’s assassination in office, in 1991 and she refused and publicly stayed away from politics. She finally agreed to join in 1997 and was elected as the congress’s leader in 1998, and has served in that position up to date. Her foreign birth has been a subject of much debate and controversy although Sonia is actually the fifth foreign-born person to be leader of the Congress Party. Gandhi was named the third most powerful woman in the world by Forbes Magazine in the year 2004. emma.mprince@gmail.com