NEW DELHI: Sonia Gandhi had told her children months before the 2004 Lok Sabha election that she would “absolutely not” become prime minister. Yet, confronted by alliance leaders who refused to accept her decision after the Congress-led coalition’s victory, she briefly surrendered with a barely audible “theek hai”.
Hours later, after an angry intervention by her son Rahul Gandhi and a private struggle over duty, danger and belonging, she returned to her original position. She would not take the job.
Sonia Gandhi has described for the first time the turmoil behind one of India’s most consequential political decisions in her memoir, ‘Belonging: A Journey of Love’, released on Nov 10. Her memoir shows she refused the possibility of heading the top post after a lot of thought and that she had taken a very complicated decision.
It had pressure from alliance partners, opposition from her children and a night during which she weighed her responsibility to the Congress against a decision she believed she had already made.
In her memoir Belonging: A Journey of Love, Sonia Gandhi details her decision to step back from becoming Prime Minister in 2004 and select Dr. Manmohan Singh for the role.
She selected Manmohan Singh because the Left was a key partner in the United Progressive Alliance (UPA). As the architect of India’s 1991 economic liberalization, Singh possessed the credibility to reassure the industry and calm economic anxieties.
She said that she picked up Singh, the two-time prime minister who died at the age of 92 in 2024, as she thought of him as a person of “unquestionable” integrity with a deep understanding of governance.
Gandhi, the then Congress president, said that she believed Singh would also assuage the doubts of many about the UPA’s ability to manage and continue the policies that began years ago.
“There were several senior colleagues, seasoned and qualified for the post, who would have been more than willing to accept it but amongst all of them was one who had long been in my sight as a person above reproach, and possessed a deep and consummate understanding of governance. That was Dr Manmohan Singh, a member of the Congress Working Committee,” Gandhi said in the book published by HarperCollins India.
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