"How Has He Left Me?" Priyanka Recalls Sonia Gandhi's Grief After Rajiv's Death

In the interview, Sonia Gandhi said the family was living in fear after the assassination of Rajiv's mother and former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.

10 Nov 2026, 07:44 · NDTV

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Sonia Gandhi lost her husband Rajiv Gandhi in a 1991 suicide bombing in Tamil Nadu
She chose to stay in India despite her sister urging her to return to Italy
Her memoir details her life from Italy to Indian politics and personal losses

What unresolved questions remain about Rajiv Gandhi's assassination?

More than three decades ago, Sonia Gandhi's world collapsed when her husband and former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated in a suicide bombing in Tamil Nadu in May 1991. As she struggled to come to terms with the loss, her sister urged her to return to Italy. But the Congress leader had made up her mind. She could not imagine leaving India. "India was my home, my children's home," she told The Guardian in an interview published ahead of the release of her memoir, 'Belonging: A Journey Of Love', on Tuesday.

READ | 'Pranab Mukherjee Shocked Me With Change At Top Suggestion': Sonia Gandhi

It chronicles Sonia Gandhi's journey from her childhood in post-war Italy and her romance with Rajiv Gandhi to her life in India and the personal losses that shaped her relationship with the country.

In the lead-up to the book's release, Sonia Gandhi opened up about to life after Rajiv Gandhi's assassination, India's most sensational political murder, and how she struggled to rebuild her life after losing her husband.

Priyanka Gandhi, who was also the part of The Guardian interview, recalled what those days were like for her mother. Sitting beside Sonia Gandhi during the interview, the Congress leader said her mother would spend entire days sitting in the dark, listening to Mozart's Requiem, consumed by grief.

"You were angry at him," Priyanka said looking at her mother, recalling how she would cry and shout: "How has he left me, why did he leave?"

Sonia Gandhi also recalls how the family had lived with the fear of losing Rajiv after the assassination of her mother-in-law, former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, in October 1984.

"We thought that, as we were always together, if something happens to one, it will happen to the other one," she says.

The couple had even written notes outlining how they wanted their funerals to be conducted.

Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated on May 21, 1991, at Sriperumbudur in Tamil Nadu, when a woman belonging to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) detonated an explosive device during an election rally. Fourteen others were also killed in the attack.

Sonia Gandhi said she later learnt that intelligence agencies had intercepted threats against her husband before the assassination. She continues to believe that the larger truth behind his killing has not fully emerged.

"I don't think we will get the truth now," she told The Guardian.

From Italy To India

Born in Italy, Sonia Gandhi moved to India after marrying Rajiv Gandhi in 1968. She had initially stayed away from politics, but Rajiv's assassination eventually drew her into public life.

She took over as Congress president in 1998, when the party was struggling with a leadership crisis. Under her leadership, the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) won the 2004 Lok Sabha election. She subsequently declined the post of prime minister.

Her memoir, which released on November 10, revisits her journey from her childhood in Italy to life in the Nehru-Gandhi family, the assassinations of Indira and Rajiv Gandhi, and her eventual entry into politics.

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