The memoir of Sonia Gandhi, one of modern India’s top political figures and long-time president of the opposition Congress Party, has hit the bookshops this week after months of anticipation and a major controversy.
Penguin Random House India withdrew from publishing the Indian edition of ‘Belonging: A Journey of Love’ following reported differences in editorial takes on Prime Minister Narendra Modi and other domestic issues. The memoir was eventually published by HarperCollins in India and Penguin Random House globally.
The 544-page book offers an unique account of Indian politics, which for decades was spearheaded by the Gandhi family, which the now 79-year-old Italian-born Sonia married into back in 1968. The book takes us through Sonia’s most difficult moments, including the assassinations of her mother-in-law Indira Gandhi and then her husband Rajiv Gandhi, some of which were never revealed before.
This includes a hitherto uncelebrated peek into her Soviet and Russian connection, from her own name to her travels to Russia as the wife of Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and later as a political leader.
Formative influences
The seeds of Sonia’s Russian connection were sown by her father Stefano Maino’s World War II stint in the USSR, as a member of Benito Mussolini’s Italian forces fighting alongside Hitler’s army. Maino was a sergeant major when he was deployed to Russia. “He was twenty-six years old at the end of 1943 when the Italian army was defeated and the troops began the... retreat. As has happened many times in history, the Russian cold, ‘General Winter’ as it’s known, took its toll on the retreating soldiers,” Sonia writes.
She recalls stories about those tragic days by her father and his comrades. In one, he offered his “ragged blanket” and his “last morsel of bread” to an emaciated Russian child. It was on the front line that he learned the names of two little girls who were among the civilian families that would come and stand by the soldier’s camps to get food. These were Anouchka and Sonia. Stefano later picked the names for his first two daughters, and the third was named Nadia, which was suggested by a nurse.
Russian was one of three foreign languages Sonia learned, along with French and English. “It had fascinated me as a language studied by very few, but more possibly as inspired by my father’s stories.”
Stefano even moved to place Sonia in an institute in Leningrad where foreign students studied Russian, through her Ukrainian-born Russian language teacher Ludmila. This did not work out due to technicalities – the Leningrad institute was only meant for students from developing countries. Sonia ended up in Cambridge, where she later met her future husband – Rajiv Gandhi, the son of then-Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.
The Kremlin and the Gorbachevs
In 1985, a year after Rajiv became prime minister, the couple was in the Kremlin as guests of Mikhail Gorbachev. The last Soviet leader, known as the architect of Perestroika and Glasnost, is described in the book as an “informal and jovial personality” who welcomed Rajiv with “a large bouquet of sweet-scented lilac, a warm bear hug, and a long handshake.”
Since few countries had ties with the USSR as close as India, Sonia notes that Indian leaders and diplomats would often be flooded with queries about the Gorbachevs.
Gandhi also recalls her interactions with Raisa Gorbacheva, whose “charm” and “informal demeanour” helped her overcome her nervousness (this was Rajiv’s first prime ministerial visit abroad).
Mikhail Gorbachev even offered to host the couple’s children, Rahul and Priyanka – now the faces of the Indian opposition – in Russia for their schooling. This did not work out, but Rahul and Priyanka did go on a month’s holiday at a youth camp in Yalta, Crimea.
Gandhi describes the atmosphere of lunches and dinners and receptions at the Kremlin, visits to museums, churches, and the Bolshoi Theater, pointing to her interest in the arts as well as a fascination with Russia’s cultural richness.
“The state banquet was held in the Palace of Facets that had been completed in 1492 by two Italian architects – a plain building but with its inner walls and ceilings covered in beautiful frescoes representing religious themes. It pleased me that the Russian government valued its heritage, although religiosity was then still anathema.”
Boat ride with Putin
Sonia also met President Vladimir Putin in 2005 after she became Congress Party president and chairperson of the United Progressive Alliance, which was led by the Congress Party. The meeting took place in St. Petersburg’s 18th century Constantine Palace, a former summer residence of the tsars, which is now the president’s official residence.
“I found President Putin an engaging personality: He conversed with our foreign minister and me on many subjects relating to India and Russia,” she said.
Sonia said she was impressed by Putin’s “profound understanding of geopolitical issues, and his determination to restore Russia to its former powerful status.” Putin, she remembers, took them on a boat ride to the Gulf of Finland as far as the Peterhof Pier, pointing out famous monuments and basilicas on its banks.
Indira, Sanjay, and Rajiv
Sonia’s relationship with Rajiv and the Gandhi family takes center stage in the book. Sonia opens up on her courtship with Rajiv at Cambridge, her life in the prime minister’s residence during Indira Gandhi’s rule, and the two assassinations that shook the country – that of Indira and Rajiv.
In an interview with The Guardian earlier this week, Sonia also mentioned how Rajiv and his younger brother Sanjay were at odds on the issue of imposing the Emergency in 1975, with Sanjay unequivocally supporting it. Though Indira made the decision to impose the law which suspended the constitution, she was never “comfortable with it,” she said. She also offers her own take on the Emergency, describing it as a mistake.
The book reveals Sonia’s opposition to Rajiv becoming prime minister and how she foresaw tragedy stalking his political career.
“His mother lay there, her body pierced with more than 30 bullet holes. I knew, I knew it then in my heart: Rajiv’s path would lead to the same end,” Sonia said, reminiscing about the day of Indira’s assassination and Rajiv’s swearing-in as prime minister: October 31, 1984.
Sonia describes her fury when Rajiv was thrust into the top post in the county. “You can’t do this to us. They will kill you; they will kill you, too!” she said. “They will kill me anyway,” the man who would soon be prime minister replied. Rajiv was assassinated in 1991 during an election campaign rally by a suicide bomber, a member of Sri Lanka’s Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.
Declining overtures
Sonia also reveals her sister’s plea to return to Italy after Indira’s assassination. But the thought of leaving India “was unfathomable.”
“India was my home, my children’s home,” she says.
The Congress Party leader also recalls her decision not to oblige the party and decline the prime minister’s post in 2004, despite steering it to power in the elections, beating massive odds. “It was clear in my mind I would never do it,” she says. “It was just not me.”