Indira Priyadarshini, was born on
November 19,
1917 to Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru and his young wife
Kamala Nehru. She was their only child. The
Nehru family can trace their ancestry to the
Brahmins of
Jammu and Kashmir and
Delhi. Indira's grandfather
Motilal Nehru was a wealthy barrister of
Allahabad in
Uttar Pradesh. Nehru was one of the most prominent members of the
Indian National Congress in pre-
Gandhi times and would go on to author the
Nehru Report, the people's choice for a future Indian system of government as opposed to the British system. Her father
Jawaharlal Nehru was a well-educated lawyer and was a popular leader of the
Indian Independence Movement. At the time of Indira's birth, Nehru entered the independence movement under the leadership of
Mahatma Gandhi.
Growing up in the sole care of her mother, who was sick and alienated from the Nehru household, Indira developed strong protective instincts and a loner personality. Her grandfather and father continually being enmeshed in national politics also made mixing with her peers difficult. She had conflicts with her father's sisters, including
Vijayalakshmi Pandit, and these continued into the political world.
Indira created the
Vanara Sena movement for young girls and boys which played a small but notable role in the
Indian Independence Movement, conducting protests and flag marches, as well as helping Congress politicians circulate sensitive publications and banned materials. In an often-told story, she smuggled out from her father's police-watched house an important document in her schoolbag that outlined plans for a major revolutionary initiative in the early 1930s.
In 1936, her mother, Kamala Nehru, finally succumbed to
tuberculosis after a long struggle. Indira was 18 at the time and thus never experienced a stable family life during her childhood. She attended prominent Indian, European and British schools like
Santiniketan,
Badminton School and
Oxford, but she showed no incandescence for academics, and was detained from obtaining a degree.[
citation needed]
While studying at
Somerville College,
University of Oxford,
England, during the late 1930s, she became a member of the radical pro-independence London based
India League.
[4]In her years in continental Europe and the UK, she met
Feroze Gandhi,a Congress activist. Nehru was not happy with the match; Kamala , who is said to have met Feroze before her death and liked him , is thought to have not liked the match , though . However , she married Feroze in 1941. Just before the beginning of the
Quit India Movement - the final, all-out national revolt launched by
Mahatma Gandhi and the Congress Party. In September 1942 they were arrested by the British authorities and detained without charge. She was ultimately released on
13 May 1943 having spent over 243 days in jail.
[5] In 1944, she gave birth to
Rajiv Gandhi with Feroze Gandhi, followed two years later by
Sanjay Gandhi.
During the chaotic
Partition of India in 1947, she helped organize refugee camps and provide medical care for the millions of refugees from
Pakistan. This was her first exercise in major public service, and a valuable experience for the tumult of the coming years.
The couple later settled in
Allahabad where Feroze worked for a Congress Party newspaper and an insurance company. Their marriage started out well, but deteriorated later as Gandhi moved to
New Delhi to be at the side of her father, now the Prime Minister, who was living alone in a high-pressure environment at Teen Murti Bhavan. She became his confidante, secretary and nurse. Her sons lived with her, but she eventually became permanently separated from Feroze, though they remained married.
When India's first general election approached in 1951, Gandhi managed the campaigns of both Nehru and her husband, who was contesting the constituency of
Rae Bareilly. Feroze had not consulted Nehru on his choice to run, and even though he was elected, he opted to live in a separate house in Delhi. Feroze quickly developed a reputation for being a fighter against
corruption by exposing a major scandal in the nationalized insurance industry, resulting in the resignation of the Finance Minister, a Nehru aide.
At the height of the tension, Gandhi and her husband separated. However, in 1958, shortly after re-election, Feroze suffered a heart attack, which dramatically healed their broken marriage. At his side to help him recuperate in
Kashmir, their family grew closer. But Feroze died on
September 8,
1960, while Gandhi was abroad with Nehru on a foreign visit.
[
edit] President of the Indian National Congress
Indira and
Mahatma Gandhi circa the 1930s
During 1959 and 1960, Gandhi ran for and was elected the President of the
Indian National Congress. Her term of office was uneventful. She also acted as her father's chief of staff. Nehru was known as a vocal opponent of
nepotism, and she did not contest a seat in the 1962 elections.
Nehru died on
May 27,
1964, and Gandhi, at the urgings of the new Prime Minister
Lal Bahadur Shastri, contested elections and joined the Government, being immediately appointed Minister for Information and Broadcasting. She went to
Madras when the riots over Hindi becoming the national language broke out in non-Hindi speaking states of the south. There she spoke to government officials, soothed the anger of community leaders and supervised reconstruction efforts for the affected areas. Shastri and senior Ministers were embarrassed, owing to their lack of such initiative. Minister Gandhi's actions were probably not directly aimed at Shastri or her own political elevation. She reportedly lacked interest in the day-to-day functioning of her Ministry, but was media-savvy and adept at the art of politics and image-making.
"During the succession struggles after 1965 between Mrs. Gandhi and her rivals, the central Congress [party] leadership in several states moved to displace upper caste leaders from state Congress [party] organizations and replace them with backward caste persons and to mobilize the votes of the latter castes to defeat its rivals in the state Congress [party] and in the oppositiion. The consequences of these interventions, some of which may justly be perceived as socially progressive, have nevertheless often had the consequences of intensifying inter-ethnic regional conflicts...
[6]When the
Indo-Pakistani War of 1965 broke out, Gandhi was vacationing in the border region of
Srinagar. Although warned by the Army that
Pakistani insurgents had penetrated very close to the city, she refused to relocate to
Jammu or
Delhi. She rallied local government and welcomed media attention, in effect reassuring the nation. Shastri died in
Tashkent, hours after signing the peace agreement with Pakistan's
Ayub Khan, mediated by the
Soviets.
The then
Congress Party President
K. Kamaraj was instrumental and supportive in making Indira Gandhi as Prime Minister,despite the oppostion from
Morarji Desai who was later defeated by the members of the
Congress Parliamentary Party,where Indira Gandhi beat Morarji Desai by 355 votes to 169 to become the fifth Prime Minister of India and the first woman to hold that position.
Prime Minister
Foreign and Domestic Policy and National Security
Dr. Radhakrishnan, the second
President of India, administering the oath of office to Indira Gandhi on 24 January 1966.
When Mrs. Gandhi became Prime Minister in 1966 there was no unity in the Congress. Her main party rival,
Morarji Desai called her 'Gungi Gudiya' which means 'Dumb Doll'. The internal problems showed in the 1967 election where the Congress lost nearly 60 seats winning 297 seats in the 545 seat
Lok Sabha. She had to accommodate Desai as
Deputy Prime Minister of India and
Finance Minister of India. In 1969 after a lot of disagreements with Desai, the
Indian National Congress split. She ruled with support from Socialist Parties for the next two years. In the same year, she nationalised banks. During the 1971 War, the US had sent its
Seventh Fleet to the
Bay of Bengal as a warning to India keep away from East Pakistan as a pretext to launch a wider attack against West Pakistan, especially over the territory of
Kashmir. This move had further alienated India from the First World, and Prime Minister Gandhi now accelerated a previously cautious new direction in national security and foreign policy. India and the
USSR had earlier signed the
Treaty of Friendship and Mutual Cooperation , resulting in political and military support contributing substantially to India's victory in the 1971 war.
Nuclear Program
But Gandhi now had a national nuclear program, as it was felt that the nuclear threat from the
People's Republic of China and the intrusive interest of the two major superpowers were not conducive to India's stability and security. She also invited the new Pakistani President
Zulfikar Ali Bhutto to
Shimla for a week-long summit. After the near-failure of the talks, the two heads of state eventually signed the
Shimla Agreement, which bound the two countries to resolve the
Kashmir dispute by negotiations and peaceful means. It was Gandhi's stubbornness which made even the visiting Pakistani Prime Minister sign the accord according to India's terms in which
Zulfikar Bhutto had to write the last few terms in the agreement in his own handwriting.[
citation needed]
Indira Gandhi was criticized by some for not making the Line of Control a permanent border while a few critics even believed that
Pakistan-administered Kashmir should have been extracted from
Pakistan, whose 93,000
prisoners of war were under Indian control. But the agreement did remove immediate
United Nations and third party interference, and greatly reduced the likelihood of
Pakistan launching a major attack in the near future. By not demanding total capitulation on a sensitive issue from Bhutto, she had allowed Pakistan to stabilize and normalize. Trade relations were also normalized, though much contact remained frozen for years.
In 1974, India successfully conducted an underground nuclear test, unofficially code named as
smiling Buddha, near the desert village of
Pokhran in
Rajasthan. Describing the test as for peaceful purposes, India nevertheless became the world's youngest nuclear power.
Green Revolution
Richard Nixon and Indira Gandhi in 1971. They had a deep personal antipathy that coloured bilateral relations.
Special agricultural innovation programs and extra government support launched in the 1960s that had finally resulted in India's chronic food shortages were gradually being transformed into surplus production of wheat, rice, cotton and milk. Rather than relying on food aid from the United States - headed by a President whom Mrs. Gandhi disliked considerably (the feeling was mutual: to Nixon, Indira was "the old witch"
[7]), the country became a food exporter. That achievement, along with the diversification of its commercial crop production, has become known as the
Green Revolution. At the same time, the White Revolution was an expansion in milk production which helped to combat malnutrition, especially amidst young children. 'Food security', as the programme was called, was another source of support for Mrs. Gandhi in the years leading up to 1975.
Established in the early 1960s, the
Green Revolution was the unofficial name given to the Intense Agricultural District Programme (IADP) which sought to insure abundant, inexpensive grain for urban dwellers upon whose support Gandhi -- as indeed all Indian politicians -- heavily depended.
[8] The program was based on four premises: 1) New varieties of seed(s), 2) Acceptance of the necessity of the chemicalization of Indian agriculture, i.e. fertilizers, pesticides, weed killers, etc., 3) A commitment to national and international cooperative research to develop new and improved existing seed varieties, 4) The concept of developing a scientific, agricultural institutions in the form of land grant colleges.
[9] Lasting about ten years, the program was ultimately to bring about a tripling of wheat production, a lower but still impressive increase of rice; while there was little to no increase (depending on area, and adjusted for population growth) of such cereals as
millet,
gram and coarse grain, though these did, in fact, retain a relatively stable yield.
1971 Poll Victory , and second term (1971-1975)
Gandhi's government faced major problems after her tremendous mandate of 1971. The internal structure of the Congress Party had withered following its numerous splits, leaving it entirely dependent on her leadership for its election fortunes.
Garibi Hatao (Abolish Poverty) was the theme for Gandhi's 1971 bid. The slogan and the proposed anti-poverty programs that came with it were designed to give Gandhi an independent national support, based on rural and urban poor. This would allow her to bypass the dominant rural castes both in and of state and local government; likewise the urban commercial class. And, for their part, the previously voiceless poor would at last gain both political worth and political weight.
The programs created through
Garibi Hatao, though carried out locally, were funded, developed, supervised, and staffed by New Delhi and the
Indian National Congress party. "These programs also provided the central political leadership with new and vast patronage resources to be disbursed...throughout the country."
[10] All and all,
garibi hatao did little and accomplished a bit less: Only about 4% of all funds allocated for economic development went to the three main anti-poverty programs, and precious few of these ever reached the 'poorest of the poor'. But it did help secure Gandhi's election.
Changing Domestic Policy
Gandhi had already been accused of tendencies towards authoritarianism. Using their strong parliamentary majority, her ruling Congress party had amended the Constitution, altering the balance of power between the Centre and the States established under the federal system. The central government had twice imposed
President's Rule under
Article 356 of the Constitution by deeming states ruled by opposition parties as "lawless and chaotic", thus winning administrative control of those states. Elected officials and the administrative services resented the growing influence of
Sanjay Gandhi, who had become Gandhi's close political advisor at the expense of men like
P. N. Haksar, Gandhi's chosen strategist during her rise to power. Renowned public figures and former freedom-fighters like
Jaya Prakash Narayan,
Satyendra Narayan Sinha and
Acharya Jivatram Kripalani now toured the North, speaking actively against her Government.
Charges
On
June 12,
1975 the
High Court of Allahabad declared Gandhi's election invalid on grounds of alleged malpractices in an election petition filed by
Raj Narain (who had repeatedly contested her Parliamentary constituency of Rae Bareli without success). The court thus ordered her to be removed from her seat in Parliament and banned from running in elections for six years. Since the Prime Minister must be a member of either the
Lok Sabha (lower house in the
Parliament of India) or the
Rajya Sabha (the upper house of the Parliament), this decision had the effect of removing her from office.
Gandhi appealed the decision; the opposition parties rallied en masse, calling for her resignation. Strikes by unions and protest rallies paralyzed life in many states.
J. P. Narayan even called upon the police to disobey orders if asked to fire on an unarmed public. Public disenchantment combined with hard economic times and an unresponsive government. A huge rally surrounded the Parliament building and Gandhi's residence in Delhi, demanding her to behave responsibly and resign.
A still from
Anand Patwardhan's first documentary Waves of Revolution, about the unrest in Bihar, distributed clandestinely within India and smuggled out in sections to create awareness abroad.
State of Emergency (1975-1977)
Gandhi advised President
Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed to declare a
state of emergency, claiming that the strikes and rallies were creating a state of 'internal disturbance'. Ahmed was a longtime political ally, and it is a strong
convention in India that the president acts on the advice of the prime minister. Accordingly, Ahmed declared a State of Emergency caused by internal disorder, based on the provisions of
Article 352 of the Constitution, on
June 26,
1975.
Even before the Emergency Proclamation was ratified by Parliament, Gandhi on the night of
June 26,
1975 moved to put an end to any and all opposition to order the arrest of all her principal opposition, including those within the
Congress Parliamentary Party. Many of these were men who had first been jailed by the British in the 1930s and 1940s.
Rule by Decree
Within a few months,
President's Rule was imposed on the two non-Congress (party)-ruled states of
Gujarat and
Tamil Nadu thereby bringing the entire country under direct dictorial rule from Delhi.
[11] Police were granted powers to impose curfews and indefinitely detain citizens, while all publications were subjected to substantial censorship by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. Finally, impending legislative assembly elections were indefinitely postponed, with all opposition-controlled state governments being removed by virtue of the constitutional provision allowing for a dismissal of a state government on recommendation of the state's governor.
Gandhi used the emergency provisions to grant herself extraordinary powers.
"Unlike her father [Nehru], who preferred to deal with strong chief ministers in control of their legislative parties and state party organizations, Mrs. Gandhi set out to remove every Congress chief minister who had an independent base and to replace each of them with ministers personally loyal to her...Even so, stability could not be maintained in the states..."
[12]She further utilized President Ahmed, to issue
ordinances that did not need to be debated in
Parliament, allowing her to effectively
rule by decree.
Inder Kumar Gujral, a future prime minister himself, resigned as
Minister for Information and Broadcasting to protest Sanjay Gandhi's interference in his work of the ministry.
The prime minister's emergency rule lasted nineteen months. Simultaneously, a draconian campaign to stamp out dissent included the arrest and torture of thousands of political activists; the ruthless clearing of slums around Delhi's
Jama Masjid ordered by Sanjay and carried out by
Jagmohan, which left hundreds of thousands of people homeless and thousands killed, and led to the permanent ghettoization of the nation's capital; and the family planning program which forcibly imposed
vasectomy on thousands of fathers and was often poorly administered, nurturing a public anger against family planning that persists into the 21st century.
Elections
In 1977, Gandhi called elections. One factor was the economic gains, though there may have been political considerations at play. Gandhi may have grossly misjudged her popularity by reading what the heavily censored press wrote about her, or may have feared a military coup had she attempted to rule by decree any longer (There were reports that the Armed Forces would forcibly remove her from power and hold elections. See
Tapishwar Narain Raina). In any case, she was roundly defeated by the
Janata Party. Janata, led by her long-time rival, Desai and with Jai Prakash Narayan as its spiritual guide, claimed the elections were the last chance for India to choose between "democracy and dictatorship." Indira and Sanjay Gandhi both lost their seats, and Congress was cut down to 153 seats (compared with 350 in the previous Lok Sabha), 92 of which were in the south.
Removal, Arrest, and Return
Mrs. Gandhi with
M.G. Ramachandran,
Chief Minister of
Tamil Nadu. In the post-emergency elections in 1977, only the Southern states returned Congress majorities.
Desai became Prime Minister and
Neelam Sanjiva Reddy, the establishment choice of 1969, became President of the Republic. Gandhi found herself without work, income or residence until winning a
by-election in 1978. The Congress Party split during the election campaign of 1977 with veteran Gandhi supporters like
Jagjivan Ram abandoning her for Janata. The Congress (Gandhi) Party was now a much smaller group in Parliament, although the official opposition.
Unable to govern owing to fractious coalition warfare, the Janata government's Home Minister,
Choudhary Charan Singh, ordered the arrest of Indira and Sanjay Gandhi on several charges, none of which would be easy to prove in an Indian court. The arrest meant that Indira was automatically expelled from Parliament. However, this strategy backfired disastrously. Her arrest and long-running trial, however, gained her great sympathy from many people who had feared her as a tyrant just two years earlier.
The Janata coalition was only united by its hatred of Mrs. Gandhi (or "that woman" as some called her); the government was so bogged down by infighting. She was able to use the situation to her advantage. She began giving speeches again, tacitly apologizing for "mistakes" made during the Emergency. Desai resigned in June 1979, and Charan Singh was appointed Prime Minister by Reddy after Mrs. Gandhi promised that Congress would support his government from outside.
After a short interval, she withdrew her initial support and President Reddy dissolved Parliament in the winter of 1979. In elections held the following January, Congress was returned to power with a landslide majority.
Indira Gandhi was awarded the
Lenin Peace Prize (for 1983-84).
1984
USSR commemorative stamp
[
edit] Operation Blue Star and assassination
Main article:
Operation Blue StarMain article:
1984 Anti-Sikh RiotsThe
neutrality and
factual accuracy of this section are disputed.Please see the relevant discussion on the
talk page.
Gandhi's later years were bedeviled with problems in
Punjab. In September 1981,
Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, a freedom fighter associated with a[
citation needed]
separatist[
citation needed] Sikh militant group took up positions within the precincts of the
Golden Temple, Sikhism's holiest shrine.
[13] Despite the presence of thousands of civilians in the Golden Temple complex at the time who were paying pilgrimage to
Guru Arjan Dev Ji's
martyrdom anniversary, Gandhi ordered the Army, to enter the site with full military force in an attempt to kill Bhindranwale. "The government estimated the number of deaths as four officers, sevety-nine soldiers, and 492 Sikhs. Other accounts place the numbers of death much higher: at perhaps 500 or more troops and 3,000 others, including many pilgrims caught in the crossfire (Ramachandra Guha - India after Gandhi pg.563)."[
citation needed] were killed in the resultant gunfire. While the exact figures related to civilian casualties are disputed, the timing and method of the attack drew significant criticism.
Indira Gandhi had numerous bodyguards, two of whom were Satwant Singh and Beant Singh, both Sikhs. On
October 31,
1984 they assassinated Indira Gandhi with machine guns in the garden of the Prime Minister's Residence at No. 1, Safdarjung Road in New Delhi. As she was walking to be interviewed by the
British actor
Peter Ustinov filming a documentary for Irish television, she passed a wicket gate, guarded by Satwant Singh and Beant Singh, where they opened fire with machine pistols before being shot themselves by other bodyguards. One bodyguard was killed and the other wounded.
Gandhi died on her way to the hospital, in her official car, but she was not declared dead until many hours later. She was taken to the
All India Institute of Medical Sciences, where doctors operated on her and reportedly removed 31 bullets from her body. She was cremated on
November 3, near
Raj Ghat and the place was called
Shakti Sthal.
After her death, sectarian unrest engulfed
New Delhi and several other cities in India, including Kanpur, Asansol and Indore, leading to the death of thousands of Sikhs and leaving many homeless. At that time many
Gurudwaras were burnt. Some members of the
Delhi Pradesh Congress Committee, long accused by independent human rights organisations of a hand in the violence, were tried for incitement to murder and arson many years later - none was found guilty. Three prominent Congress politicians - HKL Bhagat, Jagdish Tytler and Sajjan Kumar - were implicated on numerous occasions but were never brought to trial. The present Indian Commerce and Industry Minister, Mr. Kamal Nath, has repeatedly been accused of ordering a mob to fire at a Gurdwara [deposition to Justice Nanavati Commission] during the riots, but he denies this. Numerous enquiries, themselves dragging on for several years during which time witnesses often died, revealed that little or no action was taken to protect the people by either the Indian police or the Army. In many instances, eye witnesses reported collusion with the mob by the police. Indira's son, Rajiv, when asked to comment on what became known as the Delhi Pogrom, simply stated "when a large tree falls, the earth is bound to shake". This was taken as tacit approval of the anti-Sikh riots. To date not a single person has been found guilty of the estimated 20,000 Sikhs that lost their lives in the anti-Sikh Delhi riots.
Gandhi's friend and biographer
Pupul Jayakar would later reveal Indira's tension, and her premonition about what might happen in the wake of Operation Blue Star.
Personal life
Nehru-Gandhi family
Main article:
Nehru-Gandhi FamilyInitially
Sanjay had been her chosen heir; but after his death in a flying accident, his mother persuaded a reluctant
Rajiv Gandhi to quit his job as a pilot and enter politics in February 1981.
After Indira Gandhi's death, Rajiv Gandhi became Prime Minister. In May 1991, he too was assassinated, this time at the hands of
Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam militants. Rajiv's widow,
Sonia Gandhi, led the
United Progressive Alliance to a surprise electoral victory in the 2004
Lok Sabha elections.
Sonia Gandhi declined the opportunity to assume the office of Prime Minister but remains in control of the Congress' political apparatus; Prime Minister Dr.
Manmohan Singh, formerly finance minister, now heads the nation. Rajiv's children,
Rahul Gandhi and
Priyanka Gandhi, have also entered politics. Sanjay Gandhi's widow,
Maneka Gandhi - who fell out with Indira after Sanjay's death and was famously thrown out of the Prime Minister's house
[14] - as well as Sanjay's son,
Varun Gandhi, are active in politics as members of the main opposition
BJP party. At the same time, scandals from Indira Gandhi's final years, including the
Ottavio Quattrocchi affair, continue to cast its shadow on
Sonia Gandhi. She had two sons -
Rajiv Gandhi , and
Sanjay Gandhi , three grandchildren -
Rahul Gandhi and
Priyanka Gandhi Vadra from Rajiv , and
Varun Gandhi from Sanjay. Her daughters-in-law are
Sonia Gandhi and
Maneka Gandhi. While Sonia is the leader of the
Indian National Congress , Maneka is an
M.P. for the opposition
Bharatiya Janata Party. Her grandson-in-law is
Robert Vadra. Her grandsons-37 year old Rahul and 27 year old Varun are unmarried. She has two great grandchildren.
[15]Indira Gandhi in popular culture
Although never mentioned by name, Indira Gandhi is clearly the prime minister in
A Fine Balance by
Rohinton Mistry.
In
Salman Rushdie's novel
Midnight's Children, Indira is responsible for the eponymous characters' downfall, referred to throughout the novel as "The Widow." This portrayal of Indira Gandhi raised controversy in some circles for its harsh depiction both of her and of her policies.
In
Shashi Tharoor's
The Great Indian Novel, the character of Priya
Duryodhani clearly refers to Indira Gandhi.
"
Aandhi," a Hindi movie directed by
Gulzar, is a partly fictionalized adaptation of some events in Indira's life, particularly her (played by
Suchitra Sen) difficult relationship with her husband (played by
Sanjeev Kumar).
