Sonia and Mahatma beat down

Image of Protesters-Sonia on a smack down of Mahatma Gandhi

On October 2nd 2007, Congress president Sonia Gandhi addressed the UN General Assembly (UNGA) to formally declare Mahatma Gandhi's birth anniversary as International Day of Non-Violence.

Sonia being of Italian descent (married to the late Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi) has initiated protests by various conservative organizations. They feel that she is using the Gandhi surname to feed her political ambitions.

As the father of India's freedom, Mahatma Gandhi is revered by many as a hero. Sonia really is not, and has been riding the coat tails of the Nehru Dynasty which is a long line that goes something like this:

Motilal Nehru (May 6, 1861 – February 6, 1931) was an early Indian independence activist and leader of the Indian National Congress. He was the founder patriarch of India's most powerful political family.

You might have heard of his son?...

Jawaharlal Nehru (November 14, 1889 – May 27, 1964) was a political leader of the Indian National Congress, a pivotal figure in the Indian independence movement and the first Prime Minister of Independent India. He worked with Mahatma Gandhi to free India.

He had a well known daughter...

Indira Priyadarshini Gandhi (November 19, 1917 - October 31, 1984) She was the Prime Minister of India for three consecutive terms from 1966 to 1977 and for a fourth term from 1980 until her assassination in 1984. She was India's first and to date only female prime minister. She is noted for creating a dictatorship by declaring Emergency after a court struck down her election in 1975, and also for her handling of the Operation Blue Star against Sikh militants, which eventually resulted in her assassination.

And she gave birth to India's political "prince"...

Rajiv Ratna Gandhi (August 20, 1944 – May 21, 1991) was the 7th Prime Minister of India (and the 2nd from the Gandhi family) from his mother's death on 31 October 1984 until his resignation on December 2, 1989 following a general election defeat. Becoming the Prime Minister of India at the age of 40, he is the youngest person to date to hold that office.

Rajiv Gandhi worked as a professional pilot for Indian Airlines before coming into politics. While at Cambridge, he met and subsequently married Italian-born Sonia Maino.

He was assassinated while campaigning, by a female LTTE suicide bomber Thenmuli Rajaratnam. His Italian-born widow Sonia Gandhi became the leader of the Congress party in 1998, and led the party to victory in the 2004 elections.

They had a son...

Rahul Gandhi is a member of parliament and is the next of this legacy.

The opposition could be attributed to the idea that people might hold Sonia and Mahatma Gandhi in the same breath, but this is an assumption. Maybe the protesters take it to heart that, "all Indians look alike", scenario? Sonia has surrounded herself with scandalous corruption, but which politician isn't? The US has politicians that blame lobbyists for all that goes wrong, but isn't it the politicians that are buying into the lobbyists in the first place?

We can only assume that people are smart and realize that Sonia being Italian is not related to Mahatma Gandhi who was Indian and shares the same surname. I don't think that Mahatma Gandhi's supporters were trying to feed him pasta, during his hunger strikes. My only guess is that this all comes down to her not being Indian, but it was the Indian populace that supported her. India is the largest democracy, and she just happened to marry an Airline pilot. Now she has power, and corruption is synonymous to politics. It's part of the job description.

More on the no win situation from http://gandhiheritage.org/ They took out a full page advertisement in the NYtimes, that had representatives of Sonia Gandhi in an uproar. The NYtimes believes in free press and the freedom of speech. It's about democracy!