New Delhi: Congress Parliamentary Party (CPP) chairperson Sonia Gandhi’s promised memoir, Belonging: A Journey of Love, is among the most anticipated books in India this year — not only for its political content but also for the glimpse it offers into the private life of one of the country’s most private public figures.
She has promised the book is bound to create a “tamasha” as she tells her story in her own words . But almost two decades before the memoir, Ms. Gandhi offered a rare account of her private world in a speech at the Netherlands-based Nexus Institute.
The 2007 Speech
Delivering a lecture titled Living Politics: What India Has Taught Me at the Nexus Institute in Tilburg on June 9, 2007, Sonia Gandhi retraced her journey from a middle-class household in northern Italy to India’s most important political family .
“It is appropriate that I speak to the theme of my lecture in this fascinating country, because the story I have to tell is a bit like the works of two of your greatest artists,” she said. “Like Rembrandt’s, it is a story of light and darkness, of mystery and the hidden hand of Destiny. Like Van Gogh’s, it is also a story of inner struggle and torment, a story of how the experience of loss can impart a deeper meaning to life” .
She described her early life in Italy as being in a “close-knit family typical of its time, conservative and in essence not very different from a traditional Indian family: strong in adherence to values such as loyalty and obedience, to modesty and truthfulness, to generosity and respect for elders” .
‘My Discovery of India Happened Differently’
Sonia said she was taught nothing of India’s history at school. “My discovery of India happened differently, through the encounter with a remarkable human being. This discovery would take up the rest of my life!” she said, recalling meeting Rajiv Gandhi at a restaurant in Cambridge .
She admitted that certain aspects of living in a political family had impacted her as a young bride. She had to accustom herself to the public gaze, which she found intrusive, and had to learn to curb her “spontaneity and instinctive bluntness of speech” and school herself “not to react in the face of falsehood and slander” .
‘Power Has Never Held Any Attraction’
In the speech, she also addressed her decision to decline the prime ministership after the 2004 elections. “I always knew in my heart that if I ever found myself in that position I would decline the post of prime minister,” she said, adding that she told her colleagues it was “dictated by my inner voice” .
“The plain fact is that power for itself has never held any attraction for me. My aim in politics has always been to do whatever I can in my own way to defend the secular democratic foundation of our country and to address the concerns and aspirations of the many whose voice often remains unheard,” she said .
‘The Life of Politics Chose Me’
Describing the circumstances that drew her into public life, Sonia said the Congress found itself in “uncertainty and turmoil” after losing the 1996 national elections, and pressure built from workers urging her to emerge from seclusion.
“Could I stand aside and watch as the forces of bigotry continued in their campaigns to spread division and discord? Could I ignore my own commitment to the values and principles of the family I had married into, values and principles for which they lived and died? I knew my own limitations, but I could no longer stand aside. Such were the circumstances under which the life of politics chose me” .
She also spoke of her transition: “My journey from the placid backwaters of a contented domestic life to the maelstrom of public life has not been an easy one. Despite its sorrows and difficulties, I have found in my new existence both fulfilment and a larger sense of purpose” .
The Memoir
Belonging: A Journey of Love is scheduled for global release on November 10, 2026, published internationally by Alfred A. Knopf and in India by HarperCollins . In recent video messages, Sonia said she wrote the book because much of what had been written about her was “either invented or exaggerated,” and that she was “totally against” Rajiv becoming prime minister when he was asked to take the post .
