NEW DELHI (The Thursday Times) — Sonia Gandhi’s memoir, Belonging: A Journey of Love, went on sale on Tuesday, tracing her path from an Italian village to the head of India’s Congress party, and drew an immediate charge from the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party that it whitewashes her family’s record.
The 544-page book, published by HarperCollins India, follows Gandhi, now 79, from her birth in Italy and student days in England, where she met Rajiv Gandhi, to her arrival in the Nehru-Gandhi family, which has given India three prime ministers. She turned down the prime minister’s post herself in 2004. It is only the second memoir by a member of the family, after Jawaharlal Nehru’s An Autobiography, published in 1936.
Love, loss, and illness
Gandhi writes about her marriage and about two bouts of cancer. In 2010, she recalls, she was advised to have an operation for suspected breast cancer, and chose to be treated at the European Institute of Oncology outside Milan because she did not want her illness discussed in the media. “On the day of the surgery, as I was wheeled into the operation theatre, Rahul and Priyanka held my hand and kissed me on the forehead, assuring me that all would be well,” she writes.
She also recounts arguing with Rajiv over the Shah Bano case in 1985. “The papers are accusing you of sacrificing Muslim women’s interests. What’s going on? Why are you letting this happen?” she says she asked him. She writes that in 2010 Pranab Mukherjee suggested “it was time for a change at the top”, which she took as a hint of his wish to become prime minister, and she rejects the charge that she was a “back seat driver” during Manmohan Singh’s government.
A political row
On the 1984 anti-Sikh riots that followed Indira Gandhi’s assassination, in which nearly 3,000 people were killed, she calls the violence a “tragic and shameful chapter” and defends Rajiv against accusations of complicity, while acknowledging failures of governance and delayed justice. She writes that Indira felt isolated and cornered before imposing the 1975 Emergency.
“Sonia Gandhi could have titled her memoir ‘Whitewashing’, instead of ‘Belonging’,” BJP spokesperson C.R. Kesavan said, accusing her of sugar-coating the family’s historical wrongs. Leaders of the Shiromani Akali Dal and the BJP in Punjab have demanded a Congress response on 1984, and Bihar’s Janata Dal (United) said it was aggrieved by her portrayal of Nitish Kumar. Congress leaders accuse the BJP of trying to give the book a political spin.
A launch event is planned in New Delhi on November 16.
