New Delhi, November 10, 2026 (Yes Punjab News)
Congress veteran Sonia Gandhi’s memoir, Belonging: A Journey of Love, has drawn attention not only for its personal revelations about the Nehru-Gandhi family and her political career but also for apparent factual errors concerning three significant political and historical events.
Readers have flagged discrepancies in the book’s references to the Anna Hazare-led anti-corruption movement, the founding year of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and the death of senior Congress leader Ahmed Patel.
The first discrepancy appears in Chapter 33, page 461, where Sonia Gandhi places the emergence of Anna Hazare and the India Against Corruption movement in 2012.
The memoir states: “In 2012 a well-known activist from Maharashtra, Baburao ‘Anna’ Hazare … emerged as the figurehead of a movement that titled itself ‘India Against Corruption’.”
However, the movement gained national prominence in 2011, particularly after Hazare began an indefinite hunger strike at Delhi’s Jantar Mantar on April 5, demanding a stronger anti-corruption law through the proposed Jan Lokpal Bill. The campaign brought together several prominent figures, including Arvind Kejriwal, Kiran Bedi and Baba Ramdev.
A second apparent error concerns the RSS. In Chapter 24, page 338, Sonia Gandhi describes the organisation as having been founded in 1921. The RSS was, in fact, established on September 27, 1925, in Nagpur by Keshav Baliram Hedgewar.
The third discrepancy relates to Ahmed Patel, Sonia Gandhi’s longtime political secretary and a key Congress strategist. In Chapter 29, page 401, she writes that Patel died in 2022 after contracting Covid-19.
Patel, however, died on November 25, 2020, following multiple organ failure after Covid-19 complications. He was undergoing treatment at Medanta Hospital, where his condition deteriorated.
The three apparent errors have introduced an unexpected factual controversy surrounding the release of the memoir, which became available in bookstores on Tuesday.
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