Sonia’s 'Belonging': A Veil Over the Past or a Future Political Gambit?

Defending the Gandhi Family through Autobiography and Launching Political Attacks  on Modi

Sonia Gandhi’s much-awaited book, *'Belonging'*, has finally been published and is now part of the public discourse. Initially, it was scheduled to be published by Penguin, but due to disagreements between the author and the publisher, it could not be released from there. Before publication, Sonia Gandhi had grandly claimed that a major 'spectacle' would unfold upon the book’s release. Ironically, no political spectacle occurred; instead, the book itself has landed in the dock due to its factual inconsistencies, tampering with historical truths, and desperate attempts to whitewash the dark chapters of the Gandhi family.

At a time when assembly elections are looming in two critical states—Uttar Pradesh and Punjab—and a Congress party, fatigued by continuous electoral defeats, is agitating against the Election Commission to deflect from its own failures, the timing of this book's release exposes its true agenda. This work appears to be little more than a political document designed to tarnish Prime Minister Narendra Modi's personal image, attack the ideology of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and the BJP, and provide artificial respiration to a sinking Congress party to harvest immediate electoral dividends.

**The Defense of Nehruvian Legacy and the Ploy to Discard the Stigma of the Emergency**

The rewriting of historical timelines begins with the defense of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru. Portraying Nehru’s policies as Congress's glorious legacy, the book launches sharp objections against the criticisms leveled by the BJP and Prime Minister Modi. However, in this endeavor, Sonia Gandhi seems to forget that the blind defense of Nehru will only resurrect those historical blunders from which Congress has been trying to shy away for decades. While the book attempts to corner the Modi government under the pretext of the India-China border dispute, this gamble is bound to backfire on Congress. It will not only reopen the scars of India's shameful defeat in the 1962 war caused by Nehru's shortsighted policies, but will also force the public to question that mysterious Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed between the Congress party and the Communist Party of China, the provisions of which remain hidden from the nation to this day.

Continuing this historical whitewashing, the entire blame for the 1975 Emergency is heaped upon the late Sanjay Gandhi, while Rajiv Gandhi is portrayed as an opponent of the Emergency—a clever ploy to absolve the current leadership of the Gandhi family from the stigma of murdering democracy. But is the nation so naive as not to ask the fundamental question: When Indira Gandhi was the elected Prime Minister, how did she hand over the reins of power and the authority to trample the Constitution indirectly to her son? Was Indira Gandhi such a helpless Prime Minister that supreme national decisions were made under family pressure? Furthermore, if there is such candid acknowledgment of Sanjay Gandhi’s decisions, why has this book maintained a mysterious silence on his controversial plane crash in 1980 under highly suspicious circumstances and the widespread conspiracy theories surrounding it?

**Operation Blue Star, the 1984 Sikh Massacre, and Unanswered Questions of the Rajiv Era**

Keeping the upcoming Punjab assembly elections in mind, the book makes a superficial attempt to heal the wounds of Sikhs regarding Operation Blue Star and the 1984 anti-Sikh riots. In a shameful effort to wash the stains of innocent Sikhs' blood off her party and government, Sonia Gandhi has shifted the entire blame onto the then-Army Chief, General A.S. Vaidya. The book claims that orders for army deployment in Delhi were given on the night of October 31, 1984 itself, but he refrained from sending nearby units with Sikh soldiers and instead called in troops from afar.

This blatant falsehood has been strongly refuted by retired military officers who were in service at the time. Military officials explicitly state that the political leadership deliberately delayed calling the army, and even when deployed, it was deliberately misled and sent on wrong routes so as not to reach riot-affected areas on time. The narrative surrounding Rajiv Gandhi's assassination in the book also leaves several unanswered questions—such as Sonia Gandhi's refusal to accompany him to that final election rally, choosing to stay back at the hotel instead, and later, Rahul and Priyanka Gandhi visiting the convicted assassin Nalini in prison to publicly 'forgive' her. These are points on which the country remains deeply suspicious, yet the book remains entirely silent on them.

**Bofors Kickbacks and Convenient Silence on Quattrocchi**

In her haste to portray Rajiv Gandhi as completely clean, the book accepts that kickbacks were taken in the Bofors gun deal—because the report of the Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) set up by the Rajiv government confirming a kickback of 64 crore rupees could not be denied—yet the name of Italian middleman Ottavio Quattrocchi is conspicuously missing from the entire account.

How can the nation forget that after Sonia Gandhi's marriage, Quattrocchi came to India as a junior employee of a modest company and became such a close friend of Sonia that he had unhindered access to the Prime Minister's residence? During Rajiv Gandhi's lifetime, the CBI never mustered the courage to question him. Later, during P.V. Narasimha Rao's tenure, then-External Affairs Minister Madhavsinh Solanki handed an unofficial letter to the Swiss Foreign Minister requesting them to halt the investigation and withhold documents from the Government of India. Moreover, the UPA government led by Manmohan Singh first allowed him to escape the country, then withdrew the Red Corner Notice against him, and finally had his two bank accounts in London—frozen by a British court containing kickback money—unfrozen, allowing the entire sum to be withdrawn overnight. This attempt to bury the ghost of Bofors in the pages of the book will only tighten the noose around the Gandhi family.

**Selective Empathy and the Height of Appeasement**

The most hypocritical aspect of the book is Sonia Gandhi’s 'selective empathy'. With an eye on vote-bank polarization during the Uttar Pradesh elections, she writes that when the disputed structure of Babri Masjid was being demolished in Ayodhya, tears came to her eyes while watching it on TV. Similar tears, she claims, welled up when the dreaded terrorists involved in the Delhi Batla House encounter were killed by police.

At this juncture, the common citizen of the country asks a direct question: Why are Sonia Gandhi's tears so selective?

* When unarmed kar sevaks were fired upon in that very Ayodhya, and the bodies of hundreds of Ram devotees turned the waters of the Saryu red, why didn’t your eyes shed tears?

* When burning tires were placed around the necks of Sikhs in the streets of Delhi in 1984 under the leadership of Congress leaders like Sajjan Kumar, and even infants and women were burnt alive, where was your empathy hiding?

* When thousands of Hindus faced a brutal and inhumane massacre inليا the Kashmir Valley in the 1990s and were forced to become refugees in their own country, why did your tears dry up?

* When 59 innocent Hindu pilgrims were burnt alive inside a compartment of the Sabarmati Express at Godhra railway station, or when hundreds lost their lives prematurely in cloudbursts in Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh, why did your heart not grieve?

It is clear that these tears are not a manifestation of human empathy, but rather of calculated vote-bank politics. In line with this appeasement, the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks are mentioned in a manner that portrays Congress as the sole protector of Indian Muslims. However, this mention will only remind the nation how Congress, to shield Pakistani terrorists, put forward P. Chidambaram and Digvijaya Singh to concoct the treasonous 'Hindu Terror' theory.

**Suppression of Internal Democracy, the Prank of 'Sacrifice', and Whitewashing Mega Scams**

The book completely glosses over the dark chapters of internal party dictatorship and the humiliation of senior leaders within Congress. There is not a single word on how Sitaram Kesri, a prominent Dalit leader and the then-Congress President, was humiliatingly locked inside a bathroom and ousted from the party, or how Sonia forcibly seized control of the Congress presidency. Similarly, the book maintains a convenient silence on vengeful political acts such as denying former Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao's mortal remains entry into the AICC headquarters after his death, and refusing permission for his cremation in Delhi.

To project herself as an 'embodiment of sacrifice' for refusing the Prime Minister's post in 2004, the old narrative has been regurgitated once again. The historical truth, however, is that then-President Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam himself informed her that the coalition allies lacked consensus and strongly opposed her candidature. Immediately after this act of renunciation, she created the 'National Advisory Council' (NAC), assumed cabinet-minister status, and unconstitutionally established herself as the alternate center of power. For ten years, foreign dignitaries met with Sonia, while Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh was projected as nothing more than her private secretary. In the same vein, a petty allegation has been leveled against former President late Pranab Mukherjee that he was 'eager' to become Prime Minister in 2010—a claim that was strongly refuted by his daughter Sharmistha Mukherjee, who rightly asked what crime it is for an experienced and capable leader to harbor political ambitions.

The complete omission of the colossal corruption scandals of the ten-year UPA rule—such as the 2G spectrum, coal allocation, and Commonwealth Games scams—reveals that Congress still lacks the courage to face the truth. Sonia has completely distanced herself from her son-in-law Robert Vadra’s DLF land scam and various land disputes in Haryana and Rajasthan, making no reference to them whatsoever. On the contrary, Anna Hazare’s spontaneous mass movement against this stinking corruption has been branded as a BJP-RSS conspiracy, insulting the outrage of crores of citizens.

**Baseless Attacks on the Modi Government, Constitutional Institutions, and Opposition Unity**

To cover up its own failures, the book launches baseless attacks on Prime Minister Modi, the Pulwama attack, and the Election Commission. By raising questions on Pulawama, Sonia has unintentionally brought Pakistan's nefarious designs and the valor of the Balakot airstrikes back to the center of political debate, which will ultimately benefit the BJP. Meanwhile, while pointing fingers at the impartiality of the Election Commission, she forgets that for decades after independence, Congress itself made maximum misuse of the institution by installing its loyalist bureaucrats.

Similarly, Nitish Kumar's exit from the 'INDIA' alliance just before the 2024 Lok Sabha elections is blamed on the BJP. The political reality, however, is that despite Nitish Kumar being the architect of opposition unity, Congress was fixated on its single-minded agenda of imposing Rahul Gandhi as Prime Minister, leaving Nitish Kumar with no choice but to walk out of the alliance.

A comprehensive analysis of these facts makes it clear that Sonia Gandhi’s 'Belonging' is not an autobiography, but a hollow compilation of political 'damage control'. Its sole purpose is ideological whitewashing of the Gandhi family's historical blunders and desperately trying to resuscitate Rahul Gandhi's dead-end political path. In doing so, however, Sonia Gandhi has resurrected those long-buried ghosts that the Indian public had almost forgotten. Now that these sensitive and controversial narratives have returned to the public platform through Sonia's own pen, BJP and its ideological affiliates are bound to take them to the masses with full aggression. Whether this book proves to be a lifeline for a sinking Congress or a self-destructive trap of its own making remains to be seen.

                                                ~~~~~~~~~~~~Shiv Mishra ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 

 

Papering Over Cracks: The Controversy Surrounding UGC Equity Regulations

   By Shiv Mishra

During a recent Supreme Court hearing on University Grants Commission (UGC) regulations, the central government submitted that it is considering setting up a special committee to review the "UGC Equity Regulations, 2026," formulated to promote parity in educational institutions. Emphasizing the fundamental need to safeguard the rights and interests of every student, the apex court scheduled the matter for its next hearing in four weeks.

The Supreme Court had issued an interim stay on the enforcement of these regulations on January 29, 2026. More than nine months have elapsed since, yet the government's inability to present a definitive resolution on such a sensitive matter looks like little more than an exercise in papering over the cracks. When the UGC notified the "Promotion of Equity in Higher Education Institutions Regulations, 2026" on January 13, 2026, the policy—contrary to its stated objective—contained multiple provisions prone to driving institutional and social imbalance. The notification triggered widespread pushback across the country, which the administration initially sought to rein in through administrative force.

A ruling party that regularly pledges to foster social cohesion and dismantle caste fault lines has, in this instance, sidelined broad public sentiment in pursuit of short-term political arithmetic. Hindu society was already uneasy with the legislative hardening of the SC/ST Prevention of Atrocities Act; against that backdrop, the new UGC guidelines left the general category deeply unsettled. The current posture recalls Vishwanath Pratap Singh’s 1990 playbook when implementing the Mandal Commission recommendations, built on the presumption that targeted social engineering creates a permanent, grateful vote bank. History demonstrates that tactical interventions for narrow gains rarely guarantee lasting political loyalty.

The greater paradox lies in modern institutional reality: at a time when caste discrimination, untouchability, and social exclusion have considerably weakened in higher education, such asymmetric guidelines threaten to drag campuses back into caste-based polarization. Within India's current electoral mechanics, resorting to divisive quotas and classifications to secure votes has turned into routine statecraft. This dynamic explains why opposition parties refrained from lodging a robust critique against the new framework: when electoral balance sheets take precedence over institutional health, broader public interest is inevitably compromised—a dynamic contributing directly to the erosion of political ethics.

A look at the background reveals that the issue traces back to a public interest litigation (PIL) filed in the Supreme Court in 2019, following the suicides of Rohith Vemula at the University of Hyderabad in 2016 and Dr. Payal Tadvi in Mumbai in 2019, both allegedly linked to caste discrimination. The petitioners sought an effective institutional mechanism to enforce the existing 2012 UGC guidelines. The Supreme Court directed the authorities to strengthen the existing machinery. Instead of consolidating institutional oversight, the regulator went a step further to draft entirely new regulations not sought in the original petition. Expanding the regulatory mandate to include Other Backward Classes (OBCs) and reconfiguring its jurisdictional scope in this manner raises critical constitutional and procedural questions.

Under the new regulations, caste-based discrimination was defined strictly in relation to specific beneficiary communities, effectively depriving general category students of institutional redressal mechanisms. The framework operates on an implied assumption that a general category student cannot be a victim of harassment or institutional bias. Furthermore, the mandatory Equity Committees and Equal Opportunity Centers established across campuses made no provision for proportionate representation of general category students or faculty members.

The 2012 guidelines contained deterrent provisions against filing false or malicious complaints. The 2026 regulations scrapped those safeguards entirely. This omission fuels legitimate concerns that the rules could be weaponized due to personal animosity or campus rivalries, potentially jeopardizing an individual's academic trajectory and reputation without due process.

Recognizing these prima facie anomalies, the Supreme Court stayed the implementation of the rules. Yet, the government took no substantive corrective measures over the past nine months. That administrative inertia has begun yielding tangible political fallout.

In recent by-elections, the BJP faced electoral setbacks in constituencies where general category voters command significant influence. The party suffered defeats in Bihar’s Bankipur assembly seat (vacated by BJP leader Nitin Nabin) and Madhya Pradesh’s Datia constituency. In Uttar Pradesh's recent Legislative Council elections, the Samajwadi Party secured both seats in the Varanasi constituency—the Prime Minister's parliamentary base. The SP also wrested the Lucknow Graduate constituency, long regarded as a traditional BJP bastion, while the BJP scraped through the Gorakhpur–Faizabad seat by a razor-thin margin of just 307 votes.

The UP Legislative Council elections also revealed a striking demonstration of voter discontent: approximately 53,615 ballots were declared invalid after voters deliberately wrote "UGC Rollback" across from the names of BJP candidates. These electors did not switch allegiance to the Samajwadi Party; instead, they deliberately spoiled their ballots to register a grievance. The signal was unmistakable: while reluctant to back the primary opposition, they are equally prepared to withhold their franchise from the incumbent if these UGC regulations remain unchanged.

This growing alienation represents an urgent warning sign ahead of the Uttar Pradesh assembly elections. The state’s demographic profile includes roughly 14 percent Brahmins, 10 percent Thakurs, 4 percent Vaishyas, and 2 percent other upper-caste groups—communities that have served as the core of the BJP's electoral coalition. Voter surveys consistently show around 85 percent of upper-caste voters backing the BJP. If dissatisfaction over the UGC rules leads even half of this constituency to stay home on polling day, the ruling party's electoral math could face severe disruption. The leadership must draw lessons from these early warning signs and enact course corrections without delay.

Sustained political success can easily breed overconfidence, clouding institutional judgment and paving the way for missteps. The government was under no constitutional compulsion to overturn the Supreme Court's verdict on the SC/ST Act via statutory amendments, yet it chose that path—an overreach reminiscent of the Rajiv Gandhi administration’s handling of the Shah Bano verdict. In the UGC case, the state has similarly engineered a self-inflicted policy and political confrontation.

In politics, a single miscalculated policy can unravel goodwill built over decades. The UGC regulations represent precisely such an inflection point for the BJP. Unless the government acknowledges this policy distortion and amends the framework to guarantee structural fairness, transparency, and balance for all students, the electoral repercussions could be severe—risking not merely loss of office, but the erosion of core political credibility, leading back to square one.

         ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Shiv Mishra ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

• UGC Equity Regulations 2026: Campus Discontent & Political Fallout

• An analysis of the Supreme Court stay on UGC Equity Regulations 2026, institutional imbalances, and the growing political cost of policy overreach. ugc-equity-regulations-2026-campus-discontent-political-fallout

•  UGC Equity Regulations 2026, Supreme Court UGC stay, higher education policy India, campus equity committee, general category students