Fictional Sonia Gandhi biography raises Indian storm (News Feature)

By Sunrita Sen Jun 6, 2010, 13:10 GMT

New Delhi - A fictional biography about Congress Party leader Sonia Gandhi has kicked up a storm in India. Her lawyers claim the book is defamatory. Spanish author Javier Moro has fired back with threats to sue, news reports said Sunday.

The book - El Sari Rojo (The Red Sari), with the subtitle When Life is the Price of Power - has been published in Spain and Italy. An English version is set for release in India.

Moro claims the book is a fictionalised account of the Italian- born Gandhi's life. It follows her early years in Italy, her marriage to former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi, and the difficult times she faced after his assassination and her subsequent entry into politics.

Gandhi is currently the president of the Congress Party, leading partner in India's ruling coalition government, and one of India's most powerful politicians.

She turned down an opportunity to become India's first foreign- born prime minister after leading her alliance to a win in the 2004 general elections.

Gandhi's lawyers claim El Sari Rojo is full of distortions. 'It contains untruths, half truths, falsehoods and defamatory statements,' Gandhi's lawyers said.

Moro was sent a legal notice six months ago saying if he published the book in India in any language, the right to seek legal redress would be exercised, Gandhi's counsel Abhishek Manu Singhvi said.

Moro, in in an interview with Spain's PTI news agency, accused Singhvi, who is also a spokesman for the Congress Party, of 'terrorising' his publishers.

'I don't know how Abhishek Manu Singhvi or others have got their hands on the version when the book is not even in the market yet. He has got a version in an illicit manner. I plan to sue him,' Moro said.

Gandhi's lawyers say Moro has refused to include a disclaimer in the book saying Gandhi had not authorised it.

Singhvi, according to a report in the Times of India newspaper, said the distortions included a passage which said Hindu priests had tried to stop Gandhi from attending her husband's funeral.

He also referred to a passage in which, after Rajiv Gandhi's death, the Sonia Gandhi character thinks of fleeing a country that she says devours its children.

'India is a democratic country which respects freedom of speech. I don't need any permission to publish the book. My book is not libellous, I haven't said anything wrong,' PTI quoted Moro as saying.

Moro said he had grown up listening to stories about Indira Gandhi - a former Indian prime minister and Rajiv Gandhi's mother - from his uncle and author Dominique Lapierre, who was Indira Gandhi's friend.

He thought of writing El Sari Rojo after Rajiv Ganddhi's assassination. 'I watched his cremation on TV, and that is when I thought that it would be a good idea to tell the story of this family through the point of view of Sonia, a woman with whom readers all around the world can easily identify,' Moro said.

Moro said the story of a person from a foreign land who wanted to be a housewife and ended up being a leader of 1 billion people was, in itself, fascinating.

'I think nobody in the Congress has read the book. They are taking lines out of context and manipulating the text,' Moro said.

'My book is on the glory of the Gandhi family. It defends the ideals of the Gandhi family,' Moro said.

Members of the Gandhi family have been at the helm of India's affairs for 45 of its 63 years of independence. Rajiv Gandhi's grandfather, Jawaharlal Nehru, was India's first prime minister. Analysts say Sonia Gandhi's 39-year-old son Rahul is being groomed as a future prime minister.

The Congress Party has earlier objected to unauthorised versions of Sonia Gandhi's life, including a film planned by an Indian director in 2006 starring Italian actress Monica Bellucci.