After a Two-Month Standoff Over What Could Be Printed, Sonia Gandhi’s Memoir Finally Has a Publisher

Spread love

By TRH News Desk

HarperCollins India has stepped in to publish “Belonging: A Journey of Love” this November — months after the deal with Penguin Random House India reportedly collapsed over disputed passages on Modi, the RSS, and communal violence.

New Delhi, September 4, 2026 — HarperCollins India will publish Sonia Gandhi’s long-awaited memoir, “Belonging: A Journey of Love,” in India on November 10, 2026. The publisher broke the news Friday — resolving months of uncertainty after the book’s original publishing arrangement with Penguin Random House India (PRHI) fell apart amid what has been described as an editorial dispute over its contents.

HarperCollins confirmed the deal in a post on Instagram, quoted in full by The Week: “HarperCollins India will publish Belonging: A Journey of Love by Sonia Gandhi. The long-awaited memoir will be published in India on 10 November 2026. One of the most anticipated political memoirs of our time, Belonging is a dramatic and deeply personal story of love, identity, duty and belonging, and offers a rare insider’s view of India’s journey.”

The dispute that derailed the original deal centered on specific editorial disagreements over the manuscript’s content, per media reports. The publishing arrangement between PRHI and Sonia Gandhi collapsed after a “back-and-forth” lasting at least two months.

References to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his 12-year rule, the role of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), instances of communal divide and riots, and the plight of religious minorities in India were the key contentious contents on which the publishing arrangement had stalled.

Penguin Random House India has publicly disputed the characterization that it simply refused to publish the book. PRHI in a statement shared on X had said that it remained “willing and keen” to work on the memoir, while maintaining that fact-checking and standard editorial recommendations are a normal part of its publishing process for any manuscript.

A Memoir Already Positioned as a Major Political Event

Even before this publishing saga, “Belonging: A Journey of Love” had been positioned as one of the most closely watched political memoirs in recent Indian publishing history. The book has built an intense anticipation for the likely personal account of a life of Sonia Gandhi.

She has held a position of eminence in the Indian politics for the past three decades. Her political career has been tumultuous as she had steered the Congress after over five years of PV Narsimha Rao and Sitaram Kesri led the grand old party. The Gandhi family loyalists afterwards persuaded Sonia Gandhi to take a political plunge.

Her Italian birth and naturalized Indian citizenship shadowed her entire political career since she entered active politics in the 1990s. Her foreign origin stalled her from becoming the Prime Minister of India, and the Congress had to back late Manmohan Singh after the UPA formed the government at the Centre in 2004.

Earlier, books such as Javier Moro’s fictionalized biography “The Red Sari” and Sanjaya Baru’s Accidental Prime Minister had sought to prove the life and political career of Sonia Gandhi.

A memoir written in her own voice, rather than filtered through a biographer or a rival’s account, arrives as a genuinely different kind of document in that history — one where, for the first time in this format, the contested narrative is being shaped directly by its subject.

Follow The Raisina Hills on WhatsApp, Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, and LinkedIn