Decline of India’s Congress party clears way for release of Sonia Gandhi book

Javier Moro’s The Red Sari was denounced five years ago as defamatory, but with BJP now in power it tops bestseller lists

Once again, Sonia Gandhi is on the front page in India. But this time the reclusive politician – one of the world’s most powerful women – isn’t plastered across the country’s raucous newspapers. Rather, she is on the cover of a “fictionalised biography” that her own party branded defamatory and kept off the shelves for five years.

The Spanish author Javier Moro’s The Red Sari was finally published this week and is now topping bestseller lists. Written in the first person, it tells how Gandhi, a young Italian girl from humble origins, came to marry an Indian pilot who happened to be the son of the Indian prime minister and eventually, years after his violent death, herself became leader of the most historic party in the world’s biggest democracy.

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