NEW DELHI: As Sonia Gandhi went about building an inclusive alliance in the run-up to the 2004 Lok Sabha polls, the biggest hurdle she faced was the internal turmoil she endured while tying up with the DMK, whose cadre in 1991 had been vocal supporters of the LTTE, the terrorist group that had killed her husband, Rajiv Gandhi.

The story of how the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) came into being is documented in Sonia’s just-released memoir ‘Belonging: A Journey of Love’.

“For me the most challenging personal assignment was to bring into the alliance the DMK, whose leader M Karunanidhi was said to be unhappy with the Vajpayee government. It was the right moment to make contact, since of all the forces needed to come together to challenge the BJP, the DMK was the most important party in the South,” she says.

The DMK cadre had been, at the time of the 1991 elections, vocal supporters of the LTTE, the terrorist group that had killed

Raiiv; some in the party had openly threatened Rajiv, she recalls.

“In 1997, the Congress had even withdrawn support to the government of Prime Minister IK Gujral when the Jain Commission, set up to inquire into Rajiv’s assassination, released its report holding the DMK leader responsible for tacitly supporting the Tamil assassins,” she says.

“With those painful memories returning to torment me, I’d ask myself, ‘What should I do? If I join hands with them, won’t it amount to a betrayal of Rajiv?’ Then again, ‘Perhaps Rajiy himself would have gone ahead with this alliance, if he knew it was necessary to strengthen our front against the BJP’,” she says in the book released on Tuesday. A decision had to be made urgently, for a larger cause, she narrates.

“My heart was in my mouth, and I was trembling when I made that first telephone call to M Karunanidhi to initiate a conversation with the DMK. Though I spoke no Tamil and he no English, his response was cordial. We went on to meet and go through all the steps of joining forces,” Sonia Gandhi says.

In time, she says she came to respect Karunanidhi and found that they had interests in common, in the arts.

He had been a poet and scriptwriter, proud of his heritage, the ancient Tamil language and its literature, and “we got on well”, Sonia Gandhi says.