/ 21 May 2004

India set to get first Sikh PM

Sonia Gandhi, rejecting fresh appeals to become prime minister of India, named Manmohan Singh, a 71-year-old Oxford-educated economist, for the post this week, giving the country its first non-Hindu prime minister since it gained independence.

Gandhi, who led the Congress Party to a shock victory in the world’s largest democracy last week, decided not to take the post after she came under fire from Hindu nationalist rivals because she is Italian by birth.

She was swayed by her children, who voiced concern for her safety. Both her husband Rajiv and her mother-in-law Indira were prime ministers, and both were assassinated, Indira while in office, Rajiv while seeking re-election.

Gandhi will remain president of the party, and it is clear that she is likely to be the power behind Singh’s throne.

She retains organisational control of the party and her parliamentary seat, and will be perfectly positioned to supervise the political career of her son Rahul, who was elected in a landslide in the constituency formerly held by his father.

At an impromptu press conference on Wednesday night Singh and Gandhi confirmed that the president had asked the Congress Party and its allies to form the next government.

A visibly relaxed Gandhi said she was ”very happy” after being under ”tremendous pressure from the party” to reconsider her decision.

Earlier in the day party workers continued to demonstrate outside the Congress headquarters in Delhi, at one point smashing the windows of a room full of journalists and manhandling MPs during television interviews.

But Gandhi said she would not change her mind. ”The country would be safe in Manmohan Singh’s hands,” she said on Wednesday night.

Singh has played the part of faithful courtier to India’s political first family since Gandhi entered public life six years ago. He has constantly referred to her as his ”leader”.

The quietly spoken former central banker said his priority would be to carry out social and economic development to realise ”the vision of Rajiv Gandhi and make the 21st century the Indian century”.

A practising Sikh, Singh will become India’s most scholarly leader, with a doctorate in economics from Oxford University and a glittering academic career.

He made his name as the architect of the modern Indian economy when in 1991 he dismantled the licences and regulations that had wrapped the country in red tape since its independence.

”He is a very modest man but he is our greatest intellectual since Nehru to be prime minister,” said BB Bhattacharya, who runs the Institute of Economic Growth in New Delhi and is a former student of Singh.

”Over the years he has learned to adjust his economics to match the political reality.”

Singh, who is the Congress Party’s leader in the appointed Upper House, has never won an election.

Gandhi made it clear to her MPs that she would not leave the political stage. ”I am not going anywhere,” she told them. ”I am still very much in politics.”

Given that reassurance, the MPs backed her decision to stand down as prospective prime minister and unanimously voted to amend the party’s constitution to allow her to nominate Singh.

Commentators said that her decision would lend her ”great moral influence”.

”More than 90% of Muslims voted for Sonia Gandhi,” said Rafiq Zakaria, a former diplomat, now a political writer.

”They did so because she said she wanted a progressive, secular country.

”This is the political environment that Sonia Gandhi created and that Dr Singh will inherit.” — Â