New Delhi: A frantic Sonia Gandhi started calling everyone she could when her son Rahul Gandhi's security "disappeared" for reasons "best known to themselves" during the Bharat Jodo Yatra as a "massive crowd" closed around him during the sensitive Kashmir leg of the movement, the former Congress president recounts in her memoir.
Gandhi writes about moments of "panic" when her son Rahul Gandhi's security mysteriously disappeared amidst a surging crowd during the Kashmir leg of the Bharat Jodo Yatra in January 2023, forcing a day's halt to the foot march.
In her memoir, 'Belonging: A Journey of Love', she spoke about her "nagging worry" that turned into sheer panic as massive crowds swarmed around Rahul without any visible security presence.
"My nagging worry turned into panic seeing that in the massive crowd closing in around Rahul there was no sign of his security; for reasons best known to themselves, they had just disappeared," she writes in the book.
Recalling her desperate attempt to intervene, Gandhi writes, "Frantic, I rang up everyone I could. The Kashmir Yatra was held up for a day till security arrangements were restored."
The march resumed after security was re-established, culminating in Srinagar under severe weather conditions.
"Rahul, along with Kashmiri leaders Omar Abdullah and Mehbooba Mufti and Priyanka by his side, walked into swirling snowfall for the finale of the Bharat Jodo Yatra," she notes.
Expressing her emotional state upon Rahul's safe return, she writes, "I find it difficult to express what I felt when he finally came back home; relief at having him return safely, amazement at the way he had held on to his resolve. I was proud of him."
She observed that while Rahul appeared physically exhausted following the cross-country foot march, "there was a light in his face I hadn't seen for a long time".
Highlighting the political significance of the nationwide foot march, Gandhi terms it a stepping stone for opposition unity against the ruling BJP.
She describes the yatra as the "first important step towards stitching together the alliance that would confront the BJP's National Democratic Alliance".
According to Gandhi, the yatra served primarily as a vehicle for public harmony, centred on a tagline that opposed the political rhetoric of the ruling party.
"Most important of all, from the people's point of view, he was the carrier of a message of unity and concord summed up in a slogan that came to be on everyone's lips, the antithesis of what the BJP represented — 'Nafrat ke bazaar mein mohabbat ki dukan kholo' (In the marketplace of hatred, open the store of love)," she writes.
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