New Delhi, Nov 11 (PTI) As Sonia Gandhi went about building an inclusive alliance in the run-up to the 2004 Lok Sabha polls, the biggest hurdle she faced was the internal turmoil she endured while tying up with the DMK, whose cadre in 1991 had been vocal supporters of the LTTE, the terrorist group that had killed her husband Rajiv Gandhi.
The story of how the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) came into being is documented in Sonia Gandhi's newly-released memoir 'Belonging: A Journey of Love'.
"One of the important duties for me at this time, in between my Jan Sampark travels, was to reach out to other parties. On an impulse I walked over to the house of my neighbour, the Dalit leader Ram Vilas Paswan from Bihar, who didn't have a large party of his own and was an ally of the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD)," she says, recalling her efforts in building the alliance to challenge the BJP.
"As soon as I realised that this had been a faux pas incurring the displeasure of RJD leader Laloo Prasad Yadav, I spoke to him and he understood that it had been unintentional," she says in the book.
As part of Jayaprakash Narayan's student movement, he had been a bitter opponent of the Congress, she recalls.
So were others in the alliance, and some in our party were not too happy to be working with former foes, but here we had a serious compulsion to put differences aside, Sonia Gandhi says.
She also spoke with Sharad Pawar, who had left the Congress five years earlier.
"I met several times with Comrade Harkishan Singh Surjeet, the general secretary of the CPI(M), always accompanied by Sitaram Yechury, who was himself later elected to the post. Their experience and astuteness were invaluable in bringing the left parties on board -- the CPI, CPI(M), Forward Bloc, and others, though supporting us from the outside as post-election allies," she says.
"The CPI(M) chief Jyoti Basu at the party's headquarters, seeing me courteously to the lift, said in what I thought was a grand-fatherly way, 'Good girl, good girl, you're doing a good job'. I called on every other possible ally we could muster to defeat the BJP: Shibu Soren, the senior tribal leader from Jharkhand, and all the important leaders from the South," she says.
Sonia Gandhi says she met them individually, in groups, and hosted a dinner for all of them.
"For me the most challenging personal assignment was to bring into the alliance the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), whose leader M. Karunanidhi was said to be unhappy with the Vajpayee 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 says.
Sonia Gandhi recalls that she could sense that some of her colleagues from Tamil Nadu were keen on an alliance but did not know how to broach the subject to her.
The DMK cadre had been, at the time of the 1991 elections, vocal supporters of the LTTE, the terrorist group that had killed Raiiv; some in the party had openly threatened Rajiv, she recalls.
"In 1997, the Congress had even withdrawn support to the government of Prime Minister I. K. Gujral when the Jain Commission, set up to enquire into Rajiv's assassination, released its report holding the DMK leader responsible for tacitly supporting the Tamil assassins," she says.
"With those painful memories returning to torment me, I'd ask myself, 'What should I do? If I join hands with them, won't it amount to a betrayal of Rajiv?' Then again, 'Perhaps Rajiy himself would have gone ahead with this alliance, if he knew it was necessary to strengthen our front against the BJP'," she says in the book released on Tuesday.
A decision had to be taken urgently, for a larger cause, she narrates.
"My heart was in my mouth, and I was trembling when I made that first telephone call to M. Karunanidhi to initiate a conversation with the DMK. Though I spoke no Tamil and he no English, his response was cordial. We went on to meet and go through all the steps of joining forces," Sonia Gandhi says.
In time, she says she came to respect Karunanidhi and found that they had interests in common, in the arts.
He had been a poet and scriptwriter, proud of his heritage, the ancient Tamil language and its literature, and "we got on well", Sonia Gandhi says.
"Following a series of meetings with the leaders of the alliance, I'd task colleagues to work out, between our state unit and theirs, the details of seat arrangements and coordinate the campaign. I'd be required to intervene whenever differences arose, and AP (Ahmad Patel) would prepare the ground for the final clinching of the alliance," she says.
"He maintained a wide network of contacts and was most effective in matters requiring tactful management. Finally on May 4 2004, we had a formal alliance in place: the United Progressive Alliance (UPA), as we called it," she said.
Gandhi recalls that on May 10, 2004, the campaign concluded, and three days later the election results were declared.
"The Congress Party-led alliance had won a decisive 218 seats -- a triumph! Excitement was in the air.
"Rahul had won handsomely in Amethi and the party workers were celebrating, filling the air with their slogans claiming that Rajiv's beta, son, was now theirs," she recounts.
Sonia Gandhi says she was ecstatic at last.
"At last our party had won! The taste of victory is sweet, goes the saying, and so it was."
(This story has not been edited by THE WEEK and is auto-generated from PTI)