"This Is Not a Political Book": Sonia Gandhi Explains Why She Wrote Her Memoir

Congress Parliamentary Party chairperson Sonia Gandhi has said her upcoming memoir is not a political book but a personal one, and asserted that she wanted to portray her family honestly, as people she knew and loved.

Writing in The Hindu ahead of the release of her book 'Belonging: A Journey of Love', Gandhi said it is her account of the place she came to call home.

"For most of my life, I kept my inner world to myself. Even after grief pulled me into politics, I held on to whatever privacy I could, and writing openly about my life felt almost unthinkable. Only after stepping back from the daily churn of public life could I see my own story clearly," Gandhi said.

"When I did look back, one thread ran through all of it: love, and the loyalty that grows from it. It all began in England, where a 19-year-old woman from a small Italian town met a young Indian student. It carried me into a new country and a new family, into a deep bond with my mother-in-law, and through the years of raising our children," she wrote about how 'Belonging' came to be.

"It also carried me through the unbearable, when I lost first my mother-in-law and then my husband to violence," she added.

Gandhi said what remained to sustain her was her love for her husband and for India, the country where she felt she truly belonged.

It also came with a sense of duty strong enough to lead her into public life, against every instinct she had, Gandhi said.

"This is not a political book. It is a personal one. Much has been written about my family, but rarely with real insight into who they were, their motivations, their struggles, their very human flaws. I wanted to portray them honestly, as people I knew and loved," the former Congress president said.

"I also hoped to share what I witnessed over more than five decades in India. I watched a country transform, at first from the margins and later from its very centre," she said.

"This book is my account of that journey, and of the place I came to call home," Gandhi said.

Published by HarperCollins India, Gandhi's memoir will be released in India on November 10, ending uncertainty over the book's domestic publication following an "impasse" between the author's representatives and Penguin Random House India.

The book covers major tragedies that impacted the Gandhi family, including the death of Sanjay Gandhi in a plane crash, Indira Gandhi's assassination in 1984 and Rajiv Gandhi's assassination in 1991.

The memoir also delves into political events surrounding the Congress-led alliance's victory in the 2004 elections, when Sonia Gandhi declined to become prime minister and instead led the party and its alliance, which governed India for a decade.

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