Brave Sonia Gandhi

Sonia Gandhi (Hindi: सोनिया गांधी, IPA: [soːnɪjaː gaːndʰiː]), born Sonia Antonia Maino on December 9, 1946, is an Italian-born Indian politician, the President of the Indian National Congress and the widow of former Prime Minister of India, Rajiv Gandhi. She is the Chairperson of the ruling United Progressive Alliance in the Lok Sabha, and the leader of the Congress Parliamentary Party. She was named the third most powerful woman in the world by Forbes magazine in the year 2004 and currently ranks 6th . She was also named among the Time 100 most influential people in the world in 2007 She was returned to Parliament by a margin of over 400,000 votes in the recently held by-election for Rae Bareilly after the office of profit controversy.

[edit] Early life
Born to Stefano and Paola Maino, as Sonia Antonia Maino, in Lusiana, a little village 50 km from Vicenza, Italy, she spent her adolescence in Orbassano, a town near Turin being raised in a Roman Catholic family and attending a Catholic school. Her father, a building contractor and a former Fascist Party member, died in 1983. [5] Her mother and two sisters still live around Orbassano.
In 1964, she went to study English at The Bell Educational Trust's language school in the city of Cambridge. While doing this certificate course she met Rajiv Gandhi, who was enrolled at the time in Trinity College at the University of Cambridge. They were married in 1969, after which she moved into the house of her mother-in-law and then Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi.
She acquired Indian citizenship in 1983.The couple had two children, Rahul Gandhi (born 1970) and Priyanka Gandhi (born 1972).
Despite the family's heavy involvement in politics (her mother-in-law Indira Gandhi, daughter of Jawaharlal Nehru, was Prime Minister), Sonia and Rajiv avoided all involvement - Rajiv worked as an airline pilot, and Sonia took care of her family. [When Indira was ousted from office in 1977 and when Rajiv entered politics in 1982, Sonia continued to focus on her family and avoided all contact with publicity.

Congress President
Following her husband's assassination on May 21, 1991, there were calls for her to enter politics by members of the Congress Party.[13] Sonia was vehement in her denunciation of politics and politicians. She is said to have stated that she would have rather seen her children beg than enter into the maelstrom of Indian political life.[14] After her refusal, the party settled on the choice of P V Narasimha Rao as leader and, subsequently, Prime Minister. The Congress fortunes continued to dwindle and it was feared that it would no longer be the largest party in parliament. Several senior leaders such as Madhavrao Scindia, Rajesh Pilot, Mamata Banerjee, G K Moopanar, P.Chidambaram, Jayanthi Natarajan etc were in open revolt against the incumbent President Sitaram Kesri and quit the party, splitting the Congress into many factions.
Sonia joined the Congress Party as a primary member in the Calcutta Plenary Session at 1997.[1].
She officially took charge of the Congress party as its president in 1998 becoming the fifth member of the Nehru-Gandhi family and the eighth foreign-born person to become Congress President, and the third foreign-born woman, following Annie Besant and Nellie Sengupta. She was elected to the Lok Sabha in 1999 from Amethi in Uttar Pradesh as well as Bellary in Karnataka.