I am pained, I have not attacked Sonia Gandhi in my book: Alva

New Delhi: Veteran Congress leader Margaret Alva today said she was “pained” to see attempts to create “controversies” over her book ‘Courage and Commitment’, asserting she has not attacked party chief Sonia Gandhi in it.

“The book is simply the story of my life – from 1942 to 2014 detailing its trials and triumphs. It was meant to show how a woman, a minority, from a small town middle class family grew up and survived in the turbulent politics of her times, without the backing of money power or business lobbies,” Alva said in a statement.

She further said, “I am pained to see the controversies sought to be created over excerpts from my book ‘Courage and Commitment’ attributing motives to what I have said.”

Alva said she has not “attacked” the Congress president in the book “for whom I have the greatest respect and affection, or the Congress Party for which I have worked for over 45 years.

“The book has material which has been in the public domain and in Parliamentary records. To interpret them as a deliberate attempt to ‘get even’ with anyone is wrong.”

Alva said she met Gandhi and presented her the first copy of the book, before it went public.

In the book, she threw light on a range of interesting issues, incidents and topics including Gandhi’s uneasy relationship with P V Narasimha Rao.

The decision by then Narasimha Rao government to appeal against a Delhi High court order quashing the Bofors case linking Rajiv Gandhi had deepened Sonia Gandhi’s suspicion over Rao, escalating friction between the two, Alva said in her book.

In her book, which is an account of her chequered political life, she said following the decision, she was asked by a furious Sonia whether Rao wanted to send her to jail.

Meanwhile Congress today dubbed the revelations coming out in veteran Congress leader Margaret Alva’s book as ‘tools’ used to market her book, wondering why enlightenment dawned on her after decades-long political career.

“We live in the new age of marketing. To sell a book, many things are needed to be said and many things are actually said or made to be said, which compromise with history and economical with truth, or a new found definition of facts.

“The important issue that surprises all of us is why does this enlightenment come after 30 years of continuation in office and a long political career,” Congress chief spokesperson Randeep Surjewala said.

He, however, said he leaves it to the “inner wisdom and call of conscience of the person stating the facts as also to the innate wisdom of the friends in media” who have seen such instances in the past.

“We do not believe that there is any more need to comment on the Book more than this,” the Congress leader said.

PTI