‘Practically no real contact’

Résumé détaillé

India’s Congress Parliamentary Party chairperson Sonia Gandhi has described her political differences with Prime Minister Narendra Modi as a clash between competing visions of…

India’s Congress Parliamentary Party chairperson Sonia Gandhi has described her political differences with Prime Minister Narendra Modi as a clash between competing visions of India, while revealing that the two have had almost no meaningful personal interaction despite years of political rivalry.

In her memoir, ‘Belonging: A Journey of Love’, released yesterday, Gandhi attributes Modi’s political outlook to his upbringing and the influence of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), contrasting it with her own belief in secularism, inclusiveness and social justice.

“We come from different ideological worlds; his idea of this country is vastly different from mine,” she writes, describing the values she says she inherited from the Nehru-Gandhi family.

Gandhi says PM Modi’s political beliefs were shaped by RSS ideologues and a worldview that, in her assessment, places his religious and cultural identity above others.

“He was fighting for his vision of India, and I for mine,” she writes, describing her own position as one opposed to hegemony and committed to equality. She also makes clear that she does not regard their differences as a personal quarrel.

Gandhi writes that she and Modi have had little personal contact throughout his years as prime minister.

Their encounters, she says, have largely been confined to official or semi-official gatherings, including meetings in the Lok Sabha Speaker’s chamber at the end of parliamentary sessions. “To this day, I’ve had practically no real contact with him,” she writes.

She describes their exchanges as formal greetings, contrasting them with an earlier political culture in which leaders from opposing parties maintained more cordial personal relationships. According to Gandhi, PM Modi tends to avoid eye contact during their encounters.

Gandhi also recalls the communal violence in Gujarat in 2002, when Modi was the state’s chief minister.

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