Sonia Gandhi memoir exposes elite Congress power games as Pranab Mukherjee floated top-job ambitions
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Sonia Gandhi’s memoir revisits a 2010 exchange in which former President Pranab Mukherjee hinted at leadership change, a moment she read as a sign of his long-standing prime ministerial ambition amid the party’s closed-door hierarchy.
Sonia Gandhi's memoir, Belonging: A Journey of Love, published by HarperCollins on November 10, 2026, revisits a 2010 conversation with then-senior minister Pranab Mukherjee inside the tightly managed world of Congress leadership. Gandhi wrote that Mukherjee, frustrated after a Congress Strategy Group meeting, suggested it might be time for a "change at the top," which she understood as a hint of his long-held desire to become prime minister.
"On one occasion, in 2010, I think after expressing his frustration, he shocked me with the suggestion that perhaps it was time for a change at the top, which I understood as a hint of his long-held desire to become Prime Minister," Gandhi wrote.
Gandhi said she gently changed the subject and noted that Mukherjee did not hold any resentment. The memoir also describes Mukherjee's role in the Manmohan Singh cabinet, his weekly coordination meetings with senior leaders such as Arjun Singh, A.K. Antony and Ahmed Patel, and her continued conversations with him after he became president in 2012, offering a glimpse into the elite, backroom machinery that often shaped the party’s decisions.
Mukherjee's daughter, Sharmistha Mukherjee, responded to Gandhi's remarks on social media, arguing that ambition is a normal aspect of political life and that her father had once said any serious politician would have such ambition. Her reply pushed back against any suggestion that political ambition was something exceptional, pointing instead to the ordinary appetite for power that runs through establishment politics.
The book further details Gandhi's limited personal interaction with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, noting that they exchange formal greetings at semi-official events but rarely make eye contact. It also touches on her strained relationship with Maneka Gandhi, referencing historical tensions within the Gandhi family and the wider dynastic fault lines that have long shadowed Indian politics.