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Sonia Gandhi’s autobiography, in the works for years, is finally on the anvil
Sonia Gandhi's autobiography will be the first comprehensive autobiography of a Nehru-Gandhi family member
Former Congress president Sonia Gandhi has signed up with HarperCollins (UK) for the publication of her upcoming autobiography, which has been in the works for several years.
The book hasn’t yet been formally announced, but HarperCollins (India) chief executive officer Ananta Padmanabhan confirmed to Hindustan Times the arrangement that Sonia has reached with the UK arm of the prestigious publishing house. He desisted from saying more, except that the book could be published in India by Penguin Random House. “Other details will be in the press note that will come with the formal announcement,” he said.
HT learns that Penguin could be publishing the book in the US. There is no clarity, however, on the India deal, said an executive from the company who asked not to be named.
Sonia could not be reached for comment on the book, which will be the first comprehensive autobiography of a Nehru-Gandhi family member. On account of their untimely deaths, Indira and Rajiv could not author their complete life histories.
A close friend of the Gandhis, Pupul Jayakar wrote Indira Gandhi: A Biography. The eponymously titled Rajiv was Sonia’s 1992 portrayal of her husband assassinated by a LTTE suicide bomber in May 1991.
Jawaharlal Nehru’s 1936 autobiography: Towards Freedom was written while he was in prison between 1934 and 1935, long before he became the Prime Minister of independent India. It was first published by The Bodley Head Ltd, London (acquired later by Penguin).
Several editions and translations later, Penguin India republished it in 2004 with a foreword by Sonia Gandhi in which she exhorted readers to combine reading its content with the first Prime Minister’s other seminal works, Glimpses of World History and The Discovery of India for understanding the “ideas and personalities that shaped India through the ages”.
Distanced now from the din and bustle of daily politics, Sonia, who is a member of Parliament’s House of Elders, will turn 78 in December this year.
Since her 1968 marriage to Rajiv, she has not just witnessed myriad milestone events but has been an active participant in them. Her recollections of tragedies that befell the family which gave the country two prime ministers after Nehru will be a precious addition to recorded history. Of equal import will be her impressions of the over two decades for which she helmed the Indian National Congress, especially the “how and why” of the decision she reached to forsake the PM’s office for Manmohan Singh after the party’s surprise return to power in 2004.
Cause and effect theories by adversaries and estranged friends such as K Natwar Singh have abounded on Manmohan Singh’s elevation, but Sonia has largely kept her counsel on the decision her son Rahul described as proof of her being a “true” Gandhi.
For her biography, Sonia is understood to have been assisted besides others, by the late British writer-historian, Patrick French. The latter’s noteworthy works include an authorised biography of noble laureate V S Naipaul: The World Is What It Is.
