Sonia Gandhi interview: ‘Great damage done to the fabric of India by BJP’

In this wide-ranging interview to The Hindu on her soon-to-be-launched book, Belonging: A Journey of Love, published by HarperCollins India, Sonia Gandhi responds in writing to a number of questions, personal, historical, and political, raised by N. Ram.

The subjects covered include how she came to write her story about belonging; the values she grew up with and came to learn and cherish in India; what she learnt from Rajiv Gandhi and Indira Gandhi and how they shaped her life and outlook; the “great damage … done to the fabric of our country, our democracy and our institutions” by the BJP-RSS dispensation; how she viewed, and now looks back on, the Emergency of 1975-1977; the major political decisions she made to accept the office of Congress President in 1998 and to continue in it, after a challenge by some colleagues, in 1999, and in 2004 to decline the offer to become Prime Minister; the current political situation and the prospects of the Congress and its coalition partners; and the change of publisher in India just weeks before the book’s launch.

‘Others have spent decades telling my “story”,’ you posted on X the other day, ‘now it’s my turn.’ My AI-assisted bibliographical search suggests there are at least 75 books, including several biographies, that attempt or purport to tell your story in substantial measure. Your post hints that you were amused rather than irritated or angry about others presuming to tell your story. Am I right? And did you read those books, or at least some of them, written by biographers and others who spent decades telling your ‘story’?

I had no idea there were so many! But I have never felt like reading books about myself. A long time ago Rajiv and I realised that there was no point in trying to keep up with all that had been written about us. But, as I say in the book, there came a time when I felt that I should tell my own story.

In the Prologue to Belonging, you give us an insight into how you came to write your story, ‘perhaps…a story worth sharing,’ as you put it somewhat self-deprecatingly. Was it the ‘chorus’, which was on your case for years, or something within you, or both that eventually pushed you over the line to give us this intimate and unusually candid story? And may I ask how long it took you to write the book, breaks and all?

It’s been such a long time that I’ve lost track, but it has certainly been more than a decade since I first wrote a bit. I only started writing in earnest about five years ago. It wasn’t an uninterrupted process. There were times when words and thoughts flowed, others when nothing would come out, and I would throw my hands up in frustration.

You describe Belonging as a personal memoir, with politics providing the background or ‘a kind of framework’. But it’s really a love story at its heart and that’s how I read it. The story of an extraordinary, instantly formed magnetic bond of love between Rajiv and Sonia, which gradually grew into something much larger, drawing you into the highest circles of power, then reluctantly into public life and politics, and eventually making you one of the country’s foremost political leaders. Stranger than fiction, isn’t it?

Yes! That’s one reason I had no desire to talk about it for so long. But it is not only a love story between the two of us, it’s also the story of how I grew to love Rajiv’s family and the country to which they belonged, and then I too came to belong in it. And of how this love brought me into public life, when I saw the purpose of all the sacrifices they had made being threatened, and the party was weakening. I felt I had to do something.

The writer R.K. Narayan once observed that, despite the passage of time and physical ageing, ‘the chap inside is the same,’ capturing the enduring sense of self. You grew up in a small town in Italy, in a family and social environment far removed from the world that you would eventually inhabit and make your own. Looking back over more than six decades in India, how much of that young Italian woman survives in the person you are today?

The values that I learnt growing up survive. I have tried my best to be true to them: loyalty to family and friends, sincerity and feeling for others, the idea of being dutiful and responsible. I think I can say that in these I am the same person Rajiv met sixty years ago. But I used to smile and laugh a lot more then!

Also read | How a love story grew into a deep belonging to India 

Rajiv Gandhi, the love of your life, and Indira Gandhi, with whom you shared an exceptionally close bond, are central figures in your story. Looking back, what do you see as their defining qualities and the ways in which each shaped your life and outlook?

When I arrived in India as a young bride, I knew nothing about India. All that I am and know today, I learnt from them. Their courage, their empathy, their commitment to a secular and democratic India and most of all, the pull of duty that was greater than any other for both of them was something that inspired me and held me steadfast during times of difficulty and doubt.

You write that Sanjay Gandhi’s name had become synonymous with the Emergency, and that Rajiv used to report complaints or feedback he had heard to his mother, but there was never any response from her. Do you think the so-called excesses of the Emergency could have been avoided had Indira Gandhi listened to her elder son and to others who were honest with her about what they had heard or experienced or observed?

It was not only Sanjay, though in the public mind he is often seen as synonymous with the Emergency. There was a lot of pressure from some of her senior colleagues, and I think there were very few people around her like Rajiv who had a different point of view. I think eventually my mother-in-law began to understand the situation through her own wisdom and took actions to remedy it.

The Emergency I lived through and opposed was, indisputably, a dark chapter in the history of independent India. Fortunately, it was short-lived for a complexity of reasons. You write interestingly about the Emergency in the book and it is clear that you disapprove, like Rajiv did, of many things that happened at that time. Would it not be correct to recognise it as an anti-democratic and authoritarian chapter rather than as a period of over-centralised governance marred by ‘excesses’?

It was only after the Emergency that I came to know the true gravity of what had been happening. Yes, democratic rights had been curtailed and there was a suspension of habeas corpus, but it was done constitutionally. Yet, when I take myself back to that period and try and see it from Mrs. Gandhi’s point of view, I see her struggling to cope with the rapidly deteriorating prevailing circumstances: violent protests, government offices and public transport set on fire, widespread organised unrest and even a call for the bureaucracy and armed forces to disobey orders. Hindsight allows us to put things better in perspective. Let’s not forget that it was Mrs. Gandhi herself who came to recognise what was happening and called for the March 1977 election. And you know very well that she herself later publicly expressed regret and apologised for excesses during the Emergency.

Some of the most interesting and insightful passages in your book concern the RSS, the BJP, and the Sangh Parivar, and the dangers they pose to India’s society and polity, particularly to the constitutional values of democracy, secularism, and fraternity. Do you think the Congress Party, historically and in recent times, has differentiated itself clearly, consistently, and effectively from the RSS-led Hindutva forces on these fundamental issues that matter so deeply to you?

But of course! I admit that there have been some within the party who felt we should not be so black and white on the issue of secularism. But that is not the Party view. In our policies and actions, I believe we have been steadfast in standing with the constitutional right of our people to worship and practise their religion and belief without fear.

On Prime Minister Narendra Modi, you write that you and he come from different ideological worlds and have very different ideas of India. Yet you also recognise something of his discomfort with the ruling elite. In a striking passage in the book, you recall feeling ill at ease in Delhi drawing rooms, where political opinions seemed ‘very far removed from the reality of India.’ The suffering and struggle to survive that you had witnessed in your constituency and across the country seemed unimaginable to this privileged group. You also observe that, although Modi’s humble origins may have been exaggerated by his PR team, he “had certainly worked his way to power within the RSS from an underprivileged world.” What political lessons should the Congress draw from this?

It’s true that he comes from a very different ideological world. But there are many ways that people succeed in politics – within the Congress party, take for example Dr. Manmohan Singh and Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge. I don’t think we have much to learn from the RSS.

Also read | ‘Where I truly belong’: Sonia Gandhi on her memoir Belonging: A Journey of Love

You record your sense of hurt over Congress leaders Sharad Pawar, P.A. Sangma, and Tariq Anwar raising the issue of your foreign origin and asserting that you could not hold high office in India. ‘I felt tears welling up and walked out of the meeting. I hadn’t entered politics to grab position and power. It was some of these colleagues who had urged me to join politics, and now they were turning on me…It wasn’t the issue of holding office that hurt me; it was that my loyalty to India was being questioned.’ You submitted your resignation as Congress President, but you were persuaded by party leaders to continue. Did this episode steel your resolve not to accept the prime ministership should the opportunity arise?

Of course, I felt hurt. These were my colleagues and they’d had my trust, but then it turned out that I didn’t have theirs. It came as a shock that they still saw me as an outsider. Looking back, I can see they may have had their own reasons. But this was early in my political life, and the idea of prime ministership couldn’t have been further from my mind. Yes, I did resign, but then after some soul-searching I realised that I could not let my personal feelings divert me from my larger purpose. I had to continue.

Chapter Thirty is, arguably, the most interesting chapter politically, and one of the most moving personally. It offers new insights into your decision not to become Prime Minister after the Congress-led victory in 2004, when virtually everyone expected you to take office. Months before the general election, you had told one of your children, “Absolutely not,” when asked whether you would accept the post should the Congress pull off a win. Rahul and Priyanka were strongly opposed, haunted by the assassinations of their grandmother and father and convinced that the office carried exceptional danger. Yet, amid the ‘surreal drama’ of party leaders pressing you to accept, you relented with a ‘Theek hai’, only to change your mind. Dr. Manmohan Singh became Prime Minister instead. Do you ever wonder how UPA policies and Congress strategy might have differed had you accepted? I ask because you are widely seen as more of a social democrat than Dr. Singh and most Congress leaders, then and now.

No, not at all. That has never crossed my mind. Our experience was by and large a very positive one. We worked as a team, and our roles were distinct with him leading the government and I leading the party.

You make it clear in the Epilogue that you have no regrets in your personal life over coming to India and making your life here with the family you married into. You also strike a hopeful note when you observe that when you joined the Congress Party and became its President, you discovered that ‘individuals have untapped reserves that come into play when life calls them to perform tasks they had thought unimaginable.’ However, you write that where you struggled with doubts was when you were called upon to make political compromises. ‘I ask myself now,’ you write, ‘did those compromises even serve their objectives? Not always. Even when they seemed to favour the party, I couldn’t rejoice, deep down. They still don’t sit lightly on my conscience.’ What were these compromises? Could you give us a couple of examples?

Let’s be realistic, in politics compromises are at times unavoidable. Sometimes we were faced with difficult political choices, when we were obliged to join hands with some who did not share our political ideology. It never sat easy in my mind. But of one thing I am perfectly clear: we never made any compromises with the BJP and the RSS and we never will.

You rue the end of decency and decorum in parliamentary politics and public life in the last decade and more – ‘a heartlessness that accompanies authoritarian regimes to belittle and torment those who differ from them.’ Do you believe things will change and politics will return to a contest over policies and programmes if the BJP is voted out of power in the 2029 Lok Sabha election?

Over the last twelve years great damage has been done to the fabric of our country, our democracy and our institutions. Even after this government goes it will take time to restore our systems back to health, and great effort from political parties. People are now beginning to be restless and recognising the damage. But I am optimistic and I know that the people of India will welcome a return to proper governance.

The decline of the Congress as India’s dominant party is a fact of political life. Over the past three decades, the Congress has struggled to halt the advances made by the Hindutva forces. There was some revival of fortunes between 2004 and 2014, but critics say that the party has not been able to reverse the declining trend. You write extensively about the Congress in your book. How do you assess its present condition and prospects?

I am not so pessimistic. Consider that the Congress party and other opposition parties have not had a level playing field since this government came to power. Take into account the complete stranglehold they have on all institutions, especially the Election Commission, their control of mainstream media, their money power and their exploitation of religion. Yet, our party is fighting and making progress, in fact, it is the only party that has had the resilience to withstand this onslaught. Our workers and leaders have been extremely courageous. They have faced persecution of all kinds and yet, in every village and every district, congressmen and women are still fighting for the values enshrined in our Constitution. What is more, it has been amply proved in recent months that many elections have been stolen, and people are now more aware of it. The Congress is working with like-minded parties, and our prospects are improving day by day.

It is unusual for a book of such personal and political significance, certain to attract a wide readership in India and abroad, to change publishers just months before its launch. In late August 2026, it emerged that Penguin Random House India would no longer publish Belonging: A Journey of Love. In early September, HarperCollins India announced its publication on November 10. The change prompted considerable speculation. One newspaper report suggested disagreements over passages concerning Narendra Modi, the RSS, communal tensions and minorities, and India’s confrontation with China, including Galwan. Penguin said that following disagreements over the manuscript your team decided not to proceed with publication. Is that account correct? Was this a disagreement over the book’s contents, or were larger questions of a writer’s freedom of expression involved?

I would rather not involve myself in these controversies.

‘I’d always disliked politics’ | An excerpt from Sonia Gandhi’s Belonging: A Journey of Love