‘Others Told My Story for Decades, Now It’s My Turn’: Sonia Gandhi on Her Upcoming Memoir ‘Belonging’

Congress Parliamentary Party chairperson Sonia Gandhi has hinted that her upcoming memoir will reveal her side of a story that others have told for decades, warning with a smile that its release is bound to create a “tamasha”.

Titled ‘Belonging: A Journey of Love’, the 544-page memoir will be published by HarperCollins India on November 10. In a new preview video shared on social media, Gandhi reflects on her life, the events that shaped her and the many accounts about her that she believes were either invented or exaggerated.

“I don’t know if I should tell the whole story,” she says in the video, before recalling the time her husband, former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi, was asked to become prime minister—a decision she says she was completely against.

Gandhi said she wanted to set the record straight and describe events as they happened, rather than leave her life story to interpretations by others. She acknowledged that the book could change public perceptions of her, for better or worse.

“Others have spent decades telling my ‘story’, now it’s my turn,” she said, adding that controversy was inevitable when a public figure chose to write about her experiences.

The video includes glimpses of her marriage to Rajiv Gandhi, his assassination, her children Rahul and Priyanka, and her years in the Congress. The memoir traces her journey from childhood in post-war Italy to Cambridge, where she met Rajiv in 1965, and her subsequent adjustment to life in India.

It also recounts the family’s major tragedies, including the deaths of Sanjay Gandhi in 1980, Indira Gandhi in 1984 and Rajiv Gandhi in 1991. The book covers the Congress-led alliance’s victory in the 2004 general election, when Sonia declined the prime minister’s post but continued to lead the party and its coalition government.

The memoir’s publication has also attracted attention following a dispute with its initially proposed Indian publisher, Penguin Random House India. The publisher cited a stalemate over a particular issue, while denying external pressure.

Gandhi’s latest preview offers a glimpse of a deeply personal account that promises to revisit her family’s tragedies, political choices and decades in public life.