Book on Sonia Gandhi has Congress in a froth

A huge row has broken out over a fictionalised biography of Congress president Sonia Gandhi written by a Spanish author, with the Congress objecting to the book and wanting to stop its English publication in India and sources saying that the Congress would  ask for an international ban on the book.

This comes on the heels of a controversy over the Hindi film Raajneeti, where the character played by Katrina Kaif is alleged to be based on the persona of Sonia Gandhi and where too certain objections were raised.

10, Janpath has taken serious objection to the El Sari Rojo (The Red Sari), which has already been published in Italian and Spanish and which Roli books is in negotiations to have it translated into English and sold in India, with Congress spokesman and lawyer Abhishek Singhvi sending a legal notice to the author, Javier Moro, on behalf of his party president. Moro, nephew of celebrated author Dominique Lapierre, had co-authored Five Past Midnight in Bhopal: The epic story of the world's deadliest industrial disaster with his uncle in 2002. Other Indic books written by Moro are Passion India, the story of an Indian prince falling in love with a Spanish dancer, The Mountains of the Buddha on the Tibetan struggle, and El pie de Jaipur (in Spanish).

Singhvi had sent a notice to the author as far back as November 5, 2009, informing Moro of the 'grossly defamatory and false nature of his publication' and in the last seven months, in various correspondence exchanged between the two, the author has been told 'that his book is full of untruths, half truths, falsehoods, defamatory statements, completely imaginary and invented conversations within quotation marks and narration of non-existent situations in the first person'.

Singhvi has quoted various instances from the manuscript where he says this has come to light. Some of them, according to him, which he has mentioned in his legal notice, are:

"Consider, only as a small example out of a much larger list intimated to Mr Moro, whether the following untruths are at all capable of being substantiated by Mr Moro:

• "On page 8 (of a manuscript in circulation), he has assumed, entirely erroneously, that the Hindu priests "refused to allow her to be present at the cremation" (following her husband Rajiv Gandhi's death).
• "Mr Moro has an obsession with Mrs Sonia Gandhi's alleged desire to leave India for Italy. This theme recurs time and again and two examples are given below.

"On page 16 of the manuscript, he states "she suddenly thought of fleeing this country that devours its children…" Mr Moro's conclusion is completely baseless, subjective and patently absurd.

"On page 176, Moro again fabricates a personal conversation between members of the family about leaving India for Italy. It is an impossible conversation to report unless he was present (which he could not possibly be), apart from being completely untrue.

• "On page 96, his conclusion that "Sonia did not understand why she had to learn a language only spoken by the servants" -- a condescending reference to Hindi -- is nothing but his purely subjective and imaginary conclusion.
• "Mr Moro has placed Mrs Sonia Gandhi at the centre of events leading to declaration of Emergency and the decision making-process in relation thereto. On page 163, he has fabricated an incident as if he was present in the very corridor where "Sonia went to tell him (ie, Rajiv Gandhi) at 3 'O clock in the morning, that after having helped Indira to complete the draft of the speech that was going to announce the state of emergency to the people, Siddartha Shankar Ray was getting ready to leave when he met secretary R K Dhawan in the corridor. Dhawan told him, 'The steps have now been taken to cut off the electricity supply to the main newspapers of the country and to close the courts.'
• "Similarly on page 138, Moro has, reproduced alleged remarks of Mr Sanjay Gandhi when he was an apprentice in the UK that: "Look, the British have f****d with India was centuries, and now I've come here to f**k with England." This reveals the degree of Mr Moro's inventiveness which is not only highly defamatory but cheap, vulgar and crude. How he can possibly attribute these words in quotation marks to is beyond our contemplation.

"Faced with the obvious and incontrovertible position of not having any personal knowledge, nor any documentary proof, nor any other supporting data, Mr Moro decided to take refuge in the idea of a so-called "fictionalised biography". A "fictionalised biography" about a living person is an oxymoron. Any false and derogatory writing, that is admitted to be without authorization or consent, is patently slanderous, libellous and defamatory. It is also interesting and curious that in Italy and Spain, the book has been reviewed largely as a "biography" and not as fiction or a novel.

"In a Spanish interview available on YouTube, Mr Moro himself describes it as "a book of non-fiction" and as belonging to the genre of "non-fiction dramatised," clearly contradicting his stand of it being a fictionalised account.

"Mr Moro did correspond at length regarding the insertion of a disclaimer in all future editions, to which he had agreed. He backed out at the last minute because he wanted any formal agreement to exclude from its purview his right to make future films and utilise other media and publication forms, at large, without restriction.

"In conclusion, we would like to point out that Mr Moro has repeated his defamatory statements although he has been aware for at least the last seven months that the subject of his defamatory writings is entitled to and shall take all steps to defend and protect herself and her family. Subsequently his publishers were also informed of that intention in writing."

Moro, on the other hand, was quoted by Press Trust of India as saying that the Congress is trying to "terrorise" Indian firms into not publishing the book. "I have written a fictionalised account of her life but that doesn't mean it's not truthful. Abhishek Manu Singhvi and his watchdogs and his company are trying to terrorise Indian publishing houses into not publishing my book. They will not succeed, is all I can say," he told PTI.

Singhvi, however, has taken a tough line on behalf of Sonia Gandhi against both the author and the book and this certainly looks to be a battle which would be fought across continents between a powerful Congress party and an author who is obviously enjoying all the publicity he is getting – apart from hoping that the current opposition would bolster the book's sales.