A hardbound copy of "Four Stars of Destiny", the memoir of former Army Chief General MM Naravane (Retd) which has sparked a controversy in Parliament, had quietly hit the bookstores even though it was yet to be cleared by the defence ministry.
According to a report in India Today, physical copies of the book were found in bookstores in Delhi before being recalled, raising fresh questions about how the manuscript, still under review by the Ministry of Defence (MoD), was printed and bound at all.
The mystery deepened last week when Congress leader and Leader of the Opposition Rahul Gandhi was seen holding a hardcover copy of the book inside Parliament complex.
What he waved was not a manuscript or a draft, but a printed hardback. Defence Minister Rajnath Singh had said in Lok Sabha that the book “does not exist”.
The memoir, chronicling four decades of Gen Naravane’s service from Second Lieutenant to Army Chief during the India-China standoff at the Line of Actual Control, was slated for release in April 2024.
Penguin Random House India (PRHI), the publisher, had opened pre-orders on platforms such as Amazon and Flipkart, which were later cancelled after the release was stalled.
A staffer at a legacy New Delhi bookstore told India Today: “We took hundreds of pre-orders for the book… But a controversy happened, and we had to return the books to the publisher".
This indicates that the book had been printed well ahead of its planned launch.
However, Penguin issued a statement on Tuesday saying that the book had not gone into publication.
It added said that no copies of the book, "in print or digital form, have been "published, distributed, sold, or otherwise made available to the public" by the publisher.
This has deepened the mystery over how the hardbound copies that made their way into the bookstores despite the publisher denying that it distributed any copy of the book.
Meanwhile, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Tuesday cited a December 2023 social media post by Naravane informing people that that his book is "available now" to rebut publisher Penguin Random House India's statement that the "memoir" has not yet been published.
"Penguin is saying the book is not published. The book is available on Amazon. Gen Naravane has tweeted, as I just read to you, that please buy my book. He tweeted this in 2023. Do you believe Penguin over Mr Naravane? I believe Mr Naravane," Gandhi said.
Chaos in Parliament
The controversy over the book erupted during the Budget session of Parliament when Rahul Gandhi cited excerpts from a magazine article based on the unpublished memoir.
BJP leaders, including Union home minister Amit Shah and defence minister Rajnath Singh, objected strongly to Rahul's act.
Singh asked whether the book has even been published and challenged Rahul Gandhi to quote from the officially published version, if it exists.
Later, Rahul appeared in Parliament brandishing a copy of the book, saying he wanted to “gift it to the Prime Minister”. The public display of a hardbound copy intensified questions about how the book was printed while the manuscript was still awaiting clearance.
According to India Today, the defence ministry has reportedly cleared 35 books by military officers between 2020 and 2024, with Four Stars of Destiny remaining the only manuscript still pending approval. Gen Naravane himself had said last year that the book was “still under review for more than a year now”.
A “pre-print” PDF copy of the memoir, marked “not for publication”, has also been circulating widely on emails and WhatsApp.
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