'Absolutely Not’ To A Reluctant ‘Theek Hai’ And Then Firm No: Sonia Gandhi Recalls The 2004 PM Post Pressure

In the hours after the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) won the 2004 Lok Sabha elections, Sonia Gandhi weighed the demands of party colleagues against her own doubts about becoming prime minister. In her memoir Belonging: A Journey of Love, she recalls reaching a decision late at night: “Sonia, be true to yourself. You’ve always known it. Just leave it!”

The Congress leader says she had not sought the post and feared that her appointment would make her Italian origin the focus of a political campaign. “The BJP and its allies would for certain use my ‘foreign origin’ as an issue,” she writes. “How could I agree to holding the office of prime minister knowing it could wound my country, the country that I loved? No, never!”

The book, published in India by HarperCollins and released on Tuesday, revisits the discussions and events that led to Sonia Gandhi declining the post and nominating former finance minister Manmohan Singh to lead the government.

A Conversation With Rahul And Priyanka

Gandhi writes that she had discussed the possibility of becoming prime minister with Rahul and Priyanka Gandhi months before the election. When one of them asked whether she would take the post if the Congress won, she replied: “Absolutely not!”

She says their conversation touched on the family’s experience of political violence, including the assassinations of Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi. “They’d lived through the trauma of their grandmother’s assassination and the brutal murder of their father,” she writes.

After the UPA’s victory, Gandhi found herself pulled between her reservations and what she describes as a sense of responsibility towards the party and its voters. “One part of me rejected the idea completely, the other part was calling on my sense of obligation,” she writes. “My emotions were changing, moment to moment.”

Party Leaders Press Her To Accept

Gandhi recounts that alliance leaders gathered at her residence and urged her to become prime minister. After listening for more than an hour, she says she felt overwhelmed by their insistence.

“They physically surround me. ‘We will not accept this,’ one of them says. ‘You cannot take this decision, Madam,’ says another,” she writes. “‘We will not take no for an answer.’”

Gandhi says she mumbled, “Theek hai” — “All right” — and the leaders took it as a sign that she had agreed. She later told Rahul and Priyanka that she did not want the job and had been pressured.

The next day, at a Congress Parliamentary Party meeting, Gandhi faced further appeals to reconsider. She had expected to nominate Singh, but party members made speeches urging her to accept the post. In her address, she said: “The post of prime minister is not my aim.”

“Today that voice tells me I must humbly decline this post,” she told the gathering. She writes that she had to stop speaking briefly after feeling faint and short of breath. When she resumed, she said: “Power in itself has never attracted me, nor has position been my goal.”

Why She Chose Manmohan Singh

After declining the post, Gandhi proposed Singh’s name to lead the UPA government. She writes that several senior Congress leaders were qualified, but Singh stood out for his experience and understanding of governance.

His work as finance minister in the early 1990s, when he introduced economic reforms under Prime Minister P V Narasimha Rao, was among the factors she considered. Gandhi also believed that Singh could reassure people about the UPA’s economic direction, particularly with Communist parties supporting the government.

“He was not allied to any camp in the party,” she writes. “What I knew best about Dr Singh was that he had a kind and compassionate heart, and his integrity unquestionable.”

Gandhi says she consulted senior colleagues before proposing Singh. He initially declined when approached privately, but was eventually persuaded to accept the role.

The Visit To Rashtrapati Bhawan

Sonia Gandhi also recounts going to Rashtrapati Bhawan on May 18, 2004, with Singh to stake the UPA’s claim to form the government. She describes feeling a surge of emotion as she entered the building, which she had visited earlier with Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi.

She says the two returned to her residence at 10, Janpath without discussing who would become prime minister. “He had quite naturally assumed, like everyone else, that it would be me,” she writes.

The memoir also addresses criticism that she was a “back seat driver” during the UPA years. Gandhi says she respected Singh’s position as prime minister and believed it was her responsibility to defer to him, even when they disagreed. She also recalls a 2010 conversation in which Pranab Mukherjee suggested “it was time for a change at the top”, which she interpreted as a reference to his long-held ambition to become prime minister.

Belonging: A Journey of Love traces Gandhi’s life from her childhood in Italy to her move to India and her marriage to Rajiv Gandhi. It also recounts the assassinations of Indira and Rajiv Gandhi and the personal losses that shaped her life.