Sonia Gandhi has written for the first time about the night she begged her husband Rajiv not to become prime minister, hours after his mother Indira Gandhi was assassinated. The Sonia Gandhi memoir, Belonging: A Journey of Love, was released by HarperCollins India on 10 November, and a BBC profile published on 11 November draws on the book to trace her path. The memoir is her account of a life that took her from a small Italian town to the centre of Indian politics.
Sonia writes that she gripped Rajiv at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in New Delhi on 31 October 1984 and begged him to refuse the prime ministership. She warned him, “They will kill you, too,” fearing for his life and for their children. Rajiv was sworn in as India’s youngest prime minister later that evening, at the age of 40. Seven years later, on 21 May 1991, he was assassinated by a suicide bomber in Sriperumbudur, Tamil Nadu, during an election campaign.
The book begins in Cambridge, where Sonia Maino, a 19-year-old student, met Rajiv Gandhi in 1965. He was a student at Cambridge University, and she was studying English there. They married in New Delhi in 1968, and she moved into a household where her mother-in-law, Indira Gandhi, was prime minister. The Sonia Gandhi memoir describes how she learned Hindi, wore saris and adjusted to Indian food and culture, and how her sense of belonging to India came through Rajiv and his mother.
Sonia Gandhi memoir and the tragedies of 1980 and 1984
Loss shaped the family’s path into politics. Sanjay Gandhi, Rajiv’s younger brother, died in a plane crash in 1980, and Rajiv, a commercial pilot with Indian Airlines, was drawn into public life. Sonia writes that she fought against his entry into politics, and that for the first time in 15 years there was tension between them. Rajiv resigned from Indian Airlines in May 1981, 11 months after Sanjay’s death, and stepped into his mother’s shoes in politics. The Sonia Gandhi memoir traces that turn to Sanjay’s death in 1980.
Indira Gandhi was shot by her bodyguards on 31 October 1984, after the army assault on the Sikh faith’s holiest shrine, and Sonia cradled her as she lay dying. An edited extract of the book published by The Guardian on 7 November describes Sonia arriving at 1 Safdarjung Road and seeing Indira with blood on her sari as she was driven to hospital. The Sonia Gandhi memoir gives a first-person account of that day, including commandos collecting Rahul and Priyanka from school.
Sonia Gandhi memoir and the reluctant entry into politics
After Rajiv’s assassination in 1991, Sonia stayed out of public life for years, and she has said she always disliked politics. She writes that she turned to the Bhagavad Gita as she struggled over whether to enter public life, and that her children argued fiercely with her because they feared losing her too. In 1995 she was asked to support a group led by Arjun Singh, N D Tiwari and Mohsina Kidwai, and she later became a primary member of the Congress after party president Sitaram Kesri invited her to its plenary session in Calcutta.
In 1998 she accepted Congress leaders’ appeals and took charge of a party weakened by factionalism, addressing large rallies in accented Hindi and declaring that her heart was buried in the soil of the country. She became the Congress’s longest-serving president, holding the post from 1998 to 2017. The Sonia Gandhi memoir covers the 1999 challenge from within the party, when Sharad Pawar, P A Sangma and Tariq Anwar questioned her suitability for the highest office on grounds of her foreign origin, and the rebels were expelled and went on to form the Nationalist Congress Party.
Sonia Gandhi memoir and the decision to decline office
After the Congress-led alliance won the 2004 general election, Sonia declined to become prime minister and chose Manmohan Singh, the economist who had helped launch India’s market reforms a decade earlier. She went on to chair the United Progressive Alliance from 2004 to 2023, and she remains a member of the Rajya Sabha. The Sonia Gandhi memoir also confirms for the first time that she battled cancer, and it acknowledges that the Emergency of 1975 was a mistake.
The memoir has drawn a political response, with the ruling BJP accusing her of whitewashing the record. Sonia also writes of difficulties around the book’s publication, including reported disagreements with its original publisher, Penguin Random House India, which has disputed her account of the circumstances. The Sonia Gandhi memoir, at 544 pages, is published by Alfred A. Knopf in the United States and by HarperCollins India, and it went on sale in India on 10 November.
Web story: Sonia Gandhi Memoir Recalls Her 1984 Plea to Rajiv