Sonia Gandhi's Memoir and the Line on 'Practically No Real Contact' with PM Modi, Explained

Sonia Gandhi has put her relationship with Narendra Modi in her own sentences. In Belonging: A Journey of Love, which HarperCollins India put on sale on Tuesday, 10 November 2026, she writes that in more than twelve years of his prime ministership she has had "practically no real contact with him." The meetings she describes are a formal namaste in a crowded room. She writes that he tends to look away.

That is a memoir, not a charge sheet. NDTV, The Indian Express (citing a PTI excerpt) and Hindustan Times quote the same passage. No report reviewed here carries a reply from the Prime Minister's Office to those particular lines. The political reply on Tuesday came from party spokespersons and ministers, and it was mostly about other chapters.

The 60-second version

• The book: Belonging: A Journey of Love, HarperCollins India, on sale 10 November 2026. Hindustan Times called it a 544-page memoir and described Gandhi as 79.
• The sentence: "To this day, I've had practically no real contact with him." She writes that Modi is in his third term and has been prime minister for more than twelve years "as of this writing."
• The scene: Leaders of major parties in the Speaker's chamber at the end of a session. A formal namaste. "He tends to look away, avoiding eye contact."
• What else passed between them, in her account: Birthday and New Year greetings, and, after hospital stays, "Theek hain aap?"
• Her frame: "It wasn't personal." She ties the distance to the RSS and to two ideas of India. She also writes that she recognised his unease with what she calls the ruling elite.
• The reply: BJP spokesperson C.R. Kesavan said the book could have been called "Whitewashing." Salman Khurshid said people should read it before shouting. A senior BJP leader, Telegraph India reported, answered the eye-contact line by talking about Pakistan.

What she wrote about the meetings

The passage the papers led with is specific. The Indian Express, from the PTI excerpt, quotes:

"Narendra Damodardas Modi has been the Prime Minister of India for more than twelve years as of this writing and is now in his third term in office. To this day, I've had practically no real contact with him. We meet at semi-official gatherings, for instance, at the end of every Parliament session, when leaders of the major parties customarily gather at the Speaker's chamber."

NDTV quotes the next lines. The room is "very small," and "usually many people are present," but when they are face to face "we greet each other with a formal namaste." She calls that a break with an older habit: "This is different from the past, when leaders across party divides would treat one another with cordiality. He tends to look away, avoiding eye contact."

Hindustan Times, in Sunetra Choudhury's report updated at 4:13 pm IST on 10 November, quotes the same "practically no real contact" sentence and the same namaste and eye-contact lines, and says the book "hits the bookstores on Tuesday."

She does not write that they have never been in the same room. She writes that the contact has not been real, by which she means, in the next sentence NDTV quotes, that they have not really talked. "Apart from such brief exchanges, we have never really conversed, though we've exchanged formal birthday and New Year greetings over the years."

One of those brief exchanges is about her health. NDTV quotes the book as saying that when she has come back from hospital, Modi has asked "Theek hain aap?" and she has answered "Jee, ab main theek hoon, shukriya." NDTV's translations are "Are you all right?" and "Yes, thank you, I'm fine now." The Indian Express summarises the same point without the Hindi: he has occasionally asked whether she was all right, and beyond that, and the greeting cards, they have barely spoken.

A reader can treat this as her memory of a manner. The papers do not present it as minutes of a meeting, and they do not quote Modi on it. The Indian Express illustrates the story with a photograph of Modi meeting Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi on 27 November 2015. The caption is of that older meeting. It is not a picture of the Speaker's chamber scenes the new passage describes.

Two ideas of India, in her words

The contact line is the headline. The pages around it are an argument about ideology, and she says she does not mean it as a personal feud.

NDTV quotes her: "He was fighting for his vision of India, and I for mine: an India against hegemony, an India that stands for inclusiveness, secularism, and social justice. It wasn't personal."

She then assigns the two visions to two upbringings. "All I learnt about India was assimilated from the members of my family, their lives of service, and their faith in a nation that encompassed a host of races and cultures, languages and faiths, based on principles of liberty and equality for all. Narendra Modi's idea of India was constructed by the ideologues of the RSS and the experience of his own growing up. It affirmed a fundamentalism in which his faith and culture superseded all others." In that India, she adds, hierarchy, order and control are central.

Hindustan Times framed the same material as a claim of some common ground. It quotes her on feeling out of place in a Delhi drawing room, "feeling that the opinions expressed were very far removed from the reality of India," and on Modi having "certainly worked his way to power within the RSS from an underprivileged world." NDTV and The Indian Express also carry the sharper half of that thought: his origins "may not have been as humble as his PR team has made out in marketing his image," and yet he rose through the RSS from an underprivileged world. The humble-origins sentence is her judgment on his publicity. The papers are quoting it, not certifying a biography.

On Parliament, NDTV quotes her saying that when he speaks there he at times uses "the same coarse language he employs in addressing a public rally," and that much of the time he "derides the opposition in what can only be termed a tirade." Jawaharlal Nehru, she writes, "is a particular target of his party's hostility, for having set our country on a democratic and secular course." She writes that Sangh Parivar websites are full of "malicious abuse and falsehoods" against Nehru. She says the BJP's stated aim is what they call a "Congress-free India," free of the party, its policies and its ideology, and that she tends to believe the antipathy "stems from the conditioning of the prime minister by the RSS."

Hindustan Times summarised that Nehru passage as Gandhi blaming his sharp comments on Nehru on that conditioning. The RSS lines are allegations and characterisations in a political memoir. They are not a description the RSS has agreed, and they are not a finding.

The Week quoted a compressed version of the same contrast: "He fought for his vision of India, I fought for mine," and the line that his idea of the country "was constructed by the ideologues of the RSS." The wording is close to NDTV's, not identical. Where the two differ, the longer NDTV and PTI excerpts are the ones used above.

What the parties said on the day of publication

The fight on Tuesday was only partly about the namaste.

Telegraph India, in a report published at 6:48 pm on 10 November, said the release "ignited a political row," with the BJP accusing Gandhi of "whitewashing" historical wrongs and Congress leaders saying the ruling party was giving the memoir a political angle.

C.R. Kesavan, BJP national spokesperson, wrote on X, as the paper quoted him: "Sonia Gandhi could have titled her memoir as 'Whitewashing' instead of 'Belonging', because the motive of this book appears to be sugar coating the historical wrongs perpetrated by the Nehru Gandhi family and camouflaging the cardinal sins committed by the Congress party." He then questioned her references, in the paper's account, to the Babri Masjid demolition, the 1984 anti-Sikh massacre, the Batla House encounter and the 26/11 attacks. His questions are put as challenges ("Did she shed even a drop of tears..."), not as extracts printed by the paper. They are his reading of the book.

Salman Khurshid, speaking to ANI, answered that politics directly. Telegraph India quoted him saying there was "very deep regret among everyone" in the Congress government at the time of the Babri demolition, and that L.K. Advani and Atal Bihari Vajpayee had said they did not want it to happen. On the wider attack he said: "Let them play politics. Even Sonia ji acknowledged that there would inevitably be some uproar. But they should read the book and try to understand it, rather than starting to shout right away."

The eye-contact sentence did get a direct sneer. Telegraph India reported that a senior BJP leader, speaking to PTI Videos, said: "With how many people will he make eye contact? He has already made eye contact once." The paper then quoted him: "Narendra Modi makes eye contact. He talks to his enemies by looking directly into their eyes. These people are not enemies," and, "He looks directly into the eyes of Pakistan and the country's enemies, and talks to them." The paper does not put a name on that speaker in those sentences. It is a reply to her passage. It is not a denial that the Speaker's chamber meetings happen, and it is not Modi speaking.

Other lines the same day were about older disputes, not about this paragraph. BJP MP Rahul Sinha said, as Telegraph India quoted him, "Sonia Gandhi's writings will not make any difference; nobody is going to read it." Union minister Giriraj Singh said her tears "flow for Muslim votes only," and listed Babri, Batla House, Pahalgam, Pakistani terrorists and Naxalites. Those are his political charges. They are not excerpts.

What the book is, beyond this chapter

HarperCollins India announced on 4 September 2026 that it would publish the memoir in India on 10 November 2026. The publisher calls it a personal and political story that begins in Cambridge in 1965, with Sonia Maino and Rajiv Gandhi, and runs through Indira Gandhi's assassination, Rajiv Gandhi's assassination, her years as Congress president, and her decision, after a key election in which the party selected her to become prime minister, to decline that office. That last point is the publisher's summary of the book, from the September press release, not a new document released on Tuesday.

The author note with that release says she lives in New Delhi as a member of the Rajya Sabha, and that Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi are members of the Lok Sabha, where Rahul is Leader of the Opposition. The Indian Express, updating its story at 10:10 pm IST on 10 November, said the book went on sale that Tuesday and described the Modi pages as coming from a PTI excerpt.

Hindustan Times is the source, in this piece, for the length, 544 pages, and for her age, 79. A 544-page memoir will produce more excerpts than the Modi passage. Tuesday's political argument already showed which other shelves, 1984, Babri, the Emergency, 2004, the parties want to pull down first.

What to watch next

1. Whether the Prime Minister's Office answers the passage. The quotes in NDTV, The Indian Express and Hindustan Times are from the book. The Tuesday replies Telegraph India reported are from spokespersons, MPs and a minister. A PMO line would be a different kind of response. None of those reports carried one.
2. Which chapter the fight stays on. Kesavan's post, as quoted, was about Babri, 1984, Batla House and 26/11. Khurshid's answer was "read the book." The eye-contact mockery was a smaller part of the same story. Further excerpts will show whether the row moves back to the Modi pages or stays on the older episodes.
3. The next Speaker's chamber gathering. Her scene is a routine one, leaders of major parties at the end of a session. The next time that room meets, her sentences will be the ones reporters bring to it. What anyone says there is not knowable from this book.
4. How much of the 544 pages is the political present. HarperCollins sold the book as a life, from Italy and Cambridge to the Congress presidency. The chapter on Modi is the one that led the Indian papers on publication day. It is not the whole book.

The sentence that will travel is hers: practically no real contact, a formal namaste, and a claim that he looks away. The BJP's published answer on Tuesday was that the book whitewashes the past, plus a jab that the Prime Minister looks enemies in the eye. Neither side has turned the Speaker's chamber into a shared account.

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Sonia Gandhi's quotations about contact with Narendra Modi, the Speaker's chamber, the namaste, eye contact, birthday and New Year greetings, the hospital exchange and its Hindi, the two visions of India, the RSS, Nehru, "Congress-free India" and the drawing-room and "PR team" lines are from her memoir Belonging: A Journey of Love, as quoted by NDTV (10 November 2026), The Indian Express (Express Web Desk, updated 10:10 pm IST on 10 November 2026, citing a PTI excerpt), and Hindustan Times (Sunetra Choudhury, updated 4:13 pm IST on 10 November 2026). Hindustan Times is also the source for the 544-page description and for describing her as 79. The Week (10 November 2026) is the source for its shorter version of the vision and RSS lines. HarperCollins India's press release dated 4 September 2026 is the source for the publisher, the 10 November 2026 India publication date, the publisher's summary of the life the book covers, including the decision not to become prime minister, and the author note on the Rajya Sabha and on Rahul Gandhi as Leader of the Opposition. Telegraph India (Our Web Desk, 6:48 pm on 10 November 2026) is the source for the release-day political row, C.R. Kesavan's X post, his questions on Babri, 1984, Batla House and 26/11, Salman Khurshid's comments to ANI, the unnamed senior BJP leader's comments to PTI Videos on eye contact and Pakistan, Rahul Sinha's comment, and Giriraj Singh's comments. Those political lines are the speakers' allegations and opinions. The 27 November 2015 photograph is identified in The Indian Express caption. This piece does not quote the book beyond what those outlets printed.