10 November should be celebrated as "Show-off Day." From the veteran journalists, now clearly visible as Congress supporters, to the Congress party workers, all did the same thing: captured Sonia Gandhi’s latest book and shared it on their X accounts. The caption, too, was the same: "Received my copy." I, too, had pre-booked the book, but these folks made it look so urgent that I cancelled my Amazon pre-order and chose Blinkit instead. Though, the hype I would say isn’t worth it. The book works, at best, as a love story—but fails completely as a political memoir.
Defenders will say it is meant to be an intimate story of love and grief, not a policy audit—yet someone who steered India’s ruling coalition for a decade cannot hide behind romance when selective political chapters are already inside the book.
The biggest setback for me was no mention of Ottavio Quattrocchi, the Italian businessman who was reportedly close to the Gandhi family. The CBI had linked him with a company named AE Services, in what is still called India’s biggest defence scandal: Bofors. AE Services was one of the three companies that allegedly received kickbacks for securing the Rs 1,437 crore contract of 410 155mm Howitzers for the Indian Army from the Rajiv Gandhi government. In July 1993, the Swiss courts cleared the release of the bank records of the accounts that had received Bofors money, and Quattrocchi was named. But before the CBI could act, Quattrocchi left India for Kuala Lumpur. He never returned. During this deal, it was Mr Gandhi who held the defence portfolio. Ms Gandhi concedes that there were agents involved, but never tells who these agents were. Neither does it mention who Quattrocchi was to the Gandhi family, how he had such success with the government of the day and why the case against him was wound down under a government her party led.
On 15 May 1999, three leaders from the Congress party: Sharad Pawar, P.A. Sangma and Tariq Anwar raised Ms Gandhi’s foreign birth and wrote to her that only an Indian-born person should become the Prime Minister. This led to Ms Gandhi submitting her resignation as the Congress President, which she only withdrew after the party workers protested. However, raising this question led to the expulsion of all three leaders merely five days after the incident on 20 May. This matters because after the Congress-led alliance won in 2004, Ms Gandhi declined to become the PM and named Manmohan Singh—a move widely debated in light of that very issue. In her book, she gives two reasons: her children’s fear for her safety, and her certainty that the BJP would use her "foreign origin" as an issue. She also writes that she was hurt when her loyalty to India was questioned, without grappling with the political contradiction between expelling colleagues for raising the question and later citing the same question to step aside herself.
The National Advisory Council (NAC) was formed in June 2004, the next month after the UPA government took office for the first time. This council, with Ms Gandhi as its chairperson and with Cabinet rank, drafted or shaped the laws behind the UPA government’s rights agenda, including RTI, MGNREGA, the Forest Rights Act and, in its second avatar after 2010, the Food Security Act. Critics called this council a "super cabinet" with no constitutional standing. Many of us are aware that in March 2006, after SP MP Jaya Bachchan was disqualified for holding an "office of profit", the opposition demanded the same test for Ms Gandhi’s NAC post, leading Ms Gandhi to resign as MP and NAC Chairperson. Yet the book makes no mention of the office-of-profit row or her resignation. She sidesteps the constitutional accountability question, insisting simply that the NAC was "purely advisory" with "no executive authority" and its members were "vetted and cleared by the government." Elsewhere, she dismisses reports that she called for PMO files and made appointments as "malicious and totally false." Truth has become very cheap nowadays; everyone is able to say it without engaging with the substance of the critique.
Mr Gandhi was assassinated by an LTTE suicide bomber in May 1991. The killers were tried and convicted. Justice M.C. Jain’s commission was set up to look into the wider conspiracy. Its interim report in August 1997 criticised the DMK for encouraging the LTTE. The Congress, then led by Sitaram Kesri, demanded that PM I.K. Gujral drop the DMK ministers. Mr Gujral refused and the Congress withdrew support; the government fell in November 1997. On the commission’s recommendation, a Multi-Disciplinary Monitoring Agency (MDMA) was set up under the CBI in 1998 to probe the larger conspiracy. It produced nothing and was disbanded in 2022, after 24 years. Ms Gandhi, in her book, covers the Jain Commission and the MDMA and asks whether there were "other players in the shadows," adding that "the truth behind the conspiracy has also been buried." She describes her own dilemma in 2004 over allying with the DMK, asking whether it would be "a betrayal of Rajiv"—before going ahead for a "larger cause." In a nutshell, she herself raises the conspiracy. Yet the MDMA achieved nothing during the UPA’s 10 years in power, with the DMK in her alliance for most of that time.
Then there are the episodes either glossed over or missing altogether: the 2008 nuclear deal and the cash-for-votes scandal that followed; the lack of accountability after 26/11; and P. Chidambaram’s "saffron terror" remark in August 2010, which looked far shakier once a special NIA court acquitted all seven Malegaon blast accused for want of proof.
Commentators often celebrate whenever political leaders put pen to paper. Reading Belonging, it is hard to share the enthusiasm. Writing a book is easy when you leave out everything that still demands an answer.
