The Hindu Business Line : Indira and India

Indira Gandhi was a true nationalist and a proud Indian who had her finger on the pulse of the real India. If she bequeathed on the Congress dynastic politics, coterie culture and power-only-at-the-top formula, she also gave it the idea of the aam admi, says RASHEEDA BHAGAT

On his first visit to Chennai after being appointed the US Ambassador to India in 1994, about a dozen of Chennai’s residents were invited to the American Consulate for a chat session with Mr Frank G. Wisner. Earlier in the day he had called upon the then Tamil Nadu Chief Minister, J. Jayalalithaa, , and waxed eloquent on how impressed he was by her, before moving on to other issues on India-US relations.

As the session neared its end, the journalist in me just had to ask him to elaborate on his comment; he was clearly bowled over by the politician whose first term in office was increasingly coming under the scanner on corruption charges after the initial honeymoon. So why had Ms Jayalalithaa impressed him so much?

Mr Wisner was only too happy to explain; he had met two other women in power in the sub-continent — Benazir Bhutto and Indira Gandhi. Benazir he dismissed as “vacuous” and Indira Gandhi, he said, was so anti-American that she couldn’t “look beyond her nose” when it came to any issue pertaining to the US. “But your Chief Minister… she is very intelligent, very well-read, and unlike many politicians listens, and comes right back with a valid comment or question.”

There has been enough documentation of how Indira Gandhi, over her political career, had demonstrated that a poor, “third world”, country like India need not be daunted by or servile to the US. And while doing so, she tilted India’s foreign policy further towards the Soviet Union. Apparently, later in her prime ministerial career, she instructed bureaucrats to refer in their reports to both the US and the erstwhile Soviet Union as “big powers” and not “superpowers”!

In a much more prosperous and powerful India of 2009, these words sound sweet indeed!

Twenty-five years after 30 bullets were pumped into her by her two Sikh bodyguards, Indira Gandhi continues to be missed and mourned by India. Love her or hate her, call her devi, demon or dictator, autocratic, authoritarian, self-serving… but she continues to occupy a special place in the hearts of most Indians.

Sure she was the wicked queen who imposed Emergency and like the kings of medieval Europe sent her political rivals to jails (without beheading them, of course). And all because on June 12, 1975, the Allahabad High court declared her election to the Lok Sabha invalid due to electoral irregularities. Yes, the doting mother in her failed to stop Sanjay Gandhi’s atrocities — forced sterilisations and other excesses — during Emergency.

In 1984, she asked the Indian Army to smoke out Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale — a monster created by her — and his extremist cohorts from the Golden Temple. Operation Bluestar caused severe damage to and desecration of the holiest Sikh shrine and led to her violent end.

Truly secular

As a shell-shocked nation grieved at her death, the one thing that people kept remembering and repeating was how she had been warned of the threat to her life from Sikhs but had still refused permission to replace her Sikh bodyguards. Before Partition, and along with it, India had inherited the scourge of communal poison. But both the “iron lady” and the true secularist in her persona had no doubt prompted her to take the decision that cost her life.

Amid all the heated debates about Indira Gandhi’s legacy in the print and electronic media, what cannot be denied is the special place Indira has in the hearts of India’s millions, particularly the rural poor and the socially disadvantaged.

While the intelligentsia examines the different personas of Indira Gandhi and how they changed during her different phases as Prime Minister — from the goongi gudiya of Ram Manohar Lohia, the “Durga” of 1971, “Iron Lady”, and to the “only man in the Cabinet” — what is etched in the hearts and minds of ordinary Indians is the image of a woman who could stand up and laugh or cry with them after any number of personal blows.

There is an attempt made by some Congressmen to blame Emergency not so much on Indira as her advisors and confidantes such as Siddharth Shankar Ray. But no leader can expect to escape the consequences of his/her actions. However, what is true, and must be counted, is that, despite advice to the contrary by her sycophants, it was Indira Gandhi who decided to end Emergency and call for elections.

True, after her drubbing at the polls, she was devastated, but only for a few months. Eleven years down the line, the goongi gudiya had evolved into a smart and gritty politician. The Belchi massacre of August 1977, less than six months after she was voted out of power, in which 11 landless Dalits were burnt to death, saw her reach their devastated homes on the only mode of transport through waist-deep waters and slushy roads — the back of an elephant.

Entrenched in Indian hearts

Such acts entrenched in Indian hearts affection for a leader who could go to the remotest corners of India, physically, emotionally, compassionately, put her arms around the victims, the oppressed, the marginalised and send a strong and direct message: ‘I am there for you, with you, in your moment of grief’.

Perhaps it was Belchi, her own determination and grit to stop whining and start fighting the many cases and inquiries set up against her by the Janata government, or the motley set of its leaders that rang the death knell of the non-Congress dispensation and paved the way for Indira’s triumphant return in 1980.

But in June that year she suffered her greatest personal loss, the death of Sanjay Gandhi. Many political commentators say that Indira never really recovered from that blow. But she did deal effectively with internal and external problems with dignified authority. In a couple of years, the Punjab problem began, and she gave orders for Operation Bluestar only after being assured by the Army top brass that not a brick would be damaged. But the heavily armed militants holed up inside the Golden Temple forced a bloody conflict and the result was a disaster with horrific consequences.

Like most great political leaders, there wasn’t one Indira… that would have been so boring and predictable. She was a mix of complexities… one who defied her family to marry Feroze Gandhi, didn’t hesitate to move away from a loveless marriage and stay with her father, devoted mother and grandmother, courageous leader who could cock a snook at western superpowers, an astute statesman who would give her army chief (Sam Manekshaw) the time he required to decisively win the war against Pakistan in 1971, a vulnerable politician who would declare Emergency and subvert the Constitution to cling on to power, and allow an atrocious coinage such as ‘India is Indira and Indira is India” to gain currency.

But, above all, she was a true nationalist and proud Indian who had her finger on the pulse of the real India. Surely it is no mere accident that she realised the significance and relevance of the phrase Garibi Hatao to India and elections in India. If she bequeathed to the Congress dynastic politics, the coterie culture and power-only-at-the-top formula, she also gave it the idea of the aam admi and how only pro-poor and pro-village programmes such as NREGA can help it win elections.

If Rahul Gandhi stays the course on his endeavour to connect with the poor and marginalised at the grassroots level, without getting discouraged or spooked by the jeers and taunts thrown at him by the Opposition and the chattering classes about his visits to Dalit homes, etc, he will not only get a hands-on experience of the real India, he might also become a claimant to his grandmother’s legacy — a little space in the hearts of people.

For the aam admi is not a fair weather friend, like other political constituents, and he/she is generous enough to think less is more.

(Response may be sent to rasheeda@thehindu.co.in and blfeedback@thehindu.co.in)