NEW DELHI -- Sonia Gandhi once hated politics, certainly the intrigues of Indian affairs.
As an Italian and rank foreigner, she was particularly uncomfortable with the Indian system. In fact, she never wanted to be involved with it, and for many years kept her late husband, Rajiv Gandhi, out of it.
Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi's brutal assassination by Sikh extremists in the mid-1980s pushed her son, Rajiv, on to the hot seat.