Facts and Friction: Will Sonia Gandhi's memoir conceal more than reveal?

Sonia Gandhi will turn 80 a month after her memoir, Belonging: A Journey of Love, is published on November 10. The problem with writing a memoir is what to leave out and what to embellish. For Sonia, the problem is especially acute. To establish her credentials, she will need to be frank about her early life: the family’s relative poverty, her father’s capture by Soviet troops and imprisonment as the Nazi German-Italian Axis Powers faced defeat in World War II.

Sonia was born a year after the end of the war. Italy in 1946 was coming to terms with Mussolini’s fascist past. Sonia’s father Stefano Maino, after being released from a Soviet prison, found work as a mason. Not much is known about Sonia and her two sisters’ initial education. By 1962, though, Stefano had realised that England offered Sonia better opportunities than Italy.

Coincidentally, 1962 was also the year Rajiv Gandhi left for Cambridge University. Sonia didn’t speak much English and enrolled into a local language school in Cambridge, the town where the university is located. In early interviews, Sonia gave the impression she studied at Cambridge University. That was quickly fact-corrected and the claim has never been repeated. Besides, Sonia had received no college education in Italy.

She did what most young people in Cambridge do to earn money: she became a waitress in a local restaurant. The restaurant catered to students from the 31 colleges that make up Cambridge University. One of those students was Rajiv Gandhi, enrolled at Trinity College. He would drop in at the restaurant and the two met.

Sonia’s memoir will skip through the two key years between 1965 when Rajiv returned to India and 1967 when she convinced her father Stefano to agree to let her marry Rajiv. The wedding took place in February 1968. Sonia was 21, Rajiv 23. Months later, Rajiv joined Indian Airlines as a commercial pilot. He flew for 12 years, settling into a quiet family life with Sonia and their young children, Rahul and Priyanka.

Rajiv had completed his three-year degree course at Trinity College in 1965 and returned to India. But did he actually receive a degree from Cambridge? During my research for Rajiv’s biography, I travelled to Trinity College where Rajiv had studied for three years. I asked the college registrar about the degree Rajiv had been conferred. The registrar looked through the 1965 graduation list, hummed and hawed, and eventually said he couldn’t locate when the degree was conferred.

“But it was, wasn’t it?” I asked. “It was a long time ago,” the registrar said. He knew I was writing Rajiv’s biography. Rajiv was India’s prime minister at the time. The registrar didn’t want to ruffle feathers. He shrugged. I shrugged. And we left it at that.

Soon after Rajiv became prime minister, I sought a meeting with him. He invited me to his 7 Race Course Road residence in April 1985. I said I’d like to write his biography. Rajiv agreed graciously with a smile. He came across as a decent, likeable man with no airs. He instructed his staff to give me full access to his Cabinet ministers.

Sonia’s memoir will obviously conceal more than it reveals. Most memoirs do. But the part that caused a break between her and her Indian publisher is deeply political. Penguin Random House (PRH) globally is the owner of Alfred A Knopf which is the worldwide publisher of Sonia’s memoir. A new Indian publisher, HarperCollins, will publish the book in India with fewer cuts than PRH India sought—essentially over Sonia’s comments on Modi, China, and RSS.

PRH says the changes they sought were a normal part of the publishing process—checking facts and sources. It was the same process PRH followed for my recently published book, Era of India: From Impoverished Colony to the World’s Third Largest Economy. I know firsthand how rigorous PRH is on fact-checking, footnotes and source identification.

I worked with the impeccably professional editors at PRH for several months to get every detail absolutely right. But Era of India is about geopolitics and history where facts are sacrosanct. Belonging: A Journey of Love is a memoir where fact and fiction can coexist.