‘There’s Bound To Be Some Tamasha’: Sonia Gandhi On Upcoming Memoir

Congress Parliamentary Party (CPP) Chairperson Sonia Gandhi has said she decided to write her upcoming memoir, Belonging: A Journey of Love, to correct what she described as inaccuracies, inventions and exaggerations about her life over the years.

In a video shared on X on Tuesday, Gandhi spoke about her decision to tell her story in her own words, adding that the book could change how some readers perceive her.

“There’s bound to be some tamasha when this book comes out. After all, others have spent decades telling my ‘story’, now it’s my turn,” she wrote in the caption accompanying the video.

Gandhi recalled that she had opposed the decision of her husband, former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, to become Prime Minister. She said that a great deal had been written about her, but much of it was not accurate.

‘My Story, As It Really Was’

“When... when then my husband was asked to become Prime Minister, which I was totally against. Well, I felt that since a lot had been written about me, and a lot of it was not quite correct, or you know, it was either invented or exaggerated,” she said.

The memoir, she added, offered an opportunity to set down the facts as she remembered them.

“So, it gave me a feel of being able to now put down my story and describe facts and things as they were—as they really were. Or let us say my, not version, I wouldn't say version, but my story,” Gandhi added.

She also acknowledged that the book could influence readers' views of her, while accepting that reactions would differ.

“People have different views. Some people may change their view about me, some people's view may become worse. But that's, uh, what it is. That's what happens when you write a book, or when you are in public life. There's bound to be a tamasha,” she said.

Memoir To Trace Journey From Italy To India

Titled Belonging: A Journey of Love, the memoir chronicles Gandhi's life, from her childhood in post-war Italy and her romance with Rajiv Gandhi to the personal losses that shaped her life and her relationship with India.

The book revisits her childhood in Italy, her relationship with Rajiv Gandhi during their time at Cambridge, and the assassinations of her mother-in-law, former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, and her husband.

Publisher Alfred A Knopf announced on August 18 that the memoir would be published on November 10. The publisher is an imprint of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, part of Penguin Random House.

Born in Italy, Gandhi was a 19-year-old student in Cambridge, England, when she met Rajiv Gandhi in 1965. The couple married on February 25, 1968. The 79-year-old Congress veteran is the party's longest-serving president.