Friday, 10 January 2014

Sonia Gandhi early life



  • She was born to Stefano and Paola Maino in Contrada Màini , at Lusiana a little village 30 km from Vicenza in Veneto, Italy, where families with the family name "Màino" have been living for many generations. She spent her adolescence in Orbassano, a town near Turin, being raised in a traditional Roman Catholic family and attending a Catholic school. Her father, Stefano Maino, was a building mason, who owned a small construction business in Orbassano. Stefano fought against the Soviet military alongside Hitler's Wehrmacht on the eastern front in World War II, he called himself a loyal supporter of Benito Mussolini and Italy's National Fascist Party. He died in 1983. 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. She met Rajiv Gandhi, who was enrolled in Trinity College at the University of Cambridge in 1965 at a Greek restaurant (the Varsity Restaurant) while working there as a waitress to make ends meet. Sonia and Rajiv Gandhi married in 1968, in a Hindu ceremony following which she moved into the house of her mother-in-law and then Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi.

  • The couple had two children, Rahul Gandhi (born 1970) and Priyanka Vadra (born 1972). Despite belonging to the influential Nehru family, Sonia and Rajiv avoided all involvement in politics. Rajiv worked as an airline pilot while Sonia took care of her family. When Indira was ousted from office in 1977 in the aftermath of the Indian Emergency, the Rajiv family moved abroad for a short time.citation needed] When Rajiv entered politics in 1982 after the death of his younger brother Sanjay Gandhi in a plane crash on 23 June 1980, Sonia continued to focus on her family and avoided all contact with the public.

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