"Sonia and I had been friends in the days before Rajiv became prime minister. Tensions built up when I criticized his policies, and our friendship ended completely when she entered politics and showed that she wanted very much to become prime minister herself. There was nothing personal about my objections to her political role. They were based on my conviction that an Italian prime minister of India would seriously damage the already fragile sense of self-worth that most Indians have. Centuries of being ruled by foreigners have caused a congenital kink in the Indian psyche... but if there is reverence there is also shame at this reverence, and in retrospect I believe that if Sonia Gandhi had agreed to become prime minister in 2004, she would have certainly not won a second term for her government. At every turn she would have been accused of being the 'foreign woman', and every calamity would have been blamed on her personally. So she was well advised by her 'inner voice' to reject the job when she was offered it in 2004. This transformed her into the Mother Teresa of politics in the eyes of not just ordinary Indians but even senior political commentators. In an exchange I had on CNN-IBN with the venerable editor Vinod Mehta on Karan Thapar's show once, he said, 'Indians love people who sacrifice high office and this is why Sonia Gandhi is so loved.' She had only sacrificed accountability, not power, I reminded him, and he had no response, but he was not the only one who sang Sonia's praises after her 'sacrifice'. Since that day of 'sacrifice', sycophants had in the name of protecting secularism crawled out of everywhere. Journalists, bureaucrats, businessmen, movie stars and political leaders united to praise Sonia's 'sacrifice'. ... She spoke to nobody until she appeared in Parliament's Central Hall to announce to her newly elected MPs that her 'inner voice' had advised her against becoming prime minister and she intended to obey it. Her announcement caused hysterical shrieks and wails to rise in that high-ceilinged hall as men and women elected by the people of India to represent them in Parliament behaved like children suddenly bereaved of a parent."