Sonia Gandhi's memoir Belonging: A Journey of Love is set to reach Indian readers through a different publisher than originally planned, after Penguin Random House India stepped back from the project following a disagreement over the manuscript. HarperCollins India has since stepped in and confirmed the book will be released on November 10, giving the long awaited memoir a firm publication date despite the earlier upheaval.
Penguin Random House India said the decision followed discussions with the author's team over editorial changes and deletions it had sought in parts of the manuscript. The publisher said some of its suggestions were accepted while it in turn accepted the author's position on other points, but the two sides ultimately could not find common ground on what it described only as a particular issue, without disclosing further detail.
The publisher was equally direct in stating what did not drive the decision, saying explicitly that no external pressure had influenced its choice to walk away, an attempt to head off speculation that political considerations rather than editorial ones were behind the split. Even so, reports around the dispute have pointed to passages touching on Prime Minister Modi, the RSS and communal divisions as the likely source of the disagreement, though neither side has confirmed specifics.
The memoir itself traces Sonia Gandhi's personal journey from Italy to India, her marriage to Rajiv Gandhi, the family tragedies that shaped her public life, and her decades in Indian politics, material that was always likely to draw close scrutiny given her long tenure at the helm of the Congress party and her family's place at the centre of the country's political history.
With HarperCollins India now carrying the book to publication, attention has shifted from the standoff itself to what the finished manuscript will actually say once it reaches shelves in November, particularly on the very passages that reportedly proved too difficult for the original publishing relationship to survive.