Congress parliamentary leader Sonia Gandhi has laid bare the intense personal turmoil and family confrontation that led her to reject the prime minister's post in May 2004, choosing instead to install Manmohan Singh as head of government. Writing in her memoir, Belonging: A Journey of Love, Gandhi reveals that her decision shifted from a flat pre-poll refusal to an overwhelmed capitulation, before ending in a categorical rejection of power.
She never intended to take the office. Months before the 2004 general election, Gandhi answered her children with an indignant "absolutely not" when asked whether she would accept the prime ministership if the party clinched a majority. Yet when victory arrived, political partners mounted suffocating pressure inside the corridors of 10, Janpath.
For Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, the premiership was inseparable from violence. Both had lived through the October 1984 assassination of their grandmother, Indira Gandhi, followed seven years later by the May 1991 assassination of their father, former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi. To them, the top executive post represented lethal exposure. Gandhi writes that while an internal sense of duty tugged her toward party workers, her children had demanded a firm commitment that she would stay away from the office.
The turning point arrived inside Rajiv Gandhi’s old conference room at the far end of 10, Janpath. Alliance leaders had gathered, speaking in turns and demanding that she head the new coalition government. When Gandhi attempted to decline, the room revolted. Coalition partners rose from their chairs, pushed forward, and physically surrounded her.
"'We will not accept this,' one of them says. 'You cannot take this decision, Madam,' says another. Their tone is forceful, almost aggressive," Gandhi recounts in the book. Trapped by the wall of shouting leaders, exhausted and overpowered, she mumbled a feeble concession: "Theek hai."
Partners erupted in celebration and began congratulating her, but Priyanka had already sprinted out of the room in tears to alert Rahul. Rahul burst into the room moments later, furious at the surrender. Confronting his mother, he shouted: "Pressurised? You are being pressurised? What about us?"
The confrontation broke the spell. Gandhi pulled back the concession, slammed the door shut on the premiership, and named Manmohan Singh to govern—sealing a decision that reshaped Indian governance for the following decade.