Sonia moved to India and married Rajiv before the split in the Congress party. At that time, Indira was getting the blame for devaluation and was dismissed as a 'gungi ghudiya' (dumb doll). Her Cabinet was dominated by Morarji Desai, the Finance Minister, who deeply resented having been passed over for the Prime Ministership. The wily Kamaraj (considered the 'King-Maker') had lost his seat, in 1967, because of his obstinate refusal to abandon the cause of Hindi as the national language. He was busy intruiging against Indira- who had good relations with the Dravidian movement in Tamil Nadu. When she broke with the 'Syndicate', it was the Left parties & the Dravidians who enabled her to rule. But that was in the future. In January 1968, few expected Indira to remain in power. The 1967 election had seen a big swing against Congress. Since Rajiv had qualified as a commercial pilot and there was a world-wide shortage of pilots, he could always provide for his family flying international routes. The family could relocate to any country where they felt comfortable. However, the fact that Indira took to her daughter-in-la, more particularly after she suffered a miscarriage, meant that she could feel comfortable as a member of an Indian joint-family.
After Indira's great election victory in 1971 and her even more splendid defeat of Pakistan, Indira could consider promoting her son as her successor. Fortunately, Rajiv & Sonia weren't interested in politics. Thus the path was clear for Sanjay and his young wife Maneka. It appears Sonia never got on well with Maneka & thus Maneka and her son Varun are not permited to return to their ancestral party.
Sonia has published an autobiography 'Belonging' which maintains a diplomatic silence about the rather bizarre goings on in the Prime Minister's household after Sanjay's death. It appears Indira had come to believe that Maneka, and her mother, were using black magic against her! Interestingly, Indira did the Lakshachandi Path ritual from 1979 to 1983. The eldest daughter-in-law usually participates in this.
The website 'MyBookAdvisor' summarises her book thus-
Belonging: A Journey of Love Summary
The Greek word 'oikeiosis' (appropriation or belonging) underlines much Catholic dogma. In the early Church, oikeiosis became a technical term to describe how Jesus Christ, the Divine Son, appropriated or took unto Himself human nature. It came to mean the internal life of the Trinity. It was also seen as the antidote to the estrangement or exile that is sin. Through Christ, humans undergo oikeiosis with God—meaning we are "re-domesticated" or brought back into close communion and familial adoption within the divine household.
Sonia says 'Catholic values are at the back of her mind', but she was married under Hindu rites and ensured her daughter's marriage, too, was Hindu. In this way, she safeguarded her mother-in-law's legacy. Indira had fought a court case to prove her sons were Hindu.
Belonging: A Journey of Love is organized around Sonia Gandhi’s recurring framework of belonging-as-practice: love isn’t treated as a feeling that arrives, but as something you build through attention, loyalty, and moral choice.
She and Rahul were separated while he was in India training to be a pilot. Their love withstood this separation. Sonia could have chosen to take the kids and leave India with her husband after Indira lost power and there was talk of her being sent to jail. Again, after her husband was killed, she could have left India with her daughter. Clearly, her sense of oikeosis involved staying in India to protect her mother-in-law's legacy. Interestingly, Rahul says he could have become PM in 1995, when he turned 25. At the time there was talk of Sonia's estrangement with the PM- Narasimha Rao.
Gandhi returns again and again to the idea that love has a political edge—not in the slogan sense, but in how it shapes who gets protected, who gets heard, and what you’re willing to sacrifice when relationships and institutions collide.
For Sonia, the family comes first. The Congress party is its ancetral property. Sadly, her son is a moon-calf. Maybe, he will step aside and let his sister take over.
One concrete thread she keeps threading through the book is the way personal devotion and public responsibility have to be held together, not traded off.
Devotion to the family is all that matters. You can't put the public interest first. This sounds like the code of the Mafia. As Michael Corleone says- "Fredo, you're my older brother, and I love you. But don't ever take sides with anyone against the Family again'. Later, after their mother dies, he has Fredo killed.
Even without a “how-to” plot, the structure keeps circling back to the same claim: belonging is earned through consistency, especially when life gets messy and power makes people act like strangers.
Sonia was ruthless in dumping those who had outlived their usefulness. Often, it turned out they weren't really loyal at all. What was her view of Amitabh Bacchan (from whose family home she was married)? It is said that he had fallen out with Rajiv and then, later on, had refused to help Sonia with her son's college fees. The Bacchans may well have felt that Rajiv hadn't lifted a finger to protect them from VP Singh's investigation of their assets. Loyalty to the Dynasty was a one way street as Arjun Singh was to learn.
A specific example she leans on is the contrast between private affection and public duty—how Gandhi frames family love as a training ground for solidarity.
But not with her sister-in-law.
She also uses the book’s repeated return to memory and loss to show that belonging isn’t the absence of grief; it’s what you do after grief, when you still choose people over comfort.
she could have left Delhi- more particularly because she suffers from asthma.
There’s also a clear emphasis on dignity: Gandhi treats dignity as the minimum standard of love, and she ties that to the way societies can either widen or narrow the circle of care.
She is Italian. There was a lot of poverty in much of Italy at one time. The country made fantastic progress over the course of the Fifties and Sixties.
Honest limitation: this is not a detailed, chronological memoir, and it doesn’t offer a clear roadmap for applying her ideas to specific modern relationship problems. If you want concrete scenes, named events, and step-by-step guidance, Gandhi’s lyrical, values-driven approach may feel frustratingly broad and occasionally abstract.
She is wary of libel suits. Her book may be anodyne but it should sell well in Congress ruled states. It appears that she thought the tide had turned against Modi after he lost his majority in 2024. She believed that the press would start hammering away at him. But Modi has retained his popularity. His party has made significant gains- most particularly in West Bengal where Rahul says his father's protege, Mamta, waas killing Congress workers. Sonia has been writing quite a few articles, some quite sensible, attacking Modi. The problem is her son who can't speak coherently. Screaming your tits off, at the age of 56, undermines confidence in your ability to run the country.
Sonia appears to think that Congress is finished in the Hindi belt. Thus she says she wept when she saw the Babri Masjid torn down. Perhaps, she- quite understandably- doesn't like Hinduism. Her mother-in-law did stupid shit under the belief that some Hindu mumbo-jumbo would save her hide. She should have got rid of her Sikh body-guards. Even if she herself wanted to die, she had endangered the lives of her grand-kids for no good reason. Rajiv, too, was stupid- though not because of his religion. The first thing the guy should have done on becoming PM was to get SPG protection for life of all of his family. Perhaps this did not occur to him while he was in office. But, later on, when he put in Chandrashekhar, he should have insisted on it. It appears approval for this was finally given a day before his death! Under Rao, the SPG Act was amended to give protection to the family of the PM up to 5 years after demitting office. Modi changed the law in 2019- which Sonia must resent.
Rajiv also seems to have failed to provide adequate financial security for his family. It may be that he trusted the wrong people. Sonia was left in an embarrassing position when he died. My impression is that Sonia has secured the financial future of the dynasty through real estate dealings. That is a good thing. Indians don't want political leaders to be vulnerable to foreign bribery. Does she want her grand-children to join politics? I think she sees that politics in India is quite lucrative and interesting provided you don't hold any important office and thus don't get targetted. The Dynasty can survive on a smaller scale just as some of the erstwhile Royals have survived. Again, this is no bad thing. The mistake is to take a job which is beyond your capacity. That can get you killed.
My verdict on Sonia is that she was a true 'pati-vrata' who protected the family legacy. Sadly, her son is a moon-calf. As President Obama said- “Rahul Gandhi has a nervous, unformed quality about him, as if he were a student who'd done the coursework and was eager to impress the teacher but deep down lacked either the aptitude or the passion to master the subject.' Sonia, by contrast, took the trouble to study Hindi and acquired some knowledge of Indian history and culture. She speaks rarely but doesn't say things which might get her shot. Rajiv's big mistake was to say, in an interview, that he might send troops back to Sri Lanka. All he meant was that the thing hadn't been a collosal error. Sadly, Prabhakarn, the head of the Tamil Tigers, took it to mean that he had only a narrow window of opportunity to kill Rajiv while he was still in opposition.
My fear is that Rahul will be killed if he becomes PM. Why? He has said that India is like the EU. There is a right of secession. This means some bunch of nutters will accuse him of going back on his word and not splitting up the country. Then, they will kill him. The truth is, Modi is the man who stands between Sonia and a third bereavement. Hopefully, Yogi will succeed him & her grandchildren will grow old without the trauma of losing close relatives to an assassin's bullet.
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