Sonia Gandhi says her contact with Prime Minister Modi has been minimal, memoir shows a clash over India’s future
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In Belonging: A Journey of Love, Congress leader Sonia Gandhi says she has had almost no personal interaction with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and presents their rivalry as a stark political struggle between inclusiveness and a more exclusionary vision of India.
Congress Parliamentary Party chairperson Sonia Gandhi says she has had almost no personal interaction with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, underscoring that their encounters are little more than formal greetings at official events. In her 544-page memoir, Belonging: A Journey of Love, she writes that the two exchange a perfunctory "namaste" and that Modi often looks away, avoiding eye contact.
"To this day, I've had practically no real contact with him. We meet at semi-official gatherings – for instance, at the Speaker's chamber," Gandhi wrote.
Gandhi frames their political contest as a confrontation between two sharply different visions for India. She presents Modi’s vision as opposed to her own emphasis on inclusiveness, secularism and social justice, and makes clear that, in her telling, this is a political battle rather than a personal quarrel.
"He was fighting for his vision of India, and I for mine: an India against hegemony, an India that stands for inclusiveness, secularism, and social justice. It wasn't personal," she wrote.
She also points to a few shared experiences, saying she understood Modi’s discomfort around Delhi’s elite circles and acknowledging his rise from an underprivileged background through the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). Gandhi says Modi’s critical remarks about Jawaharlal Nehru reflect his RSS conditioning.
The memoir follows Gandhi’s life from her childhood in post-war Italy, through her education in the United Kingdom, her marriage to Rajiv Gandhi, and her entry into Indian politics. It also recounts major personal losses, including the deaths of her first-born child, Indira Gandhi in 1984 and Rajiv Gandhi in 1991, as well as her battle with breast cancer.
In a prior statement to The Hindu, Gandhi said she wrote the book to tell her own story rather than react to outside narratives. Her son, Rahul Gandhi, posted a tribute on X, praising her six decades of public service.
HarperCollins announced that the book will be available in bookstores across India from 10 a.m. on November 10.