Sagarika Ghose’s bare-knuckle biography of Indira Gandhi brought to the fore memories from over a half century back of my fleeting encounters with a person of grace, and deeply penetrating, all observant eyes.
I had twice run into Indira Gandhi in her bungalow. She looked so slight and, to my teenager’s eyes, very self-assured. Later, I ‘encountered’ her in her confidently-handwritten noting in a file my father ever so surreptitiously showed me in his office. Along with him, I marvelled at the lucidity and logic of her observations and the clarity of her orders—not a single word scored out, not a punctuation out of place.
To most of us in our sixties who have lived through Indira Gandhi’s era, much of what Ghose brings out so very well in her tell-almost-everything biography is old hat.
We knew enough of Indira Gandhi’s upbringing and her father’s efforts to make her a well-rounded, highly accomplished individual.
We were also aware, without being critical, that, like her father, her best friends and confidantes were western.
Indira—India’s Most Powerful Prime MinisterSagarika GhoseJuggernaut₹699
Triumph and despair
We applauded her triumph over Pakistan in the 1971 war and despaired as she gave away our decisive gains on our Western front to Bhutto who reneged on everything he had agreed to in Shimla.
We were relieved that despite back to back droughts Indira Gandhi had ensured that the country didn’t go hungry and were proud of a Green Revolution she conjured that assured lasting food security for India.
Then, we were impressed at the success of India’s nuclear and space programmes under her and delighted that we had a foothold in the Antarctica without knowing why we had to be there at all!
Indira Gandhi’s audacious incorporation of Sikkim into the Indian Union stunned us all by its speed and measured daring leaving us astonished, shaking our heads in disbelief, “Did India, could India, have really pulled this off?”
Later, in the lead up to the Emergency, as Indira Gandhi became increasingly dictatorial, many of us turned against her. Some of us, seduced by JP, become foot soldiers of a total revolution that only flattered to deceive.
We were aware of the forced sterilisation drives during the Emergency initiated by Sanjay Gandhi, the razing of old settlements in Turkman Gate and the humiliation of public servants. We were also distraught at Indira Gandhi’s drift towards superstitious Hinduism during this period.
We were totally in the know of the fear psychosis that gripped the country over 21 months of the Emergency. Ghose covers all this engagingly and in detail in her book.
Dictatorial turn
Following the Emergency Indira Gandhi had, as Ghose tells us, indeed turned rogue and remained so right up to her assassination. Her spectacular return to power after a devastating post Emergency defeat, we are told, only made her cunningly harsh—peevish, intolerant and cagily suspicious of everyone, even more so, after the death of Sanjay in an air crash.
We lived through the terrifying consequences of her fatal promotion of Bhindranwale and the violence that engulfed India for years thereafter.
Ghose’s ‘Indira,’ then, is a must-read for those who have not experienced her times firsthand—and that is the majority of Indians alive today who were not even born when Indira Gandhi was assassinated. They deserve to know much more of an India under Indira, than just the three things commonly associated with her: India’s victory over Pakistan in the 1971 war, the Emergency and her assassination.
Mean tales
In her book, Ghose graphically brings out the mean pettiness that was ever-present in the Nehru household from Motilal’s time right up to Indira Gandhi’s regime, alongside the grandeur.
The condescension with which Indira’s mother Kamala was treated by Nehru’s sisters, especially Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit, as well as the sadness of Indira Gandhi’s marriage and the rumours of her alleged affairs have been well brought out, a trifle too salaciously one might add.
But the book has its shortcomings. Her ‘letters’ to Indira Gandhi which pepper her book are speculative and distracting.
Her attempt to show Indira Gandhi as a precursor to Narendra Modi is decidedly premature. It is also disingenuous of her to make Nehru out to be much more of a democrat than he really was.
For the record, Nehru not only did not do away with colonial India’s most repressive laws but he used them to harass, imprison and exile his most recalcitrant opponents. Great as he undoubtedly was, Nehru was no undiluted democrat.
Fortunately, these shortcomings are few and do not make the book any less of a fine read.
Ghose has produced an incisive biography which is rich in detail, thoroughly engaging and racy. Indira Gandhi may have actually approved of it.
Indira—India’s Most Powerful Prime Minister ; Sagarika Ghose, Juggernaut, ₹699.
