Few individuals have occupied the centre of Indian politics for as long while revealing as little of themselves as Sonia Gandhi. For nearly three decades, she has been at once ubiquitous and elusive: the head of India’s oldest political party, the matriarch of its most famous family and, during the United Progressive Alliance years, arguably the most consequential figures in the country’s political establishment. Her forthcoming memoir,

Belonging: A Journey of Love, therefore matters not merely as autobiography but as a potential document of political history. The real test will be whether it offers history an insider’s illumination or merely a carefully curated family remembrance. Mrs Gandhi occupies a position no other living Indian politician can claim. She entered the Nehru-Gandhi family as an outsider, witnessed the assassinations of both Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi at devastatingly close quarters, resisted politics for years and then became the person who revived a declining Congress and led it back to power. The unanswered questions are consequently formidable.

Why did she finally enter politics after Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination? What persuaded her to decline the prime ministership in 2004 despite possessing........

© The Statesman