Sonia Gandhi On Why She Spoke To Priyanka, Rahul In Hindi And Not In Italian

Despite not being proficient in the language, Sonia Gandhi spoke to her two children, Priyanka and Rahul, in Hindi till they began going to school. Her Hindi was laced with a strong Italian accent, writes the 79-year-old Congress leader in her memoir, 'Belonging: A Journey of Love', which was released on November 10.

For Sonia Gandhi, it was a conscious decision to choose Hindi over English and Italian when conversing with her children. To people, she said it was a selfish move. She wanted to hone her Hindi-speaking skills. But deep down, there was a strong desire to be accepted.

"When people asked me why I spoke to my children in Hindi and not in Italian, I used to answer that it helped me to practice my own skills, but that was true only in part. The reason deep down was my own strong desire to be accepted, to be embraced, to belong," Gandhi writes.

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The children picked up English once they started going to school, and learned Italian on holidays with their Italian grandparents and cousins.

But did Hindi make Gandhi feel that she 'belonged'?

"How naive I was then! How could I have hoped that it would be so when within the country differences are so pronounced-even amongst people of the same background, speaking the same language, following the same customs-that they can never be made to disappear? Your birth determines who you are till your last breath-and after life," Gandhi writes.

Gandhi eventually found acceptance, but outside her family, in Amethi, Rajiv Gandhi's constituency.

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One of her first Hindi lessons came from her 'Uncle Bachchan', Harivansh Rai Bachchan, father of Amitabh Bachchan, who would occasionally teach her a bit of Hindi, "but too little to make myself understood."

After marrying into the Gandhi family, the former Congress chief felt it was important for her to learn Hindi. She hired a tutor, "but his style of teaching was not suited for a foreign language speaker, and I wasn't making any progress."

Eventually his lessons were discontinued, and Gandhi began to learn by conversing with the staff. Her mother-in-law's long-established rule that only Hindi could be spoken at the table helped her Hindi-learning journey.

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"Later I attended classes at a Hindi institute in Green Park in South Delhi, riding pillion on a Suzuki moped with my friend Sabina, the sister of Christian von Stieglitz, who was also learning the language. Those were hair-raising rides, with Sabina struggling to balance the vehicle and navigate a passage as pedestrians, scooters, and bicycles appeared from all directions, ignoring traffic regulations. But it was a proper class with a competent tutor and many students, some from non-Hindi-speaking parts of India, others from foreign countries. I found the cacophony of different accents, from other parts of India as well as foreigners like myself, amusing, and also comforting: I wasn't the only one who spoke with an odd accent," she writes.

It was at the same institute that Gandhi learnt the Devanagari script, grammar, and conversation skills that would come to her rescue years later when addressing large gatherings. 

She would often show off her progress to her husband and trick him and her brother-in-law, Sanjay Gandhi, with a difficult 'shuddh' (pure) Hindi word they did not know. The language commonly spoken at home was Hindustani, a mixture of Hindi and Urdu, Gandhi writes, which is why she could trick them with Hindi words.

Importantly, over the years Gandhi had begun to lose a bit of her native language, she points out.

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Days Long Preparation For Hindi Speeches

Gandhi writes that she was "painfully conscious" of her Italian accent as she read out her prepared speeches.

"I would start on the Hindi speeches many days before the event, going through several drafts, sometimes till late at night or early morning. Even later on when I had to speak in Parliament, I worked with extra diligence on those speeches, often translated by Janardhan Dwivedi, one of the general secretaries of the party, who helped me with my Hindi from the time I first entered politics," she adds.

Once satisfied with the draft, Gandhi would read the final one out a couple of times to a friend or colleague and to herself.