Sonia Gandhi has said she had “always disliked” politics and struggled over whether to enter public life after the assassination of her husband, Rajiv Gandhi, before the Bhagavad Gita helped her decide.
In her book Belonging: A Journey of Love, the former Congress president recounts the turmoil she faced as the party went through a difficult period in the late 1990s.
She also recalls how her children, Rahul and Priyanka Gandhi, “argued fiercely” with her because they feared losing her too.
After Rajiv’s assassination in 1991, Sonia gradually emerged from seclusion and became more active.
She says some of Rajiv’s former colleagues visited her as a courtesy or to invite her to family functions, while others urged her to take an active interest in Congress affairs.
“To the latter I would listen quietly but not heed their request,” she writes in the book, news agency PTI reported, citing excerpts published by The Hindu.
Sonia says the Congress was unable to form a government on its own after its disappointing performance in the 1996 elections and was troubled by splits and internal disputes.
She recalls that in 1995 she was asked to support a group led by Arjun Singh, ND Tiwari and Mohsina Kidwai, all long-time Congress members who had held important party and government posts.
She refused, and they broke away to form another party. They were followed the next year by senior Tamil leaders GK Moopanar and P Chidambaram, and Madhavrao Scindia, who had joined the Congress in 1980. They also formed separate parties.
In 1997, Mamata Banerjee left the Congress after differences with the state leadership and formed the Trinamool Congress.
Sonia says she became a primary member of the Congress that year after party president Sitaram Kesri invited her to its 80th plenary session in Calcutta. As the party’s situation worsened, pressure on her to take over its leadership increased.
According to PTI, Sonia says she became increasingly worried about the Congress and its future as media reports presented a bleak picture.
“Each time I walked past Rajiv’s picture and my mother-in-law’s, a mixture of pain and guilt would seize me; at times I’d even deliberately avoid looking at them,” she writes.
Sonia, the Congress’s longest-serving president, says her sense of belonging to India came through Rajiv and her mother-in-law, former prime minister Indira Gandhi.
She felt that the forces they had fought for decades to protect India’s pluralistic character were now on a path that could cause serious damage.
“How could I sit comfortably at home and let their work and their sacrifices go in vain?” she writes.
She says she would wake up in the middle of the night wondering what she should do.
“Had I not fought at every step against a life in politics? Had it not cruelly taken away from me first my mother-in-law, then the love of my life, my children’s father? Why, why was I feeling that strong urge to respond to the demand being made of me?”
“I’d always disliked politics, even during all the years when Rajiv was in public life. But now I was beginning to understand what had compelled him, what I had then so strongly resisted: the pull of duty towards his mother, his country. That pull was now getting hold of me. It scared me, I tried to fight it, but it kept coming back to haunt me,” Sonia says.
She describes being “caught in a war with myself,” with one part of her recoiling from the ambition, greed, hypocrisy and betrayal associated with the pursuit of power.
At the same time, she could not reject the values taught to her in childhood, including diligence, respect for elders, obedience to parents and loyalty to family traditions.
“Where my duty lay was clear to me; what that implied was the terrifying part,” she writes, describing nights of broken sleep and anxious days. She says she felt alone and searched for something that could guide her through her fears and doubts.
Although she had not been religious in her adult life and respected all faiths, Sonia says she felt the need to return to the Bhagavad Gita, which she had read when she was younger.
She was aware of its influence on leaders of India’s independence movement and had seen and heard its verses presented in theatre, festivals and political speeches.
Sonia asked her office to find someone who could teach her at home. Professor Vachaspati Upadhyaya, whom the family called Shastriji, agreed to explain the Gita’s deeper philosophical meaning in his spare time.
Beginning in January 1997, she met him periodically and used a Sanskrit edition from Rajiv’s bookshelves that carried Hindi and English translations below each verse.
Shastriji would recite one or two verses in Sanskrit, Gandhi would read the Hindi translation, and he would explain their meaning.
The sessions began slowly but became more frequent in December 1997, according to her office appointment diary. Their final session was held on January 5, 1998.
During this period, Rahul and Priyanka were aware of her restlessness and feared that she would be drawn into politics. “Just as I had fought with Rajiv, my two children now argued fiercely with me,” she writes.
“They had been through the ordeals of losing their grandmother and their father; there were only the three of us now left of our family; they didn’t want to lose me, too, they said emphatically.”
Before leaving for their New Year holiday, they made her promise not to do “anything crazy.”
Left alone with her thoughts as the Gita readings drew to a close, Sonia reflected on Krishna’s message: “Perform your dharma without regard for the fruit of your action.”
She also considered Arjuna’s declaration that his doubts had been dispelled and that he was ready to play his part in the battle.
“Something awoke in me: I was sure. I had the answer to my own doubts and questions. I had to step out and go where my duty called. And I did,” Sonia writes.
The memoir, published by HarperCollins India and due to be released in India on November 10, also recounts her marriage to Rajiv, her introduction to Indira and her efforts to adjust to life in India by learning Hindi, wearing saris and adapting to Indian food and culture.
It also covers the tragedies that transformed the Gandhi family, including Sanjay Gandhi’s death in a plane crash, Indira’s assassination in 1984 and Rajiv’s assassination in 1991.
– Ends
(With PTI inputs)
