Reading a book about India in French which has been translated from the Spanish original seems a bit crazy. However, when I picked this book up from the shelf in our local pensioners’ club I hadn’t realized what a long journey it had taken to get there. Neither was I aware of the extensive journey on which it would take me. As I read on in this700-page tome I gained insights into the complex history and politics of contemporary India. I am not sorry that I made the effort, and have come away enriched in knowledge and understanding of the enormous effort involved in governing India, the largest democracy in the world. But it is as much a family saga as an account of political developments, and the pink sari of the title has both historical and personal significance in it.

The book begins at the moment Sonia Ghandi is informed of the assassination of her husband, Rajiv, prominent Indian politician and scion of the celebrated Ghandi family which has been inextricably bound up in the history of contemporary India. His grandfather, Jahawarlal Nehru, was a key figure in India’s........

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