Sonia Gandhi, the former Congress president and one of the most influential figures in modern Indian politics, is set to publish her memoir this fall. Titled “Belonging: A Journey of Love,” the book will be released on November 10 by Alfred A. Knopf, the publisher announced this week.
The memoir will trace Sonia Gandhi’s extraordinary personal and political journey — from an Italian-born young woman who married into India’s Nehru-Gandhi dynasty, to becoming one of the most powerful figures in Indian politics as long-serving president of the Indian National Congress.
According to the publisher, the book will reflect on both the promise and the tragedy of marrying into the Nehru-Gandhi family, and will revisit the profound losses she experienced — the assassinations of her mother-in-law, former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, and her husband, former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi.
The memoir is also expected to address one of the most talked-about moments of her political career: her decision in 2004 to decline the post of Prime Minister of India, despite the Congress-led alliance’s victory in that year’s general election — a decision that has been the subject of speculation and competing accounts for over two decades.
In Her Own Words
In a statement released through Knopf, Gandhi reflected on why she chose to write the book now, saying that although a great deal has been written about her family, few accounts have truly captured the underlying motivations, actions, and — as she put it — the very human failings of the people involved. She described the memoir as, in many ways, a tribute to that humanness.
She also framed the book as offering readers a personal vantage point on six decades of social and political change in India, calling it a reflection on her own sense of belonging to the country she adopted as home.
Family and Political Context
The release comes at a time when the Nehru-Gandhi family remains central to Indian politics. Both of Sonia Gandhi’s children — Rahul Gandhi, currently a prominent opposition leader, and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra — sit as members of the Lok Sabha, the lower house of India’s Parliament, representing the Congress party.
The memoir will likely invite renewed attention to long-standing questions about internal Congress party dynamics, including her 2004 prime ministership decision — a moment that has previously been the subject of competing narratives, including claims from former aides that her son Rahul had urged her against taking the post out of concern for her safety.
Why It Matters
A first-person memoir from Sonia Gandhi is a rare and significant addition to the historical record of contemporary Indian politics. She has largely avoided writing extensively about her own life and choices, even as numerous journalists and biographers have published accounts of her rise from a reluctant political spouse to the architect of Congress’s electoral strategy through the 2000s and 2010s. “Belonging: A Journey of Love” will be one of the few accounts of that era told directly in her own voice.
