Sonia Gandhi’s Memoir ‘Belonging’ Chronicles Love, Loss, and India’s Deepening Political Divide

Few personal journeys have been as closely entwined with a nation’s history as that of Sonia and Rajiv Gandhi. Sonia Gandhi’s long-awaited political memoir, Belonging, offers a strikingly candid account of her path from a small town in Italy to the highest levels of power in India—all for love, she says.

The senior Congress leader has long guarded her private life. In Belonging, she speaks openly for the first time about the extraordinary twists and turns of a life that has largely unfolded in full public view.

Published today, Belonging offers moving glimpses of Gandhi’s private grief. She writes about the loss of her first child, who died shortly after birth, and the chilling discovery of grenades in a room of their home after Operation Blue Star, the 1984 military operation against Sikh separatists at the Golden Temple in Amritsar. She also provides a firsthand view of several turbulent chapters in Indian politics, including the violent assassinations of her mother-in-law, Indira Gandhi, in 1984, and her husband, Rajiv, in 1991.

The book also revisits darker episodes that have shadowed the Gandhi family and the Congress party, including Indira’s imposition of the Emergency in June 1975. During that 21-month period, civil liberties were suspended, political opponents were imprisoned, and the press was silenced, spreading fear and dismay across the country. In Gandhi’s account, it also caused a rift within the family.

Ultimately, Gandhi’s memoir is a vivid record of six decades of India’s political transformation, from the Congress-dominated secular republic she joined in 1968 to today, when Hindu nationalism has become the dominant political force under Narendra Modi.

Here are five key takeaways from her memoir and what they reveal about Indian politics today.

Gandhi has had virtually no contact with Modi in 12 years

Gandhi’s account offers a glimpse of how deeply political polarization runs in India today. In one revealing passage, Gandhi writes that she has had “practically no real contact” with Modi during the 12 years he has led the nation. At times when the two have been in the same room, such as the Speaker’s small chamber, Modi “tends to look away, avoiding eye contact,” she says. On occasion, she adds, he has briefly asked about her health after a hospital stay.

For Gandhi, this breakdown marks a departure from the past, when leaders on opposing sides of the aisle “would treat one another with cordiality.” After the 2001 terror attack on Parliament, Gandhi immediately called then-BJP Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee to enquire about his safety, a gesture he appreciated.

Gandhi describes an increasingly authoritarian style of politics, in which those in power seek to “belittle and torment” opponents. For years, her son Rahul has been ridiculed by the BJP as “Pappu,” a derisive term meant to portray him as inexperienced and naive. She notes that similar patterns are emerging elsewhere, echoing U.S. President Donald Trump’s use of personal insults and ridicule against political opponents.

Loneliness at the top for India’s women leaders

India has an illustrious history of women occupying top leadership positions, long before many other democracies. But their rise has often come at a cost: loneliness in navigating a male-dominated political world.

In the book, Gandhi describes a 2012 conversation with Hillary Clinton about female leaders and their backgrounds. Recalling Indira, she shares that, despite wielding authority, Indira could feel besieged and profoundly alone—especially in the months leading up to the declaration of the Emergency by her mother-in-law.

Gandhi also writes of her own isolation, including when she chose to lead the Congress out of a sense of duty to her family’s political legacy.

Those in power increasingly shut out the press

Among the many ways Gandhi charts the erosion of India’s democratic conventions in Belonging, one particularly telling shift is the changed relationship between the media and those in power. She recalls a time when journalists had opportunities to question prime ministers directly.

In 12 years in power, Modi has not held a standalone press conference. He attended one press briefing at the end of an election campaign and appeared alongside U.S. presidents at joint press encounters after bilateral meetings, where questions were taken from the press. Modi has consistently avoided open forums with journalists, and his media interactions have largely been one-on-one interviews with sympathetic, pro-government anchors, or in one widely publicized exchange with a Bollywood actor who asked how he likes to eat mangoes.

Beyond the media

The book’s publication has renewed attention on concerns about free expression in contemporary India, and the extent to which fear of repercussions may influence what can be said, written, and published.

Penguin Random House India was set to publish Gandhi’s memoir but withdrew from the project in August. Gandhi told the Guardian that the publisher was “uneasy in general with the criticism of the government” and said it dropped the book after she declined certain suggested edits. Penguin has disputed her account, saying the claim that it declined to publish because of refused editorial changes “does not accurately reflect the circumstances.”

The book is released in the U.S. by Alfred A. Knopf and is being published in India by HarperCollins.

In June, Penguin also withdrew from plans to distribute graphic journalist Joe Sacco’s The Once and Future Riot, about the 2013 Muzaffarnagar communal violence. The publisher cited an inaccurate map of India and unresolved citation issues. Sacco, however, attributed the decision to the “current political climate in India.”

Quiet ruptures with the ‘thoroughly dishonest’

Western political memoirs, particularly by former heads of government or senior politicians, often name adversaries, recount private exchanges, and offer candid assessments of colleagues. David Cameron’s 2019 memoir, For the Record, took aim at his former friend Michael Gove, describing him as “mendacious” and a “foam-flecked Faragist.”

Gandhi, by contrast, is restrained. She writes warmly of the closeness between the Gandhi family and Bollywood superstar Amitabh Bachchan, whose parents she lived with when she first moved to India, but she makes no mention of the subsequent estrangement between the two families. In another instance, she does not name the political leader she calls “thoroughly dishonest” and whom she says she trusted in 1999, when Congress unsuccessfully attempted to form a coalition government.

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