‘Modifications’? Penguin Random House India Drops Sonia Gandhi’s Memoir in a Dispute That Echoes India’s Shrinking Publishing Freedom

The announcement of Sonia Gandhi’s memoir “Belonging: A Journey of Love” had barely had a week to register in the Indian public consciousness when, on Friday, August 28, 2026, a second and far more troubling development overtook it.

Penguin Random House India — the Indian arm of the world’s largest publishing group, and the imprint that had been expected to handle the memoir’s Indian distribution — will not publish the book in India.

Penguin Random House India will not publish Congress leader Sonia Gandhi’s much-awaited memoir “Belonging: A Journey of Love” in India after the publisher sought changes and deletions in parts of the manuscript that were not accepted by the author, according to a report by The Indian Express.

The disagreement reportedly arose over changes and deletions that Penguin Random House India wanted to make to “a part of the manuscript.” Gandhi rejected the proposed changes, leading to PRHI’s decision not to publish the memoir in India. 

The nature of the proposed changes — what Penguin India wanted removed or altered, and why — has not been publicly disclosed by either party. Neither Alfred A. Knopf, the U.S.-based publisher of the global edition, nor Gandhi’s literary agent David Godwin, nor Penguin Random House India CEO Gaurav Shrinagesh responded to questions from The Indian Express.

The global publication schedule — a November 10 release date, a first print run of 100,000 copies from Knopf, and simultaneous availability in the United Kingdom through William Collins — remains unchanged. It is only the Indian publication that has been disrupted.

What Happens Next: HarperCollins Circles

The exit of Penguin India from the project has immediately opened a competition for what is, commercially and politically, one of the most significant publishing rights available in the Indian market this year.

With PRHI no longer publishing the book, several Indian publishers are reportedly competing for the rights. HarperCollins is reportedly close to finalizing an agreement to publish and distribute the memoir in India.

HarperCollins India — the Indian arm of News Corp’s publishing division and one of Penguin India’s primary competitors in the country’s trade publishing market — has, according to Outlook India, emerged as the frontrunner in what has become an unexpectedly competitive bidding process. The irony is not entirely lost on observers: HarperCollins is also the American publisher of the global edition through its parent company structure, which includes a separate arrangement from Knopf within the Penguin Random House group.

No announcement from HarperCollins India had been made as of the time of writing. The November 10 global publication date creates a compressed timeline for any Indian publisher to step in, complete contract negotiations, arrange printing and distribution, and have the book available in Indian bookshops on or near the global release date.

A Second Penguin India Controversy in the Same Year

The Sonia Gandhi dispute did not emerge in isolation. It landed on top of a separate and already significant publishing controversy involving Penguin Random House India that had been simmering through much of 2026.

Penguin Random House India has faced another dispute involving a political memoir this year. Earlier in 2026, the publisher said it had “not printed” former Army chief General M.M. Naravane’s memoir “Four Stars of Destiny.” The issue came into focus after Rahul Gandhi displayed a copy of the book in Parliament. Excerpts from the manuscript had earlier appeared in media reports. They included sections dealing with the Galwan clashes and the Agnipath military recruitment scheme.

The Penguin India withdrawal lands in a specific and well-documented context: Indian publishing under the BJP has become an increasingly complicated business for books that touch on politically sensitive subjects.

The Naravane memoir — written by the former Chief of Army Staff who served during the 2020 Galwan Valley clashes with China, one of the most sensitive military confrontations in India’s recent history — raised questions about whether a publisher with significant commercial interests in India had declined to print a book whose contents might be politically inconvenient for the current government. Penguin India said it had “not printed” the book without elaborating on the reasons.

The latest development involving “Belonging” could therefore add another closely watched publishing dispute to Penguin India’s recent history.

Together, the two controversies — one involving a book by the country’s most senior military officer about its most sensitive border conflict, the other involving a memoir by the former president of the main opposition party — have placed Penguin Random House India under a spotlight that it has, conspicuously, declined to step into. The company’s refusal to comment on either the Naravane or the Gandhi situation has fueled speculation that commercial considerations, political sensitivities, or pressure from outside the company have shaped decisions that the publisher characterizes, when it characterizes them at all, as editorial.

What Did Penguin India Want Changed?

The central mystery of the story — and the one that is driving the most significant commentary and speculation in Indian literary and political circles — is the question that Penguin India has not answered: what, specifically, did it ask Gandhi to remove or alter?

The Indian Express, which broke the story, reported only that the requested changes concerned “a part of the manuscript” and that they were described as “editorial changes and deletions.” The vagueness of the description has left the field open for speculation that ranges across multiple possibilities: passages dealing with internal Congress party history; characterizations of specific political figures, including those still active in Indian public life; accounts of the BJP or RSS; descriptions of specific historical events including the Emergency, the 1984 anti-Sikh riots, or the Bofors scandal; or reflections on the judiciary, the media, or other institutions whose independence has been questioned during the current political dispensation.

Gandhi’s refusal to accept the changes — documented by The Indian Express and confirmed across multiple subsequent reports — is itself significant. For a woman who has spent six decades deploying tactical silence as a political instrument, who resisted for twenty years the pressure to write her memoirs at all, and who ultimately decided to break that silence in a 544-page account at the age of 79, the decision to stand firm against an Indian publisher’s editorial demands rather than accommodate them carries a weight that neither she nor her publishers are currently explaining.

The Indian Express’s report that Gandhi rejected the proposed alterations without compromise suggests a principal who understood precisely what she had written and was not willing to allow an Indian publishing gatekeeping apparatus to decide what version of it the Indian public should see.

The Political Context: Publishing in BJP-Era India

The Penguin India withdrawal lands in a specific and well-documented context: Indian publishing under the BJP has become an increasingly complicated business for books that touch on politically sensitive subjects.

Academic presses, trade publishers, and literary journals have all navigated, with varying degrees of success and with varying degrees of public acknowledgment, the commercial and sometimes legal pressures that accompany the publication of material that challenges the current government’s preferred narratives about Indian history, religion, politics, or national security. The withdrawal of books already in print, the delayed publication of university press volumes on sensitive topics, and the self-censorship of publishers who never announce what they have chosen not to publish are all documented features of the current Indian publishing environment.

What makes the Gandhi memoir case distinctive is its visibility. The author is the former president of India’s main opposition party, the memoir is being published by Alfred A. Knopf — one of the most prestigious literary imprints in the world — and the details of the Indian publisher’s withdrawal have been reported by The Indian Express, one of the country’s most credible newspapers. This is not a case that can be quietly managed. The question of what Penguin India wanted removed from Sonia Gandhi’s account of her six decades in Indian public life is now itself a political story — one that the November 10 publication of the book in its unaltered international edition will, at least partially, answer.

When the book appears — in English, from Knopf, in its author-approved form — Indian readers who want to know what a publisher tried to make disappear from their country’s edition will be able to find out. In the age of international e-books and online retail, the distinction between an Indian edition and a global edition is, in practice, significantly less absolute than a traditional publisher’s territorial rights arrangement might suggest.

Sonia Gandhi, who spent half a lifetime saying nothing in public about the most intimate experiences of her life, has now chosen to say everything — and has declined to let anyone decide which parts of that everything her country’s readers should be permitted to see.