Penguin India says it is not the publisher of Sonia Gandhi's memoir

Penguin Random House India said on Friday it is not the publisher of Sonia Gandhi's memoir Belonging: A Journey of Love in India. It also rejected a narrower claim: that it dropped the book because the author refused editorial changes. "Any suggestion that Penguin Random House India decided not to publish 'Belonging' because the author declined editorial changes does not accurately reflect the circumstances," the company said.

The same statement defended a publisher's right to fact-check. "As a publisher, it is both our prerogative and responsibility to fact-check and provide authors with recommendations that are in the best interests of their books. This is a normal part of the publishing process." Penguin added that it remained "willing and keen to publish the book." Those two sentences sit together uneasily. One says PRHI is not the publisher. The other says it still wants to be.

The Indian Express first reported that Penguin India had pulled back after Gandhi refused cuts. Hindustan Times later named the contested ground: references to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, and Chinese intrusions. A person familiar with the manuscript told HT that Gandhi treated the text as her own account and would not accept "distortions." One passage recalled a 2004 Gujarat rally in which Modi called her a "Jersey cow."

Congress calls it pressure. BJP calls it fiction.

Ashok Gehlot, the former Rajasthan chief minister, called the episode "the murder of democracy." He said Penguin's global parent was ready to issue the book in its original form, while the India office wanted changes. "What is the reason or what pressure is there that what is being published across the world cannot be published in India?" he asked. He said the discomfort likely sat in the China, Modi and RSS sections.

BJP leaders flipped the charge. Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi said a publisher is entitled to test whether a book labelled as memoir is memoir. Amit Malviya asked what in the text required a fact-check. Neither side produced the manuscript. The public argument is about a book most readers have not seen.

The global edition is scheduled for 10 November from Alfred A. Knopf in the United States. Knopf is itself a Penguin Random House imprint. That corporate fact is the sharpest detail in the row. The same group can print the book in New York and still leave the India rights unsigned. Reports on Saturday said HarperCollins was close to a deal for the India edition. No contract was published.

A second recent withdrawal

Earlier this year PRHI stopped distributing Joe Sacco's The Once and Future Riot, on the Muzaffarnagar riots. Congress speakers used that precedent as evidence of a pattern. Penguin did not address Sacco in Friday's statement.

Gandhi is 79. The book has been sold as a personal history rather than a campaign document. Once a publisher asks for deletions around a sitting prime minister, a ruling organisation and a live border dispute, the personal history becomes a political object. The next hard fact is the November date in New York. The India edition still has no named publisher on the record.