In her recently released memoir, Belonging: A Journey of Love, Congress leader Sonia Gandhi describes her assessment of Prime Minister Narendra Modi in a section where she is critical of his ideology but also acknowledges that he came up from an “underprivileged world” and had elements of discomfort with the elite that she also understands.“There were elements of his (Modi’s) discomfort with the ruling elite of our times that I, too, had come to understand well. I often found myself ill at ease in a drawing room in Delhi in the midst of a political discussion – feeling that the opinions expressed were very far removed from the reality of India,” Gandhi says in her book. “The suffering, the struggle to survive, that I had witnessed in my constituency and seen in my travels through the country were to this privileged group unimaginable.”AdvertisementGandhi’s bid to find this one meeting ground with Modi vis-a-vis the ruling elite, which Modi has associated with the Congress party and the Nehru-Gandhi family, is significant as she seems to send a message that her family does not represent the establishment that Modi has attacked over the years. Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Congress President Sonia Gandhi at Parliament House in New Delhi in 2022. (Express Photo by Anil Sharma)During the Congress-led UPA government led by PM Manmohan Singh, Gandhi headed the National Advisory Council (NAC) that gave the government, which had several votaries of a free market, a rights-based welfarist direction.In her memoir, Gandhi appears to partially nuance her party and her son Rahul’s strong criticism of the Modi government’s alleged engagement with “crony capitalism” by acknowledging Modi’s unease with the elites.AdvertisementAlso Read | Pressured by Congress, Sonia Gandhi said ‘yes’ to PM post. How Rahul reactedOn his part, PM Modi has consistently sought to hardsell his government’s welfare efforts, highlighting the supply of free foodgrains to 80 crore people, the provision of LPG gas to poor households, among its various schemes.In her book, Gandhi then suggests that the PM has deployed PR to claim a humbler background than what he might have belonged to. “Mr Modi’s origins may not have been as humble as his PR team has made out in marketing his image, but he had certainly worked his way to power within the RSS from an underprivileged world,” she says. Loksabha Speaker Om Birla, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and others cabinet ministers also Congress president Mallikarjun kharge and Sonia gandhi during Political leaders, including PM Narendra Modi and Sonia Gandhi pay tribute to the martyrs of 2001 Parliament attack at Parliament House in New Delhi. (Express photo by Prem Nath Pandey)Barring this “underprivileged” convergence, Gandhi has been scathing in her critique of the Modi regime and the BJP-RSS for what she alleged damaged the country’s secular ethos and pluralistic social fabric.She underlines that she disagrees fundamentally with Modi’s vision of India, which draws from the RSS’ ideology, although she has not interacted much with him. Apart from “brief exchanges”, she says, “we have never really conversed, though we exchanged formal birthday and New Year greetings over the years”.Comparing their contrasting ideologies, Gandhi writes, “We come from different ideological worlds: his idea of this country is vastly different from mine. All I learnt about India was assimilated from the members of my family, their lives of service, and their faith in a nation that encompassed a host of races and cultures, languages and faiths, based on principles of liberty and equality for all.”you may likeOn the other hand, she states, “Narendra Modi’s idea of India was constructed by the ideologues of the RSS and the experience of his own growing up. It affirmed a fundamentalism in which his faith and culture superseded all others. In that India, hierarchy, order and control are central.” She adds, “He was fighting for his vision of India, and I for mine: an India against hegemony, an India that stands for inclusiveness, secularism, and social justice.”Gandhi also alleges that the PM sometimes used “coarse” language of the rallies even in the House. “When speaking in Parliament, he at times uses the same coarse language he employs in addressing a public rally. Much of the time he derides the opposition in what can only be termed a tirade.”She then refers to the acerbic attacks from the Modi government on Nehru, saying: “Jawaharlal Nehru, our first prime minister, is a particular target of his party’s hostility, for having set our country on a democratic and secular course. The Sangh Parivar internet sites are full of malicious abuse and falsehoods against him. The BJP’s stated aim is what they call a ‘Congress-free India’ – free of the party, its policies, and its ideology.”