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Sonia Gandhi has largely withdrawn from active politics. She no longer runs the Congress party, does not lead its election campaigns, and has ceded the public stage to a younger generation. Yet the Hindutva ecosystem remains unable to leave her alone. A Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh-linked (RSS-linked) weekly, Organiser recently described the National Advisory Council (NAC) she once headed as a “Dimagi [intellectual] Naxal takeover.”

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) social-media units circulated sexually suggestive AI-generated images intended to evoke her deceitfully postulated past in an Italian bar. Meanwhile, controversy erupted over proposed changes to the Indian edition of her memoir, particularly passages reportedly dealing with Narendra Modi, the RSS and communal politics.

Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty.

Why does a semi-retired politician still provoke such fury? Sonia Gandhi unsettles Hindutva because her life contradicts its narrow definition of who may belong to India, while her record recalls when that ideology appeared electorally beatable. The hatred combines ideological hostility, historical resentment, xenophobia and misogyny.

There are legitimate reasons to criticise Sonia Gandhi. But criticism must evaluate public conduct of a political leader. She has instead faced attacks on her birthplace, accent, religion, marriage, and body.

For Hindutva, Sonia Gandhi’s first offence is that she chose India and was accepted by millions of Indians. Born in Italy and raised as a Catholic, she married Rajiv Gandhi in 1968, made India her home, raised her children there and became an Indian citizen in 1983. Her belonging rests on citizenship, family, experience and democratic consent, not blood, birthplace or the religious identity assigned by majoritarian nationalism.

That makes her symbolically threatening. Hindutva treats India primarily as a Hindu civilisation and minorities as people whose loyalty may repeatedly be tested. Sonia embodies another India: one in which national identity can be acquired, plural and civic. Voters, not self-proclaimed cultural gatekeepers, permitted her to lead India’s oldest political party. Her........

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