LAST year a supporter of Sonia Gandhi threatened legal action and succeeded in preventing the publication in English of “The Red Sari”, a fictionalised life which had already had a successful run in Spanish and Italian. Although a couple of biographies have been published in India, Rani Singh’s “Sonia Gandhi: An Extraordinary Life, An Indian Destiny” is the first for an international market.

《红色纱丽》一书歪曲地描述了索尼娅·甘地的生活，此书的西班牙语和意大利语版本都广受欢迎。而英文版《红色纱丽》一书的出版却受到了索尼娅·甘地的一名支持者的阻挠，他扬言要采取法律手段，最终他成功了，英文版并没有出版。在印度国内，尽管有一些关于索尼娅·甘地的传记已经出版，但拉丽辛格的《索尼娅·甘地：卓越的一生，一个印度人的宿命》却是第一本面向全球读者的传记。

When Sonia married Rajiv, son of the prime minister, Indira Gandhi, in Delhi in 1968, nobody predicted great things for her. She was pretty, personable and very shy. Like her husband, she had few academic qualifications. Her father was a builder from a town on the outskirts of Turin. Although the Nehru-Gandhi family was not, as Ms Singh states several times, aristocratic, they and their circle could certainly be snooty. It was not unusual in the 1990s to hear Sonia Gandhi referred to in Delhi social circles as “the Italian au pair”.

1968年，索尼娅·甘地在新德里和当时的印度总理英迪拉·甘地（甘地夫人）的儿子拉杰夫·甘地结婚。人们对她并无多大的期待。索尼娅·甘地面容姣好，姿态优雅，害羞内敛。同她丈夫一样，她在学术上建树甚少。她的父亲是一个建筑工人，来自都灵市郊一个小镇。辛格不止一次将尼赫鲁-甘地家族描述为是有着贵族习气，尽管事实情况并非完全如此，但他们的小圈子的确是高傲势利。（尼赫鲁-甘地家族本可以待人傲慢，但事实上，他们这个小圈子并不像辛格在书中不止一次的描写的那样喜欢摆贵族的架子）在20世纪90年代，新德里的社交圈将索尼娅·甘地称为“意大利帮工”的情况已经很少再出现了。

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