Veteran Congress party leader Sonia Gandhi’s memoir Belonging was released Tuesday, recounting family losses and limited dealings with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, The Guardian reported, amid a dispute over its publication in India.
The Guardian says Gandhi was elected Congress party president in 1998. In her account, meaningful exchanges with Modi have been rare throughout his 12 years in office. The report sets that relationship against her call to then-Prime Minister AB Vajpayee after the 2001 Parliament attack, which it presents as a remnant of earlier cross-party civility.
The memoir describes early family loss alongside later threats. Gandhi writes that her first child lived only briefly after birth and recalls grenades discovered in a room of the family home following Operation Blue Star, the 1984 military operation at the Golden Temple, The Guardian reported. The book also revisits the 1984 assassination of her mother-in-law, Indira Gandhi, and the 1991 killing of her husband, Rajiv Gandhi.
The Guardian says the memoir also covers the Emergency Indira Gandhi imposed in June 1975. The 21-month period curtailed civil liberties, jailed political opponents and silenced the press, the report said.
Gandhi told The Guardian that Penguin Random House India withdrew after she rejected the publisher’s proposed edits; she said it was uneasy with criticism of the government. Penguin disputed her account, according to the report. HarperCollins is publishing the book in India, while Alfred A Knopf is its U.S. publisher, The Guardian reported.
The Guardian sets the memoir against wider political polarization, the rise of Hindu nationalism and reduced access for the press. It presents these as context rather than a stated explanation for Gandhi’s relationship with Modi.
