The strong women behind the powerful men

In death, Rosalynn Carter reminds us of the devotion with which she assisted her husband not only in his political career but also in his post-presidential life. Theirs was a marriage of love, with the fullness of affection and commitment coming into it. It was at age three that Jimmy Carter first saw Rosalynn, a new-born baby delivered into the world by his mother, the loving nurse known as Miss Lillian.
And years later, in 1946, Jimmy and Rosalynn married, and stayed married till Rosalynn closed her eyes on the world a couple of days ago. In hospice during her final stages --- Carter too has been in hospice since February this year --- and affected by dementia, no one expected her to die so soon. Now that she is gone, it is not hard to imagine the loneliness Jimmy Carter will feel in the remaining days of his life.
The Carters were a happy couple through all their years as peanut farmers in Georgia and then in the governor's mansion in Atlanta. It was their dedication to politics which carried them to the White House in 1977. Deep disappointment was theirs, as also of millions of others around the world, when Jimmy Carter lost his bid for a second term to Ronald Reagan in 1980.
But he and Rosalynn quickly picked up the pieces and went ahead in reinventing themselves through the Carter Centre, caring about diseases in Africa, about democracy in politically vulnerable nations around the world, about human rights where governments stayed at a remove from the people whose fortunes they were supposed to preside over.
In his wife's death, Jimmy Carter will be a lonely figure, given that Rosalynn was his partner for seventy-seven years through all the bright moments and all the disappointments of his life. Aged ninety-nine, he too does not have much more of time on this planet. But he knows, and so does the world, that his marriage to Rosalynn was a happening to which people in love around the planet could look for inspiration.
There have been all the strong women who have inspired the men in their lives, their husbands, into going forth with their mission to change the fate of their nations. Begum Fazilatunnessa Mujib's is a shining instance of a simple middle class woman whose devotion to family, whose readiness to keep the clan in good shape, was a spur to Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman's long campaign to free his people from colonial rule. Begum Mujib did not falter in her work. She ensured good education for her two daughters and three sons.
Despite all the pressure she was under --- with the security forces of the state of Pakistan keeping her family in endless surveillance, with those who could have helped turning away from her when she needed them most, with her constant need to change residence when Bangabandhu remained in incarceration --- she did not lose her composure or her faith in her husband's power to change the destiny of the Bengali nation. She kept the home fire burning. And she was always the light in Bangabandhu's life.
Which takes us to the story of how Mikhail and Raisa Gorbachev bonded with each other. When Raisa, a highly educated woman with a background in philosophy and having been a teacher at Moscow State University, died in 1999, Gorbachev was devastated. He was not the same man after his wife passed away and in all the time he lived till death came to him twenty-two years later, it was obvious that without Raisa he was lost. The two of them shared all the highs and lows of life.
Gorbachev, clearly a break from political tradition in what was the Soviet Union, inaugurated the trend of having Raisa accompany him on his official trips outside the country. Raisa was unlike any other spouse of any other Soviet leader. She had a keen eye for fashion, engaged in intellectual conversations with people (she was not impressed with Nancy Reagan, whom she found rather out of touch with the great issues facing the world) and clearly was accessible to people. Old pictures of the Gorbachev couple demonstrate the romance which underpinned their lives in all the years they stayed married.
A powerful woman behind a political leader was Winnie Mandela, whose struggle to keep her family going as also to have the African National Congress stay afloat during Nelson Mandela's twenty-seven years in prison are truly the stuff of legend. It is of course a different matter that the couple went their separate ways once Mandela walked free of prison, but that Winnie was pivotal in keeping alight the flame of freedom in apartheid South Africa is today a defining chapter in modern political history. She protected her children even as the white racist regime went after. She was thrown into prison, but the apartheid men could not kill her spirit.
Kasturba Gandhi was the power behind the Mahatma's crusade to ensure justice in South Africa. Initially squeamish about the nature of the tasks Gandhi expected her to carry out --- cleaning latrines used by a number of people, for instance --- she soon joined her husband in raising the demand that all black people and all coloured people needed to be accorded their human, political and social rights. In Argentina, Evita Peron was a consequential figure beside her husband Juan Peron and to this day is revered for the social causes she undertook in the years Peron wielded power. Evita died young and Peron would marry again, but her mystique has never worn off. Argentine history has a special place for Eva Peron, as she was popularly known.
The wives of politicians, at least a good number of them, are remembered because of the involved nature of their work beside their husbands or in encouraging their husbands to fulfil their political ambitions. Some wives have suffered silently and yet stayed unflinchingly loyal to their husbands as the latter fell and rose and fell again in their careers. Pat Nixon was a symbol of moral strength for Richard Nixon throughout his career. She was the silent witness, the devoted spouse to a man who went through a series of crises in his life.
On the day Nixon made a farewell speech to the White House staff as he prepared to leave the presidency in 1974, Pat's eyes brimmed with tears. Her heart broke. When years later she died, Richard Nixon wept uncontrollably in public. No one had ever seen him in tears in his long political career, but Pat's death caused something to snap inside him.
Rosalynn Carter, of whose passing I was informed by the Carter Centre within minutes of the sad happening, now joins all those other women --- strong, powerful and independent --- who stood beside and behind their men, to let them know that they could count on them for loyalty and faith and unwavering belief in their politics.

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