So the unthinkable has happened. Unthinkable, yes, but just what many of us had been dreading all these days. A nation’s nightmare come true. The one woman who had been bearing on her frail shoulders the burdens of the world’s largest democracy, the accumulated problems of seven hundred million people, the woman who, for a decade and a half, stood four square against all the forces threatening this country—she has been struck down. And suddenly there is a vast emptiness in India—an emptiness that ‘every sensitive Indian felt in his or her heart on hearing the news.
Perhaps she knew it was coming. Day in and out she had been warning of the dangers enveloping the country, of the forces at work out to wreck the foundations of the Indian Republic, destroy our hard-won freedom and unity, and disrupt the peace of the land. She also dropped more than a broad hint that she was their prime target, being their greatest stumbling block. There was an air of desperation about her utterances in the last few weeks, like the sounding of an insistent alarm bell. And yet we did not take her seriously, Not only that. Some of us—let us confess—even ridiculed her and said she was merely crying wolf for her own purposes. All the time, the wolf was right there, creeping nearer, getting ready to spring.
Perhaps this was the way she wanted to go, too. The way of Julius Caesar, Abraham Lincoln, John Kennedy, Martin Luther King, the way the Mahatma himself went—at the height of glory, leaving behind a glowing legend for all time to come. Didn't she say long ago that the historical character she admired most was Joan of Arc and she wished to be like Joan sacrificing her life for her country?
The French woman was burnt at the stake as a heretic for waging a crusade against the foreign invaders and insisting that she did it in answer to a call from God. Indira Gandhi was killed by some treacherous men among her own bodyguards because she considered it as her sacred mission to protect the unity and integrity of the country, because she stood firm as a rock against the tides of subversion, fanaticism and violence threatening to sweep over India.
After the army action in Punjab in the first week of June, she said it was one of the most painful decisions she had ever taken, but she had to do it because she felt she owed it to the nation. In retrospect, it looks as if she was signing her own death warrant. She must have known it in her heart of hearts. But, as Margaret Thatcher said, Indira Gandhi was not the person to shrink from doing what she considered her duty for fear of any danger to her life.
She was cast in the heroic mould. Even in the last public meeting she addressed somewhere in Orissa, just a day before the fatal event, she had said that even if she died in the service of the nation, she would be proud of it. “Every drop of my blood, l am sure, will contribute to the growth of this nation and to make it strong and dynamic.”
Earlier, she had said at a public meeting in Lucknow that some forces were bent upon eliminating her but the worst they could do was to kill her. “Even if Indira Gandhi dies, her blood would spring from the earth and thousands of Indiras will emerge to serve the people of the country...”
Now we hear the ring of doom in those words. Now we understand the passion with which she was speaking, and realise how true was her perception of danger and how desperate the need to protect her. But too late, all too late.
Will the security and intelligence agencies of India ever outlive this shame?
ASI write these lines from a corner of suburban Delhi, vast crowds—men, women and children, the old and the crippled an endless train of VIPs from far and near but mostly a stream of ordinary humanity—are converging on, and besiegirig, Teen Murti Bhavan in the heart of the city for the last darshan of Indira Priyadarshini. The scenes are to be seen to be believed—the multitudes in a paroxysm of grief flowing by the flower—decked bier, like the waters from an opened flood-gate, often going out of control, and breaking the cordon, the security men frantically trying to restore order, the outbursts of anger, Rajiv Gandhi appealing with folded hands to the crowds to maintain calm, grown-up men and Women crying unashamedly and in the midst of the turmoil, like the eye of a storm, a face, a most familiar face, set at rest, unseeing and unheeding, terrifyingly still... A freeze from history caught up in the whirlpool of the present.
I was in Delhi when Nehru died and had seen the outpouring of a grieving city. But nothing like this was seen on that occasion. Then the sorrow was tempered by the people’s awareness that their beloved leader had gone in the fullness of years, his life’s labour done, gone peacefully like the setting sun. The homage was to splendour that was. Here the sense of loss was much more because his daughter had been snatched away, that too in the most cruel manner, when she was still in the prime of her political life and could have served the country for many years more. And there was anger mixed with sorrow this time. As at the time of Gandhi’s assassination, but unfortunately more so now. There was then Jawaharlal Nehru, also Sardar Patel to calm the popular passions. We have nobody of their stature now.
Rajiv, of course, tried to face the situation manfully. Sensing the black mood of the people as the black Wednesday turned into night, he said in his broadcast to the nation that maintenance of peace and goodwill was the need of the hour and any act of violence would be painful to the spirit of the departed leader. Unhappily, the message was lost on the hotheads in Delhi and elsewhere who by their acts of madness created a serious law and order problem for an administration already in a state of shock due to the outrage at No. l Safdarjung Road.
Napolean once said that St. Helena was written in the Book of Destiny. Perhaps, the day of the assassins in Delhi, October 31, 1984, was also written in the Book of Destiny. An epic life had to end on an epic note. So, we need not grieve for her unduly. Seeing the last act of the tragedy at Teen Murti Bhavan, where once Indira played hostess to her father in the palmy days of the Nehru era, one’s thoughts went back to the great man. Maybe, his spirit was there telling his daughter, “Thy work is done, and done well. And now sleep, Indu..." Yes, “after life's fitful fever," she sleeps.
But what a life, and whata woman! Remember 'the’ days when she was new to the office of Prime Minister, rather unsure of herself and tongue-tied in Parliament, when Ram Manohar Lohia called her goongi gudiya (dumb doll), when the Congress party bosses thought she had no choice but to toe their line. How the alchemy of power and mass adulation transformed her! It took hardly five years or so for the dumb doll to become what the world called the iron lady and the “Empress of India.”
Not that she was without flaws. The grief over her untimely and violent end need not blind us to the faults and failures of her leadership. It was during her reign that corruption grew to alarming proportions and the parallel economy of black money almost overtook the regular economy. She did not do much about it. The democratic institutions suffered under the twin pressures of slush funds and political interference in administration. It is true that the seeds of decay were sown during Nehru’s time under what Rajaji called the ‘permit-licence-quota-raj’. It is also true that much of the rot was due to the consumerism that gripped a large section of Indian society, particularly the growing and articulate middle class, as a part of the developmental process and that this would, in all probability, have come about even if a person other than Mrs Gandhi were at the helm of affairs. All the same, she cannot altogether escape responsibility for the distortions in the system during her long regime.
Again, she did not help the growth of a healthy party system. It was not her business to build up a strong opposition to her party, no doubt. But she could have at least tried to make her own party function on the right democratic lines, in which case it would have had a salutary effect on the other parties and on the polity in general. As it happened, the Congress(I) degenerated into a loose organisation where only sycophants and climbers could prosper. ‘Congress culture’ came to be a byword for political permissiveness and the other parties also showed the same symptoms.
Her authoritarian bent of mind led her to the blind alley of Emergency in 1975. The country then appeared to be set on the course that our neighbouring countries had taken but, thanks to her innate instinct for legitimacy, the trend was reversed and a peaceful change was made possible in free and fair elections— something which has seldom happened under an authoritarian ruler.
In January 1980 Mrs Gandhi came back to power to the rejoicings of a people disillusioned with the Janata experiment at the Centre. This, her last phase, began with high expectations but unfortunately she could not fulfill them, whatever the reasons. Centre-state relations became strained. Law and order turned from bad to worse. Trouble in Assam continued and a new and more serious crisis developed in Punjab. Whether anybody else in her place could have found a solution to these complicated problems in the given time is a matter of opinion. However, the negative side of the picture is there.
But then, some of the great figures of history also had their own weaknesses and frailties. Akbar, Queen Elizabeth I, Catherine the Great, Mao Zedong—all had their warts.
And no objective analyst of Indian politics will deny her the credit due to her on many counts. The progress made by the country under her leadership in such fields as agricultural production, industrialisation, the spread of higher education, science and technology—especially in telecommunications, electronics, nuclear and space ventures—as also in defence self-sufficiency is truly remarkable. If only she had kept up her earlier zeal of the Garibi Hatao programme! In the last phase much of her time and energy was spent in unproductive politicking and manoeuvres for short-term gains for her party. Still, even this period had its redeeming aspects. Inflation was contained and the economy put on a fairly even keel, the aberrations of it notwithstanding.
In the sphere of foreign policy, she was a hard-headed realist who would not take chances with India’s security. The Indo-Soviet friendship treaty, of which she was the chief architect, stood the country in good stead at a critical time. India being elected to the leadership of the Non-Aligned Movement was a tribute her statesmanship. If India‘s relations with the USA, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka were troubled, it is unfair to single out Mrs Gandhi’s government for blame. The problems were inherent in the geopolitical situation. She made India a power to reckon with in the Afro-Asian world. She would not brook any attempt to injure its vital interests. If for nothing else, Indira Gandhi’s place in Indian history is assured for her victorious leadership in the Bangladesh liberation war. Not since Chandragupta Maurya’s time had a native ruler met a foreign threat so decisively as she did in that crisis.
For 15 years, no matter what the pressures from within or outside, this woman held India together—no mean achievement in these troubled times. She became the symbol of resurgent Indian nationhood—an India cherishing all that is best in her tradition, but a forward-looking India. Her personality itself combined the graces of the past with a cosmopolitan culture. And while being refreshingly modern, she was not ashamed to acknowledge her devotion to India’s spiritual heritage.
And now suddenly an India without Indira. It is a disorienting blow of reality. Wherever ‘we turn, there are clouds of uncertainty and forebodings. The ship of state seems adrift on the high seas, the tried and trusted captain gone. There are breakers and reefs ahead and an ill-wind is blowing. What is going to happen?
Will India sail on to safer waters or go to pieces? These are the doubts that assail one's equanimity, but we will be untrue to the spirit of the departed leader and the founding fathers if we lose heart and give up the struggle to preserve the unity and integrity of the country and the values of democracy and secularism enshrined in our Constitution. The cult of violence and communal hatred must be driven out, once for all, from this land. It is not only Punjab but the whole of India that needs the healing touch. No community—neither the minorities nor the majority—should be made to feel discriminated against. If there are genuine grievances in any quarter, they have to be removed forthwith. From sectarian quarrels the attention of the nation has to be turned to the emancipation of the poverty-stricken millions of this country. That is the unfinished task of Indira Gandhi and the leaders who have gone before her. Swaraj has no meaning till this is done.
It is an irony of fate that Indira Gandhi's wish to have her son as her successor was realised in this manner. She first groomed Sanjay for this honour but destiny willed it otherwise. Now her tragic death accomplished the fond mother's purpose. True democrats cannot but oppose dynastic succession in principle, especially if it appears to have been hustled through. However, insofar as Rajiv‘s sudden elevation ensures a smooth transition in an hour of crisis, it ‘may turn out to be a good arrangement, subject of course to the approval of Parliament and the electorate later. And for all we know, the young man may make good. Personality development is an imponderable factor in politics. If he fails, you can trust the system to find a better alternative. But in this critical hour, whatever the political differences, one must wish the young Prime Minister of India good luck and godspeed. The burden he has taken upon his shoulders is too heavy to admit of carping criticism and cynical disdain.
If India without Gandhi and Nehru and Patel could survive, an India without Indira should also survive. That is how she herself had visualised it with her unshaken faith in his ancient country’s future. The present storms must pass and one day this country will reach that state: “Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high...”
(This article originally appeared as the cover story in the issue dated November 17, 1984)
