‘Where I truly belong’: Sonia Gandhi on her memoir ‘Belonging: A Journey of Love’

For most of my life, I kept my inner world to myself. Even after grief pulled me into politics, I held on to whatever privacy I could, and writing openly about my life felt almost unthinkable. Only after stepping back from the daily churn of public life could I see my own story clearly.

When I did look back, one thread ran through all of it: love, and the loyalty that grows from it. It all began in England, where a 19-year-old woman from a small Italian town met a young Indian student. It carried me into a new country and a new family, into a deep bond with my mother-in-law, and through the years of raising our children.

It also carried me through the unbearable when I lost first my mother-in-law and then my husband to violence. But what remained to sustain me was my love for my husband, and for India, the country where I felt I truly belonged.

It also came with a sense of duty strong enough to lead me into public life, against every instinct I had. This is not a political book. It is a personal one. Much has been written about my family, but rarely with real insight into who they were, their motivations, their struggles, their very human flaws.

I wanted to portray them honestly, as people I knew and loved. I also hoped to share what I witnessed over more than five decades in India. I watched a country transform, at first from the margins and later from its very centre.

This book is my account of that journey, and of the place I came to call home. The writer is a senior politician and the longest-serving president of the Indian National Congress.