Sonia Gandhi’s ‘Belonging: A Journey of Love’ | How a love story grew into a deep belonging to India
In an interview with The Hinduon in her book Belonging: A Journey of Love, Sonia Gandhi noted that under the Bharatiya Janata Party-Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh dispensation over the past twelve years, “a lot of damage has been done to the fabric of our country, our democracy and our health institutions. Even after this government comes back, it will be restored big time. Now they are getting restless and realizing the damage, but I am optimistic and I know that the Indian people will return to they will welcome the proper administration of public affairs.
Asked about the decline of the Congress as India’s dominant party, the insider opinion of some critics that the party has failed to reverse the downward trend, and its current state and prospects, the former Congress president said, “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. They consider all the major electoral institutions, their money, their commissions. power and their exploitation of religion Yet our party is fighting and making progress… What’s more, in recent months it has been amply proven that many elections have been stolen and people are now more aware of it and our prospects are improving day by day.
Sonia Gandhi’s much-anticipated Belonging, published by HarperCollins India, is a personal memoir, with politics providing the background or “some sort of framework,” as she puts it in the book. I read it as a love story at its core, the story of an extraordinary, instant bond of love between Rajiv and Sonia, which gradually blossomed into something much bigger, drawing her into his family, into the highest circles of power, then reluctantly into public life and politics, eventually making her one of the country’s foremost political leaders.
“Stranger than fiction, right?” I asked her in the interview. “Yes!” she replied. “That’s one of the reasons why I didn’t want to talk about it for so long. But it’s not just a love story between the two of us, it’s also a story of how I fell in love with Rajiv’s family and the country they belonged to, and then I came into it. And how that love brought me into public life when I saw that it threatened the meaning of all the sacrifices the party was making.”
Rajiv Gandhi and Indira Gandhi, with whom she shared an extraordinarily close bond, are the two central figures in Sonia’s story. When asked what she saw as their defining characteristics in retrospect and how each shaped her life and outlook, she explained, “When I came to India as a young bride, I knew nothing about India. Everything I am and know today, I learned from them. Their courage, their empathy, their commitment to a secular and democratic India, and above all, the duty that was greater and stronger for them than at any other time was an inspiration to me. doubt.”
Asked how much of the young Italian woman who met Rajiv Gandhi in a Greek restaurant in Cambridge some sixty years ago survives in Sonia today, she replied: “The values I learned in my childhood survive… But I smiled and laughed a lot more then!”
She answered questions in detail about the 1975-1977 Emergency as an anti-democratic and authoritarian chapter in the history of independent India; and the answer needs to be read in its entirety to understand how he views Emergency today.
In May 1999, when some party leaders, including Sharad Pawar, raised the issue of her foreign origin and argued that she could not hold a high office in India, she tendered her resignation as Congress president and then withdrew it. When asked, Sonia Gandhi replied, “Of course, I felt hurt… It was a shock to me that I was still seen as an outsider.” But looking back, she saw that “maybe they had their own reasons.” She added that “after some soul-searching” she realized that “I couldn’t let my personal feelings distract me from my larger purpose. I had to keep going.”
After the Congress’s victory in the 2004 Lok Sabha elections, Sonia Gandhi, the clear choice of the party and the coalition to become Prime Minister, declined the offer. But under intense pressure in the “surreal drama” that followed, she said “Theek hai” only to change her mind. When asked if she ever thought how the policies and strategy of the United Progressive Alliance might be different if she accepted it, she replied emphatically: “No, not at all. I never thought about that. Our experience was very positive overall. We worked as a team and our roles were different when he (Manmohan Singh) was leading the government and I was leading the party.”
Read the full text of the interview
Published – 7 Nov 2026 06:00 IST