‘My thought was always: he will be killed next’: Sonia Gandhi on marrying into an Indian political dynasty and her husband’s assassination

Sonia Gandhi has said she always feared her husband Rajiv would be killed, a fear that was realised when he was assassinated in 1991.

The Congress party president, who has led the party for decades, has described her life as having been far from remarkable, despite witnessing some of modern India’s most significant political moments.

Born to a working-class family in northern Italy, she met Rajiv Gandhi while studying in Cambridge in the 1960s and fell in love with him at a Greek restaurant.

From Cambridge to Delhi

Gandhi did not know that Rajiv was the heir to India’s most consequential political dynasty when they married in 1968. His grandfather was Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first prime minister, and his mother was Indira Gandhi, the country’s first female prime minister.

She held Indira Gandhi’s bloodied body after the then-prime minister was gunned down at their home in Delhi in 1984.

A life of tragedy

Gandhi’s home in Delhi, a relic of British colonial rule, became the centre of Congress party operations after her husband’s assassination by Sri Lankan Tamil separatist terrorists in 1991.

She stepped up to lead the fragmenting party after Rajiv’s death, famously turning down the prime minister post in 2004 after Congress won the elections.

Gandhi stepped down as Congress president in 2017, when her son Rahul was appointed her successor.

The weight of history

Gandhi’s study in her Delhi bungalow is filled with portraits of her husband, mother-in-law, and grandfather-in-law, as well as a painting of Mahatma Gandhi.

She has said she no longer recognises herself as the innocent Italian girl who was swept off her feet and transplanted to an alien land and culture.

‘Too much has happened, too much has changed,’ she said.