1. The “family curse is an inversion of a family blessing”. The curse begins as a blessing, a boon by the gods bestowed upon someone extraordinary which is then misused or abused in some way leading to the boon turning into a curse.
2. There is always hubris involved. The individuals, in some manner or other, transgress the mortal limits imposed by the gods.
3. The curse is usually linked with the abuse of children or of creative potential.
4. The members of the family who inherit the curse exacerbate it through their own hubris.
   

The Gandhi family seems to have had fulfilled all the criteria. I say ‘have had’ hoping that the curse has been expiated by Sonia Gandhi’s refusal to accept the job of Prime Minister of India after she brought the Congress party back to power in the general elections in 2004.

For a curse to come to an end it needs atonement, it requires humility and acceptance of limits. When tragic events of a similar nature occur repeatedly in a family, someone within that family needs to pause and reflect on what is going on. It requires an attempt at rectification of the mistakes and transgressions. Above all, I think it requires extraordinary courage.

But what seems to be happening, at least on the surface, within the Gandhi family is a compulsive, instinctual surrender to the collective longing for a redeemer in India. The Congress is one of the two major political parties in India. Since Independence, in 1947, there have been very few years when the Congress party was not in power or when a member of the Gandhi family was not the head of the party.

Right now that person is Sonia Gandhi, daughter-in-law of Indira Gandhi. Throughout her married life, Sonia Gandhi despised the Indian political world and not only did she resolutely stay out of it but threatened to divorce her husband, Rajiv, if he ever joined the family ‘business’.

She had wept with fear for Rajiv’s life when he was sworn in as Prime Minister after his mother, Indira Gandhi, was assassinated.

So what made Sonia Gandhi join politics? What compulsion, what call of destiny was it that after retreating completely from the public eye for 6 years after her husband was assassinated in 1991, she joined the same political party. Not only Sonia but her two children, Rahul and Priyanka, have joined the Congress party as well and Rahul is now a Member of Parliament.

Sonia had specifically said the decision on whether to join politics or not, was entirely theirs. And she meant it but just as she has not been able to resist the relentless pull of fate her children do not seem to have the choice either. Or is it that none of them seems to have the ability to reflect or have the will power to break away from a family matrix which has clearly been very destructive to the individuals in that family.

The situation for Sonia was not unlike, in fact it was almost uncannily like the situation her mother-in-law faced several decades ago. But Indira was the daughter of Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Prime Minister of Independent India and perhaps the pressure on her was too great to resist.

Sonia’s chart reveals an extraordinary degree of synastry and commonality of themes with that of other members of the Gandhi family, particularly with Indira. A brief comparison shows that her Ascendant at 20deg18 of Leo is exactly conjunct to that of Indira Gandhi at 20deg08 of Leo. For some years now people in India have remarked on how Sonia seems to be emulating Indira in so many ways, including how she walks, dresses, even to the extent of wearing her husband’s watch.

Sonia’s Midheaven (MC) at 9 Taurus is exactly trine Indira’s Mars at 9 Virgo. In fact the Leo Aquarius and Scorpio Taurus axes occur repeatedly in charts of at least 6 members in the family revealing a gift from the gods of being born to prominence, status and position of leadership. It shows men and women of great determination and willpower who have a strong need and ability to leave a lasting legacy.

Sonia has Saturn conjunct Pluto in Leo in the 12th house. Indira had Neptune and Saturn conjunct in Leo in the 12th. Indira’s family background demanded that she make something of herself, leave a mark. But Sonia came from an ordinary middle-class family from Luciano, Italy which made no such demands on her. However, her meeting, falling in love with and marrying Rajiv Gandhi was an assurance of a position of prominence forever.

Sonia’s Mercury at 26 Scorpio is exactly conjunct Indira’s Sun at 26 Scorpio explaining the instinctive rapport and understanding they shared right from the beginning.

But to understand the family dynamics in some depth we need to go through a background of their history.

The Nehrus had been allied with power since the Mughal rulers but gained national prominence in modern India with Motilal Nehru, Indira Gandhi’s paternal grandfather. Motilal Nehru, (MLN) born in 1861, was a brilliant and successful lawyer, one of the wealthiest and most socially prominent citizens in the city of Allahabad.

With the Sun, Venus, Pluto and Ascendant in Taurus it seems hardly surprising that in 1900 Motilal Nehru moved his family to a huge, 42 room mansion called Anand Bhawan (Abode of Joy).

After a trip to Europe he imported a car, probably the first in the province and certainly the only one to be driven by an English chauffeur, a testimony to his Mercury in Aries conjunct the Ascendant. Decades later, his great grandson Rajiv would own the first laptop in India.

Jawaharlal, Motilal’s only son, had Neptune cnj Pluto in the 4 th both square Saturn in the 7 th, ruling the 12 th house of the collective. It was not only the presence of a powerful father at home with whom he would have many differences of opinion over the years but the British who ruled his home, his country and against whom he would struggle for the next several decades.

JLN, born in 1889, (incidentally the same year as Adolf Hitler) was a driven, obsessive man and single-minded in his goal of removing the British rulers from India.

Both of Indira’s daughters-in-law and her younger son carry close Saturn Pluto aspects and all of them seemed to have either projected the aspect on others or used it in destructive ways instead of owning it as JLN did. Nehru’s Neptune Pluto conjunction square Saturn expressed itself in a mystical vision and a longing for an idealistic state, for freedom, for an independent “Mother India” and to achieve this goal personal sacrifice and the complete destruction of the existing patriarchy was necessary.

JLN spent almost 18 years in prison while fighting British rule. In the months he was out of prison he was constantly involved in politics and had little time for his family including his only child, Indira. Years later Nehru was haunted by this neglect of his family but in his justification one has to say that he couldn’t be fighting the mighty British empire and get home in time for tea.

This unrelenting sense of duty which took precedence over any personal needs or desires directed not just Nehru’s life but that of several other family members through all the generations.

It was in 1922 that JLN began, from prison, his life long correspondence with Indira. However, what seems to have been an intense, close relationship was based on an idealistic fantasy. Indira’s natal Sun at 27 Scorpio, in the 4th, was conjunct Nehru’s Sun at 22 Scorpio and her sense of personal identity was enmeshed with that of her fathers’. It was only after his death that she came into her own.

In 1942, Indira married a Parsi man, Feroze Gandhi who had been working with the Congress and was a family friend. Nehru, his sisters and even Mohandas Gandhi tried to dissuade her from the marriage—he was, in the eyes of the family not a very suitable man. He had no qualifications, no job prospects, no family background, and was from a different caste. Nehru’s sister thought him 'common'. In fact, the whole country seemed to be against it. But Indira was inflexible.

She was then going through her progressed New Moon in Sagittarius in the 4th, transiting Uranus and transiting Saturn both opposite her natal Sun. This was her first act of rebellion and bid at freedom from the family matrix and unconsciously perhaps from her father who since his wife’s death in 1936 had become more dependent on Indira.

After Kamala's death, Nehru fell in love with a compatriot but could not marry her. "The one thing Nehru was unwilling to do for any woman (including Indira) was sacrifice his work--his political and moral responsibilities--to personal desires and needs.² However, it wasn’t just his own needs that didn’t count but also those of others, like Indira’s were sacrificed to his work. Although Nehru was against any of his family members being included in the government after he became Prime Minister, he did not seem to have hesitated to usurp Indira to serve him.