Friends, Family, And Foes: Sonia Gandhi Lays Her Cards On The Table In ‘Belonging’

For someone who has spent much of her public life avoiding the media, Sonia Gandhi has produced a remarkably revealing memoir. Belonging: A Journey of Love (HarperCollins India) offers an intimate account of a woman who entered India’s most powerful political family through marriage, resisted politics for years, and eventually became the arbiter of political fortunes, including who would, and would not, become prime minister of India.

The book is full of explanations. Why she refused the prime ministership in 2004. Why she chose Manmohan Singh. Why Pranab Mukherjee never realised his ambition. Why her relationship with Maneka Gandhi deteriorated. And why, despite their profound political differences, her assessment of Narendra Modi is not entirely without acknowledgement of his strengths.

Sonia is temperamentally a consensus-builder, reticent and wary of confrontation. Unlike many political autobiographies, Belonging is neither a score-settling exercise nor a meticulously constructed prosecution of old adversaries. It is frequently candid, occasionally defensive and almost always restrained.

That is simultaneously its strength and weakness. The honesty of its personal recollections contrasts with a persistent desire to explain, reconcile and justify. Sonia tells us much about what happened, but is less forthcoming about whether things might have been done differently.

The Night Sonia Nearly Became Prime Minister

Perhaps the most consequential revelation concerns May 2004, when the Congress unexpectedly returned to power and Sonia declined the prime ministership. For more than two decades, her refusal has been interpreted variously as an act of sacrifice, political calculation, or a response to the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP’s) campaign against her foreign origin. Her memoir introduces another explanation: she had made the decision long before the results, under the influence of her children.

Rahul and Priyanka, having lost their grandmother and father to assassinations, were deeply opposed to their mother occupying an office they associated with mortal danger. Sonia had assured them she would not accept it. But when the moment arrived, her resolve faltered. Congress and alliance leaders surrounded her, demanding that she reconsider. Their insistence became almost aggressive. Overwhelmed, she murmured an acquiescence, which was immediately interpreted as consent.

The domestic consequences were explosive, as is evident from the following passage:

You said yes?” thundered Rahul. “They wouldn’t listen to me,” I replied, “I don’t want to do it, you know I don’t. I was being pressurised.” “Pressurised? You are being pressurised?” he demanded. “What about us?” He stormed off, his face clouded with anger. “Look, Ma, you’ve always been clear about this,” Priyanka said. “Don’t get forced into it. Do what you’ve decided to do. We’re both here to help you handle it.

Sonia’s eventual refusal was certainly shaped by personal apprehensions. But there was also a hard political calculation. The BJP’s campaign over her Italian origins threatened to overshadow the legitimacy of the new government.

Singh offered a solution. His personal integrity, administrative experience and reputation as the architect of the 1991 economic reforms reassured industry, while his acceptability to the Left helped sustain the new coalition.

Sonia rejects the suggestion that she subsequently ran the government by proxy. She describes allegations that she summoned government files from the Prime Minister’s Office as “malicious and totally false”.

There was undoubtedly a division of power: Sonia controlled the Congress organisation and influenced its political priorities; Singh ran the government. Their partnership worked because their economic and social instincts broadly converged. And also because Sonia had genuine admiration for Singh’s qualities.

The clearest demonstration of the strength of the Sonia-Singh compact came over the India-US civil nuclear agreement. When the Left threatened to withdraw support, Sonia backed Singh rather than those who considered themselves her trusted allies. It was an important assertion of confidence in his judgment.

Yet, the larger constitutional question remains. The United Progressive Alliance arrangement was politically effective, but it also blurred the distinction between formal authority and informal influence. The memoir explains Sonia’s intentions more convincingly than it resolves the debate over that arrangement.

Mukherjee’s Ambition And Maneka’s Rebellion

If Singh emerges as the trusted colleague, Mukherjee appears as the accomplished politician whose ambition remained unfulfilled.

Sonia is generous about his intellect, describing his encyclopedic knowledge of Congress history and world affairs, while recalling a temper that could turn his face “almost purple”. But she is equally clear that Mukherjee believed his seniority and experience entitled him to higher office. The most revealing episode dates to 2010, when he broached the possibility of changing the prime minister.

Sonia writes: “He [Pranab Mukherjee] shocked me with the suggestion that perhaps it was time for a change at the top, which I understood as a hint of his long-held desire to become Prime Minister.” Her response was characteristic: she gently changed the subject.

Mukherjee’s own memoirs suggested that he had believed, in 2012, that Sonia might replace Singh with him. The recollections expose a striking asymmetry. Mukherjee evidently read possibilities into Sonia’s political calculations that she herself says she never entertained.

By then, UPA-II was struggling with corruption allegations, inflation, and ministerial rivalries. Rahul Gandhi was increasingly restless with the organisation he would eventually inherit. Yet, Sonia remained committed to Singh.

The memoir also recalls a Congress gathering in Shimla in 2003, when Sonia discovered senior colleagues discussing who should lead the party into the election. She felt wounded by their apparent willingness to consider someone else. The episode reveals that even the Gandhi family’s commanding position within the Congress was not always secure.

If Sonia handles Mukherjee with restraint, she is noticeably less forgiving towards Maneka Gandhi. Her description of her younger sister-in-law is among the book’s sharpest personal portraits. Initially, Maneka was a welcome, lively presence in the household. Gradually, however, Sonia came to regard her as disruptive, argumentative, and increasingly influential over Sanjay Gandhi.

She recalls Maneka using language considered unacceptable in Indira Gandhi’s home and attributes the growing distance between Rajiv and Sanjay partly to her influence. In one instance, Sonia recalls Indira telling her then cabinet secretary P.N. Dhar about her young daughter-in-law: “Uske abhi se par nikalne lage hain.” (She has started growing her wings already).

Sonia also identifies Maneka’s mother, Amteshwar Anand, as an important source of pressure within the family. In her account, Maneka did not restrain Sanjay’s political excesses during the Emergency but encouraged his assertiveness. The subsequent estrangement from Indira is presented against the background of Maneka’s political ambitions and growing proximity to rival political circles.

It is an unmistakably partisan family history. Maneka’s version would almost certainly be different. But the severity of Sonia’s judgement is revealing precisely because she is so careful elsewhere. On Maneka, the instinct for reconciliation appears to desert her.

Modi And The Distance Between Two Indias

Sonia’s assessment of Modi is more nuanced than might be expected from one of his principal political adversaries. She is critical of his ideological worldview, the influence of the RSS, and what she regards as an authoritarian approach to governance. She accuses the Modi government of appropriating numerous UPA-era programmes while failing to generate sufficiently original ideas of its own. Yet, she acknowledges Modi’s political abilities and his rise from modest circumstances through the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh organisation.

More intriguingly, Sonia admits that she shares something of Modi’s discomfort with sections of Delhi’s privileged political class. She, too, has encountered drawing-room conversations that appeared detached from the lives of ordinary Indians.

The ideological gulf, however, remains vast, as Sonia writes:

Narendra Modi’s idea of India was constructed by the ideologies of the RSS and the experience of his own growing up. It affirmed a fundamentalism in which his faith and culture superseded all others. In that India, hierarchy, order, and control are central. He was fighting for his vision of India and I for mine: an India against hegemony, an India that stands for inclusiveness, secularism, and social justice.

While Sonia clarifies that her conflict with Modi isn’t personal, she also admits their almost nonexistent relationship, something Sonia or the Congress do nothing to fix. Their encounters are confined largely to formal parliamentary occasions, where greetings seldom extend beyond a namaste. She recalls Modi avoiding eye contact, although he did enquire after her health following a hospitalisation.

The Woman Behind The Matriarch

The most affecting sections of Belonging have little to do with political calculation. Sonia writes of losing her first child after a premature delivery, of the grief surrounding that experience, and her insistence on a burial. She discusses her treatment for breast cancer, correcting earlier reports about where she received medical care.

There are recollections of her Italian childhood, the emotional difficulty of surrendering her citizenship, and her desire to belong to the Gandhi household. She continued speaking Italian to her children while embracing Hindi and the customs of her adopted family. The book’s title acquires particular resonance here. Sonia’s story is not simply about an Italian woman becoming Indian. It is about an individual attempting to reconcile several identities without entirely relinquishing any of them.

There are delightful glimpses of world leaders, too. Bill Clinton appears charming but distracted, seemingly as interested in the women present as in the discussion. Nicolas Sarkozy comes across as arrogant. Princess Diana charms Sonia’s mother by addressing her affectionately in Italian. A particularly amusing anecdote concerns Prince Edward, Duke of Edinburgh, when his brusque enquiry about the identities of Indian dignitaries prompted Mukherjee to introduce himself and his cabinet colleagues with unmistakable dignity. And when Barack Obama won the American presidency, Sonia recalls being moved to tears, sharing the excitement of friends for whom his victory represented a historical breakthrough.

These moments humanise a politician whose public reserve has frequently been mistaken for coldness. Yet, they also sharpen the book’s central contradiction.

Sonia is considerably more comfortable acknowledging vulnerability in her private life than responsibility for political misjudgments. Her explanation of the Emergency, her assessment of Congress colleagues and her defence of the UPA arrangement reveal a recurring tendency to distinguish good intentions from unfortunate consequences. For the Congress today, this distinction is increasingly difficult to sustain. The party must defend its record while confronting the reasons for its electoral decline. Rahul and Priyanka inherit not only the moral authority Sonia associates with the family’s sacrifices, but also the accumulated contradictions of its political history.

Belonging is, therefore, neither a devastating exposé nor a conventional exercise in self-glorification. It is the testimony of a woman who exercised immense influence while remaining instinctively uncomfortable with the public performance of power.

(Rasheed Kidwai is a senior journalist, author and political commentator )