Indira Gandhi thought it was a mistake: What Sonia Gandhi had said about the Emergency

In a 2006 interview with former Indian Express editor Shekhar Gupta on NDTV, Sonia Gandhi recounted her memories of the Emergency and how she and Rajiv Gandhi dealt with it.

“The fact that my mother-in-law herself declared the elections in 1977 tells us that she had a rethink on the Emergency. She thought it was a mistake,” says Sonia Gandhi in the interview.

Defending the matriarch of the Gandhi family Sonia says, “Don’t forget the Indira Gandhi I knew was a democrat at heart, to the core.” she adds that “circumstances at the time led her to declare the Emergency but she was never quite at ease with herself.”

When probed some more on whether it ever came up in the discussions at home Sonia says that, “there were instances when she (Indira) through what she said, through her comments your could tell that she was disturbed.”

“At times she was uneasy about it. There was no way that you could say that the Emergency was right. She (Indira) herself said it was not right.”

On the controversial sterilization drive “nasbandi’ that was allegedly masterminded by her brother-in-law Sanjay Gandhi, Sonia believes that there was deliberate propaganda against it created by the Opposition.

“Yes, there were things that shouldn’t have been done but not to the scale which the Opposition built up.”

She abruptly ended the interview when probed to speak about the conversation that took place between Sanjay, Rajiv and Indira Gandhi saying, “Maybe 25 years from now I’ll write a tell-all book.”