Spanish author Javier Moro’s controversial book, an unauthorized “dramatized biography” on Congress President Sonia Gandhi, “The Red Sari”, is finally released in India by Roli Books. The book which has been censored during UPA era, has finally got the permission to hit the Indian bookstores.
The controversial The Red Sari, which has been sold over half a million copies in Spain and Italy, has reportedly portrays Sonia Gandhi as a snob who wanted to leave India after Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination.
In the book, Moro writes: “Sonia did not understand why she had to learn a language only spoken by the servants.”
Javier Moro written the book in 2008 and it was first released in Spain but the English version was unofficially banned in India due to Congress threat. Former union minister Abhishek Manu Singhvi had threatened a lawsuit against the author in 2010.
The Congress party and Sonia Gandhi’s lawyers describe the book as “full of untruths, half-truths, falsehoods, defamatory statements, completely imaginary and invented conversations” and warned she would “take all steps to protect and defend herself and her family.”
However, as Congress is losing popularity in the country after terrible loss in the Lok Sabha polls, the Roli Books has decided to go ahead and launch the English version in India.
“In 2010, there was no official ban, but the circumstances created were such that we could not go ahead. The Spanish publishers of the book, Planeta, wrote to us saying that this is not the right time, and we don’t want the book to be published in India. After the change of government in May 2014, we wrote to them (Gandhi’s lawyers), asking them if they wanted to publish it now, and they gave us their consent,” said Pramod Kapoor, Head, Roli Books.
In the book Moro has written how Sonia reacted when Rajiv Gandhi announced that he would be next prime minister.
“Rajiv took her hands in his as he continued whispering the reasons that were forcing him to accept the post. ‘Oh no! Oh my God, no!’ Sonia sobbed in a flood of tears…Her whole body contracted as if she had received an electric shock, and from the depths of her soul, a harsh, guttural cry arose,” 
Moro writes in the book.
“Seven years after the conversation she had had with Rajiv in the hospital where Indira lay dying, in which she begged him not to accept the post that his mother had left vacant, her grim fear was finally realized,” the author writes.
After Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination in 1991, the book reads: “Priyanka ran to her mother’s room and searched feverishly for her inhaler and antihistamines. When she came back into the living room, she saw Sonia sitting on an armchair with her eyes almost turned up, her mouth open and her head thrown back, trying to get air. She thought she was dying.”
The book claims Sonia’s prominent role during emergency imposed by her mother-in-law Indira Gandhi in 1975 and her feud with Maneka Gandhi.
The book is now available in all major online and offline bookstores across India.
Book Details:
| Author: | Javier Moro | ||
| Publisher: | Roli Books | Year of Publication: | 2008 |
| ISBN-13: | 9789351941033 | ISBN-10: | 9351941035 |
| Cover: | Paperback | No. Of Pages: | 429 |
| MRP: | Rs. 395 | Buy From: | Flipkart.com Amazon.in  |
Tags: india Javier Moro Roli Books Sonia Gandhi The Red Saree
