Congress parliamentary party chairperson Sonia Gandhi has described the decision by her mother-in-law and then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi to impose the Emergency as a mistake and said she cried while witnessing the demolition of Babri Masjid in Ayodhya in 1992.In an interview with British daily The Guardian ahead of the launch of her memoir, Sonia said she believed her mother-in-law had eventually come to share her views on the Emergency. “I always feel she was a democrat at heart. I know many would laugh at this, but I believe she was never comfortable in the course of the Emergency. I think it was sitting heavy on her,” she said.The Guardian quoted Sonia as saying that her husband Rajiv Gandhi opposed the Emergency and urged his mother to wait until the next election. In contrast, she said, “his younger brother Sanjay Gandhi pushed for its imposition, arguing during a family dinner that the Opposition would destroy their mother and insisting that they must be stopped”.BJP spokesperson Sudhanshu Trivedi criticised Sonia Gandhi over her remarks that she had cried while witnessing the demolition of the Babri Masjid. “This shows that Babar was in the heart of the Congress back then, and he remains in its heart even today. The Congress has now narrowed its scope to Babar Raj, moving away from Mahatma Gandhi’s ‘Ram Rajya’,” Trivedi said. The BJP also attacked Sonia and the Congress over the Emergency, describing it as a “murder of democracy”.Sonia also claimed that the country’s democratic fabric and institutions had suffered a “great damage” over the past 12 years (since the BJP-led NDA government came to power in 2014). In an interview with an India-based English daily, she said restoring institutions to health would take time and require “great effort from political parties”.“People are now beginning to be restless and recognising the damage. But I am optimistic and I know that the people of India will welcome a return to proper governance,” she said ahead of the launch of her memoir, “Belonging: A Journey of Love”, scheduled to be released on November 10.Reacting to her remarks, BJP Rajya Sabha MP Tarun Chugh said Sonia “needed to get rid of her Italian lenses to view India clearly”.Accusing her of being unable to accept “a new tide of faith and development sweeping the country”, Chugh said, “Write the book by all means, but also take into account the Congress’ record. You should write who from your family was involved in the Bofors gun kickbacks. You should write about why the culprits of the Bhopal gas tragedy were allowed to flee and at whose behest.”In her interview with The Guardian, Sonia also recalled the assassination of her mother-in-law. She said she was at home on October 31, 1984, when she heard what sounded like fireworks. Rushing to Indira Gandhi’s office nearby, she found her lying on the ground, riddled with bullets and covered in blood. Sonia said Indira Gandhi had been shot by her Sikh bodyguards in retaliation for Operation Blue Star, the Army operation at the Golden Temple earlier that year.After Indira was placed in a car, Sonia held her bleeding mother-in-law and tried to revive her as they sped to hospital. “I remember the drive from the house to the hospital was excruciating. There wasn’t much traffic, but it felt so slow. I also knew that because she wasn’t speaking, it must be over,” she said.