Sonia Gandhi has written for the first time about begging Rajiv not to become prime minister after Indira Gandhi was assassinated.

Her memoir, Belonging: A Journey of Love, came out from HarperCollins India on 10 November and runs to 544 pages.

She writes that she gripped Rajiv at AIIMS in New Delhi on 31 October 1984 and warned him, "They will kill you, too."

Rajiv was sworn in that evening at 40, India's youngest prime minister. He was killed by a suicide bomber in Sriperumbudur in May 1991.

The book starts in Cambridge, where Sonia Maino, then 19, met Rajiv in 1965. They married in New Delhi in 1968.

She describes learning Hindi, wearing saris and adjusting to Indian food in a home where her mother-in-law was prime minister.

After Sanjay Gandhi died in a 1980 plane crash, she fought Rajiv's entry into politics. She says it was their first tension in 15 years.

After 1991 she stayed out of public life for years. She writes that she turned to the Bhagavad Gita while deciding.

She took charge of Congress in 1998 and stayed president until 2017, the longest anyone has held the post.

In 2004 she declined to become prime minister and chose Manmohan Singh instead.

The book confirms for the first time that she battled cancer, and says the 1975 Emergency was a mistake.

The BJP has accused her of whitewashing the record. Her original publisher, Penguin Random House India, disputes her account of their split.

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