How a love story grew into a deep belonging to India
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Sonia Gandhi during the unveiling of her upcoming book ‘Belonging: A Journey of Love’. File picture. Source: AICC
In an interview to The Hinduon her soon-to-be-launched book, Belonging: A Journey of Love, Sonia Gandhi observed that under the Bharatiya Janata Party-Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh dispensation 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.”
Asked about the decline of the Congress as India’s dominant party, the view of some critics that the party has not been able to reverse the declining trend, and its present condition and prospects, the former Congress President responded: “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… 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.”
Sonia Gandhi’s much-awaited Belonging, published by HarperCollins India, is a personal memoir, with politics providing the background or “a kind of framework,” as she puts it in the book. I read it as a love story at its heart, the story of an extraordinary, instantly formed bond of love between Rajiv and Sonia, which gradually grew into something much larger, drawing her into his family, into the highest circles of power, then reluctantly into public life and politics, and eventually making her one of the country’s foremost political leaders.
“Stranger than fiction, isn’t it?” I asked her in the interview. “Yes!”, she responded. “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.”
Rajiv Gandhi and Indira Gandhi, with whom she shared an exceptionally close bond, are the two central figures in Sonia’s story. Asked what, looking back, she saw as their defining qualities and how each shaped her life and outlook, she explained: “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.”
Asked how much of the young Italian woman who met Rajiv Gandhi at a Greek restaurant in Cambridge about sixty years ago survives in the Sonia of today, she replied: “The values that I learnt growing up survive ... But I used to smile and laugh a lot more then!”
She responded in some detail to questions about the Emergency of 1975-1977 as an anti-democratic and authoritarian chapter in the history of independent India; and the response needs to be read in its entirety to understand how she views the Emergency today.
In May 1999, when some party leaders, including Sharad Pawar, raised the issue of her foreign origin and asserted that she could not hold high office in India, she submitted her resignation as Congress President and then withdrew it. Asked about this, Sonia Gandhi responded, “Of course, I felt hurt…It came as a shock that they still saw me as an outsider.” But looking back, she could see “they may have had their own reasons.” She added that “after some soul-searching,” she realised that “I could not let my personal feelings divert me from my larger purpose. I had to continue.”
After the Congress-led victory in the 2004 Lok Sabha election, Sonia Gandhi, the obvious 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. Asked whether she had ever wondered how United Progressive Alliance policies and Congress strategy might have differed had she accepted, she replied emphatically: “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 [Manmohan Singh] leading the government and I leading the party.”
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