SUNIL NEGI
New Delhi, Oct 22:
In a surprise move for all, former Congress President and Chairperson of the UPA Advisory Council and Congress Parliamentary Party Chairperson Sonia Gandhi made her debut on Instagram on Thursday.
Gandhi introduced herself on Instagram through the verified account @soniagandhi. Her first post was a video offering the first look of her upcoming memoir ,’Belonging: A Journey of Love’.
“Hello everyone, I’m truly grateful to share this moment with you all; the first look of Belonging: A Journey of Love,” Gandhi wrote in her first post. “It is a story of love, duty, loss and finding a place to belong. I look forward to sharing it with you.”
In the video, Gandhi is seen sitting in a library surrounded by bookshelves, receiving the first copies of her book and sharing sweets with her daughter, Congress MP Priyanka Gandhi Vadra on the occasion. She points out that the book has a lot of photographs.
The 544-page memoir is scheduled for release on November 10, 2026. It will be published globally by Alfred A. Knopf, while HarperCollins India will bring out the Indian edition.
Belonging: A Journey of Love begins in Cambridge, England, in 1965, when Sonia Maino, then a 19-year-old student, met Rajiv Gandhi. They married in 1968, after which she moved to India.
According to the publisher, the memoir explores her transition from life in Italy to becoming part of the Nehru-Gandhi family, her introduction to her mother-in-law and former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, and her efforts to adapt to Indian life and culture.
The narrative also revisits the personal tragedies that shaped her life, including Sanjay Gandhi’s death in a plane crash in 1980, Indira Gandhi’s assassination in 1984 and Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination in 1991.
“It was heartbreak and loss that threw me into the public world of politics. Up till then I had guarded my privacy fiercely,” she said in a statement released by Knopf.
The publisher describes it as a dramatic and deeply personal story of love, identity, duty and belonging, and offers a rare insider’s view of India’s journey over six decades.
The book was initially to be published by Penguin Random House India, but the house later said it would not be the Indian publisher after an impasse over proposed editorial changes and deletions to portions of the manuscript, which Gandhi’s side did not accept. HarperCollins India then acquired the rights.
This is Gandhi’s first foray into social media. Over the years she has maintained her distance from it, with the Congress’ X handle being the forum on which she released her video statements.
Within hours of joining, she saw her follower count surge past 70,000-1 lakh and her first video garnered over 1.5 lakh likes. She is following only three accounts so far: her son Rahul Gandhi, daughter Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, and the Congress party.
Sonia Gandhi, a Rajya Sabha MP who will turn 80 in December, largely stayed away from social media for much of her political career. Her decision to join comes as social media plays an increasingly influential role in reaching younger voters.
Reacting, her son Rahul Gandhi said, “I am happy, and so proud, that your story will finally be read by the millions of people who love you. I know how hard it was for someone as private as you to tell the world your beautiful story.”
