Indira Gandhi Flashcards
Indira’s upbringing
Her mother, Kamala, was a feminist and often ill, although she joined the protests against the British in their home city of Allahabad in the 1930s. At this time, Indira’s father, Jawaharlal Nehru, was in prison. An only child (a younger brother died at two weeks); her father was often absent, albeit they often exchanged letters.
A variety of schools in India and when travelling with her mother and other family members in Europe.
With her father in prison, Kamala was then also arrested and imprisoned, briefly, in December 1930. Her grandfather died early the following year.
In 1936 her mother became ill and was again sent to Europe for treatment, accompanied by Indira. Kamala died in Switzerland.
Indira’s rise to power
Prior to Nehru’s death, Indira became his gatekeeper, taking a commanding position as he started to fade.
The process of transition between administrations was new to everyone. Quickly, Indira found the prime ministerial home turned into a memorial museum and library. The attention she had received for years as the only child of the most famous living Indian was evaporating.
The new prime minister, Lal Bahadur Shastri, told her he needed a Nehru in the cabinet and she accepted.
The elevation revealed new ambition. When she flew to Kashmir to visit troops during a stand-off with Pakistan, she was lauded by the newspapers.
In 1965, Shastri died from a heart attack. She looked like a suitable and malleable stopgap replacement, drawing the nation together.
Indira’s time in power
She thrived in power, trouncing both her enemies and backers and dividing Congress. She left socialism and conflict. Faced with drought, famine and a shortage of rice, she decided to become more radical, not to rethink policies.
She was a weak parliamentary performer and bad on her feet. Her reaction was to avoid parliament when she could and to rely on the advice of a close entourage. She liked to reach out to the public and trusted crowds more than individuals.
Any attack on her or her administration was deemed a calumny. Her methods were autocratic. It meant a shift from the consensus and common endeavour of the 1950s.
The 1975 state of emergency
Despite Congress winning the general election in 1971, the country was failing and strikes and opposition were increasing. Indira Gandhi feared CIA involvement and backing for a coup, as it had in Chile.
In 1975 Indira Gandhi declared a state of emergency. Opposition groups were banned , newspapers were shut down (the electricity supplies were cut the night before the declaration), and more than 100,000 people were arrested.
Sanjay Gandhi
Became Indira’s chief adviser. Set up a parallel operation alongside the mechanisms of government. Bribery became endemic.
One of his particular concerns was the rapid rise of India’s population. Men were sterilised by a team led by one of Sanjay’s friends. Several million were sterilised.
He also started a huge slum clearance project.
Having lost in a general election in 1977, Indira was then returned three years later.
Five months later “to the relief of the nation and the terrible grief of his doting mother”, Sanjay died early one morning performing illegal aerobatics over Delhi.
Indira’s last years and assassination
After Sanjay’s death, she turned to her remaining family plus a highly dubious swami, Dhirendra Brahmachari.
Her murder in 1984 was a kind of suicide.
The root cause was a conflict she and Sanjay had sparked in Punjab to influence a state election. Sanjay had set up and sponsored an obscure Sikh preacher, Sant Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale. An extremist who wanted a separate Sikh homeland.
Bhindranwale and his armed supporters took over the most holy shrine of the Sikh faith, the Golden Temple in Amritsar. Indira ordered an assault which largely destroyed the temple.
All Sikh personnel were transferred out of Indira’s security detail but she countermanded the decision. In an atmosphere of doom, she visited a sadhu in Kashmir and spoke of death.
On the last day of October 1984, walking through her garden with an entourage, two Sikh guards were waiting. One, Beant Singh, pulled out his service revolver and shot her.
Rajiv Gandhi
The events after his mother’s death showed many of the things that had gone wrong with Indian politics in the 20 years since Nehru’s death.
Rajiv was encouraged to inherit his mother’s job on a flight back to Delhi after news of her murder. It was decided that the president - who had been picked by Indira for his sycophantic tendencies - could nominate whomever he chose.
So Nehru’s grandson, a socially popular Indian Airlines pilot with no ministerial experience, took power in the largest democracy on earth.
His premiership began in 1984 with a founding slaughter. More than 3000 Sikhs died before Rajiv decided to call out the army. When it was over, he made a notorious comment - when a mighty tree falls, the earth is bound to shake.
He had sensible modernising intentions, plus he worked hard. He ignored corruption so the payment of financial incentives became a growing part of Indian public life.
He became involved in the politics of Sri Lanka, sending a huge peacekeeping force to implement a pro-Tamil agreement only to find the Tamil Tigers refused to cooperate. When too many Indian soldiers returned dead, the effort was abandoned.
Sikh insurrection continued in Punjab, with police using savage methods against the militants.
The Congress party lost in the general election of 1989. The minority coalition administration fell in 1991 and Rajiv returned to the election trail. Near the end of the campaign at a rally in a small town near Madras he was assassinated by a suicide bomber, a young woman Tamil Tiger set on avenging his government’s military escapade in Sri Lanka.
Sonia Gandhi
Born in Italy, met Rajiv while in Cambridge at an English language school. They married and she came to India in 1968.
After her husband’s death, the Congress party was at a low ebb and at risk of being at an end. Voters were bored by corruption scandals and new parties were appearing.
Sonia knew this was probably the last chance to secure a possible political future for her children and even a risk of having to leave their large government supplied bungalow in New Delhi.
In the 1998 election she was portrayed by the opposition as an outsider, criticised her Catholic background and, indeed, she spoke Hindi with a strong Italian accent.
In fact, the jibes didn’t seem to resonate. For a lot of poor people she represented a distant ideal and generated sympathy from her suffering. And in Indian culture, a daughter-in-law is subsumed into the husband’s family. Also black hair and dark Italian complexion plus she never wore western clothes.
In 1998, Congress won 166 seats, up 28, and the BJP was short of a majority.
At this point, Sonia’s skills as a leader started to appear. She kept friends separate from her professional career (unlike her husband) and kept her private life with her children hidden from view. She built alliances with regional, caste-based and communist parties. And as an outsider, other politicians struggled to know how to deal with her. Plus her internal opponents within Congress all died.
In 2004, against the prediction of pollsters, Congress came back to power.
During the election the party made no clear statement about who would be PM but it was assumed that Sonia would take the post. In parliament, she told her MPs that after listening to her “inner voice” (a phrase borrowed from the Mahatma), she had decided to “humbly decline” the post. “Power in itself has never attracted me, nor has position been my goal.” It was a subtle response in a land where rejection of material ambition strikes a powerful religious chord. As secretly agreed as far back as 1999, the respected Sikh technocrat, Manmohan Singh, would serve at madam’s pleasure.
Indira’s marriage
Indira secretly became engaged to Feroze Gandhi (no relation) a “chancer” from a Parsi family. He had been an 18 year-old student at a British staffed college in Allahabad. At a picket, Kamala had fainted and Feroze had rushed forward to help her. He dropped out of college and appeared next day at Anand Bhawan to sign up as a Congress volunteer.
Indira wanted happiness, children, a quiet and private life. She married Feroze in 1942 despite her family’s opposition. He was a drinker, philanderer and effectively unemployed. And found it impossible to adapt to being the nation’s son-in-law. He died of a heart attack in 1960 at the age of only 47. Despite their unhappiness as a couple, Indira felt isolated afterwards.
Out of power - 1977-1980
In March 1977, following the state of emergency, the Janata Party gained 40% of the vote to Congress’ 35%. The Communist Party and others deserted Congress. Indira was humiliatingly defeated in the Rae Bareilly constituency; Sanjay also lost.
Janata harassed Indira and her family, following and bugging them. Their passports were confiscated. The media joined in the persecution.
A series of commissions were set up to investigate Indira and Sanjay. The highest profile was the Shah Commission. However, the eventual report was turgid and a predictable summary of J C Shah’s foregone conclusions.
Indira started to tour the country and was met with a lot of enthusiasm. She also went to Britain to start to rebuild her international standing. Meanwhile, the Janata government performed poorly and descended into factions and chaos. The brief arrest and imprisonment of Indira also backfired.
Indira was reelected to parliament in a by-election of November 1978. The government collapsed in mid-1979 with new elections to be held in the first week of January 1980.
