The Night Fidel Castro Talked to Rajiv Gandhi for Six Hours, Recalled in Sonia Gandhi’s Belonging (Picture Credit – Photo Division, Government of India)
\n\nSome debts of gratitude outlive the people who earn them. In 1960, Jawaharlal Nehru called on a young revolutionary in a Harlem hotel, at a time when the authorities in New York had chosen to sideline him. Years later, that revolutionary, Fidel Castro, embraced Nehru’s grandson in Cuba and told him what the gesture had meant. In 'Belonging: A Journey of Love', Sonia Gandhi recalls being in the room.
\n\nSonia first met Castro in 1973, when he made a one-night stopover in India on his way to Vietnam. Indira Gandhi hosted a dinner in his honour at the Ashok Hotel, and Rajiv and Sonia were invited. There, her mother-in-law told her the Harlem story. Castro had been shunned and humiliated at the UN, the owner of the Hotel Theresa had offered him hospitality, and Nehru had called on him there.
\n\nThe evening left a lasting mark on Sonia. She remembers a commanding, proud man who was also warm and funny, and she found his words in Cuban Spanish far more powerful than the interpreter’s English.
\n\nThey…
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