Sonia Gandhi has largely withdrawn from active politics. She no longer runs the Congress party, does not lead its election campaigns, and has ceded the public stage to a younger generation. Yet the Hindutva ecosystem remains unable to leave her alone. A Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh-linked (RSS-linked) weekly, Organiser recently described the National Advisory Council (NAC) she once headed as a “Dimagi [intellectual] Naxal takeover.” The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) social-media units circulated sexually suggestive AI-generated images intended to evoke her deceitfully postulated past in an Italian bar. Meanwhile, controversy erupted over proposed changes to the Indian edition of her memoir, particularly passages reportedly dealing with Narendra Modi, the RSS and communal politics.Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty.Why does a semi-retired politician still provoke such fury? Sonia Gandhi unsettles Hindutva because her life contradicts its narrow definition of who may belong to India, while her record recalls when that ideology appeared electorally beatable. The hatred combines ideological hostility, historical resentment, xenophobia and misogyny.There are legitimate reasons to criticise Sonia Gandhi. But criticism must evaluate public conduct of a political leader. She has instead faced attacks on her birthplace, accent, religion, marriage, and body.For Hindutva, Sonia Gandhi’s first offence is that she chose India and was accepted by millions of Indians. Born in Italy and raised as a Catholic, she married Rajiv Gandhi in 1968, made India her home, raised her children there and became an Indian citizen in 1983. Her belonging rests on citizenship, family, experience and democratic consent, not blood, birthplace or the religious identity assigned by majoritarian nationalism.That makes her symbolically threatening. Hindutva treats India primarily as a Hindu civilisation and minorities as people whose loyalty may repeatedly be tested. Sonia embodies another India: one in which national identity can be acquired, plural and civic. Voters, not self-proclaimed cultural gatekeepers, permitted her to lead India’s oldest political party. Her success exposed the difference between constitutional citizenship and ethnic nationalism.Former President A.P.J Abdul Kalam authorising the then Prime Minister designate Manmohan Singh to form the next government in New Delhi on May 19, 2004. The chairperson of the Congress Parliamentary Party Sonia Gandhi is also seen in the picture. Photo: PIB.Her second offence was 2004. The BJP’s “India Shining” campaign projected confidence, while its leaders repeatedly made Sonia’s foreign origin a political issue. Yet the Congress-led alliance won. She then declined the post of prime minister and nominated Manmohan Singh. That decision deprived her opponents of the confrontation they wanted.Also read: How Feelings and Culture Fuel Hindutva’s Dominance in Today’s IndiaThe allegedly power-hungry foreign woman refused India’s highest political office, while retaining enormous influence as Congress president. Hindutva has never fully recovered from the symbolism: she defeated it electorally and then denied it the opportunity to claim that a foreign-born woman had captured the Indian state.The NAC deepened that resentment. Its accountability and Sonia Gandhi’s influence can be debated. But its recommendations helped shape the Right to Information Act, rural employment guarantee, National Rural Health Mission, school meals and rehabilitation policy. The RSS-linked Organiser now call this a “Dimagi Naxal takeover” and groups missionaries, activists, intellectuals, journalists and NGOs into a conspiratorial anti-Hindutva network. It converts welfare rights, expertise and civil society participation into evidence of subversion.Sonia Gandhi’s third offence is gender. A foreign-born man exercising political influence might be denounced as an outsider. A powerful woman is subjected to another arsenal: rumours about her past, slurs about her character and attacks on her appearance. Over the years, BJP leader have compared her with a “Jersey cow,” questioned whether Congress would have accepted her had she been a Black Nigerian, cast doubt on her family and repeatedly called her a “bar dancer.” Subramanian Swamy has used demonising names and made grave personal allegations without substantiating them.The new AI images are the technological continuation of this old misogyny. During a viral retro-image trend, official BJP accounts posted fabricated bar scenes referring to Sonia Gandhi’s Italian birthplace; some suggestive posts were later deleted. One image carried the caption “Lusiana, Italy. Circa-1970s.” Another real photograph falsely circulated as Sonia Gandhi was traced to go-go dancers in Sydney in 1967. The purpose was not satire about policy. It was sexual humiliation through diabolic invention.The insinuation is especially dishonest. Sonia Gandhi married Rajiv Gandhi in 1968 and was living in India as a wife and, soon afterward, a mother. But even that defense should not be necessary. A woman’s dignity cannot depend on whether she was married, a mother or employed in a socially approved occupation. The lie matters; so does the prejudice that makes the lie politically useful. It assumes that sexualising a woman can erase her citizenship, authority and voice.AI has made this politics more dangerous. Earlier propagandists had to mislabel an existing photograph. Now they can manufacture the desired “evidence” in seconds. The image travels faster than its correction and remains lodged in public memory after being disproved. When official party accounts participate, fabrication is no longer merely the work of anonymous trolls. It acquires organisational approval and teaches supporters that a woman opponent may be defeated by digitally inventing her past.Congress Parliamentary Party Chairperson and MP Sonia Gandhi pays floral tributes to former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi on his 82nd birth anniversary, also known as Sadbhavana Diwas (Harmony Day), at Vir Bhumi in New Delhi on August 20, 2026. LoP in the Lok Sabha and party MP Rahul Gandhi, behind right, and party MP Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, behind left, are also present. Photo: PTI/Kamal Kishore.The dispute over Sonia Gandhi’s memoir, Belonging: A Journey of Love, belongs to the same struggle over who controls her story. Penguin, India said negotiations ended over an editorial impasse and denied external pressure. Reports said Sonia rejected proposed changes concerning Modi-era politics; Harper Collins India has since agreed to publish the Indian edition. Yet the episode still illustrates the chilling atmosphere surrounding political publishing. When publishers anticipate legal or political danger around criticism of those in power, pressure need not arrive as a written government order. Caution can become pre-emptive compliance.Her memoir is threatening because Sonia Gandhi has usually absorbed abuse in silence. Hindutva has spent decades narrating her life for her: foreigner, Christian conspirator, secret ruler, corrupt matriarch, immoral woman. A memoir allows the object of this propaganda to become its author. It may offer her account of bereavement, belonging, the United Progressive Alliance years, Modi’s ascent and India’s transformation. Those who monopolise national memory naturally fear an alternative witness.The obsession serves a present political function. Attacking Sonia Gandhi keeps the Gandhi family available as a permanent enemy and distracts from failures of governance. It binds supporters through Gandhi-Nehru hate, suspicion of minorities, hostility to cosmopolitanism and patriarchal contempt.Ultimately, the hatred says less about Sonia Gandhi than about Hindutva’s insecurity. A confident movement would criticize her record and move on. An insecure one must endlessly question whether she is Indian, invent sexual images of her youth, criminalise the welfare architecture associated with her, and become anxious when she writes about her own life.If citizenship can be invalidated by foreign birth, women can be silenced through synthetic sexual imagery, civil society can be branded subversive, and memoirs must be softened to accommodate political power, the target is larger than one politician. The real target is India’s plural, constitutional idea of belonging, the very idea Sonia Gandhi’s life, with all its contradictions, stubbornly represents.Ashok Swain is a professor of peace and conflict research at Uppsala University, Sweden.This piece was first published on The India Cable – a premium newsletter from The Wire – and has been updated and republished here. To subscribe to The India Cable, click here.