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Sonia Gandhi's memoir, Belonging: A Journey of Love, went on sale in India on Tuesday, 10 November 2026, and the ruling BJP has attacked it as whitewashing the Nehru-Gandhi family's record. Published by HarperCollins India, the book offers a rare personal account of how Sonia Maino, born in 1946 in a small village near Vicenza, Italy, met Rajiv Gandhi at a restaurant in Cambridge, married him in New Delhi in 1968, and became matriarch of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty. She recounts holding her dying mother-in-law, Indira Gandhi, after her 1984 assassination, and Rajiv Gandhi's own assassination in 1991. An excerpt published in The Indian Express describes her 2004 decision not to become prime minister. Sonia has said the memoir is a personal rather than political book. The BJP attacked it at launch, with spokesperson C R Kesavan saying she should have called it whitewashing and accusing it of sugar coating historical wrongs by the family. The release comes as Congress seeks to regain ground against the BJP, with Rahul Gandhi leading opposition protests over the past month.