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69 pages

English

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A loving daughter, a caring mother, an affectionate grandmother a confident globetrotter and finally prime minister, Indira slipped into each role with ease. The story of India's first woman prime minister is no ordinary story. It is the story of a girl for whom sacrifice and loss came early. For whom growing up meant seeing her father drift in and out of jail and a mother in and out of hospital. Wearing khadi and organizing her own band of troops. Combating loneliness and giving up the things she loved for a bigger cause. With the freedom struggle playing out in the background Indira Gandhi's life was inextricably linked to the politics and destiny of her country. In this compelling biography, Sreelata Menon vividly recreates the life and times of a young girl who goes on to become one of the most powerful and charismatic leaders of the world. Filled with little-known facts about Indira Gandhi s life this book is a fascinating read that brings to light the different facets of her personality.

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Children's

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Publié par	Penguin Books Ltd
Date de parution	15 octobre 2013
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9789351183297
Langue	English

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Sreelata Menon

INDIRA GANDHI
Child of Politics
PUFFIN BOOKS
Contents
About the Author
By the Same Author
CHAPTER ONE
An Assassination Most Foul
CHAPTER TWO
Revenge Served Cold
CHAPTER THREE
Where It All began
CHAPTER FOUR
Political Baptism
CHAPTER FIVE
Home Alone
CHAPTER SIX
A New World
CHAPTER SEVEN
Another World
CHAPTER EIGHT
Mummie s Best Friend
CHAPTER NINE
A Changing World
CHAPTER TEN
Her Dadu and Her Papu
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Politics in Her Blood
CHAPTER TWELVE
Family Ties
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Teen Murti House
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Finding Her Feet
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
It s a Girl
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Not a Smooth Ride
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
A Feisty Leader
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
A Basketful of Woes
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Mixed Fortunes
CHAPTER TWENTY
The Curtain Comes Down
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Yet It Wasn t Always Politics
Trivia Treasury
Other Books in the Series
Jawaharlal Nehru: The Jewel of India Aditi De
Rabindranth Tagore: The Renaissance Man Monideepa Sahu
Follow Penguin
Copyright Page
PUFFIN BOOKS
INDIRA GANDHI
A widely travelled freelance writer who enjoys writing on all kinds of topics, Sreelata Menon is a history buff who especially enjoys introducing children to the lives and times of great personalities. Author of Freelance Writing for the Newbie Writer , this is her second biography after Guru Nanak: The Enlightened Master in the Puffin Lives series.
Other books in the Puffin Lives series
Mother Teresa: Apostle of Love
by Rukmini Chawla
Jawaharlal Nehru: The Jewel of India
by Aditi De
Ashoka: the Great and Compassionate King
by Subhadra Sen Gupta
Rani Lakhsmibai: The Valiant Queen of Jhansi
by Deepa Agarwal
Akbar: The Mighty Emperor
by Kavitha Mandana
Mahatma Gandhi: The Father of the Nation
by Subhadra Sen Gupta
The 14th Dalai Lama: Buddha of Compassion
by Aravinda Anantharaman
Swami Vivekananda: A Man with a Vision
by Devika Rangachari
Gautama Buddha: The Lord of Wisdom
by Rohini Chowdhury
Guru Nanak: The Enlightened Master
by Sreelata Menon
Chanakya: The Master of Statecraft
by Deepa Agarwal
1. An Assassination Most Foul
It was a lovely morning. A lingering aroma of smoking twigs and burnt leaves hung in the cool, dry air. Bathed in the October sun Delhi was at her autumnal best and 1 Safdarjang Road, the official residence of India s prime minister Indira Gandhi, was slowly waking up to another ordinarily busy day.
A modest house with neatly laid gardens, 1 Safdarjang Road was home to not only Mrs Gandhi but also her eldest son Rajiv, his wife Sonia and their two children-fourteen-year-old Rahul and Priyanka who was just twelve. As sparrows hopped around noisily among the flowering bushes in the garden and koels frolicked merrily on its lawns, it did appear that morning that god was indeed in his heaven and all was right with the world.
How are you? Were you hurt? asked Mrs Gandhi in some concern as she walked into the room where her grandchildren, getting ready for school, were already at breakfast. You are back! they chorused in delighted surprise. Their father they knew was away in West Bengal and their grandmother was supposed to have been in Bhubaneswar. Yes, she nodded. But I was told about the accident. Were you hurt? She asked again. Always busy and constantly on the move, Mrs Gandhi had very little time to spend at home. After all being the prime minister of a country was no easy task. Yet she somehow always managed to make time for Rahul and Priyanka.
She had in fact, a few days ago, taken them for a fleeting but super holiday to Srinagar. They had stayed at the panoramic Chasma Shahi guest house and gone shopping at the Srinagar market as well. Then with hardly a day s break between trekking up the Sankaracharya Hill, near the famous Dal Lake and dropping them off in Delhi, she had dashed off again on a strenuous election tour of Orissa.
But now as they helped themselves to some orange juice with eggs, cereal and toast the children realized that she had cut short her trip because of their accident the day before. A van had jumped the lights and collided with their escort car. We are all right, they assured her earnestly, anxious to set her mind at ease.
Rahul and Priyanka adored their grandmother and she in turn doted on them. Mrs Gandhi was not only warm and loving, she was great fun to be with as well. She was also a marvellous fund of exciting stories. She knew a whole host of stuff other grownups weren t interested in. She even knew, as Priyanka says all about the swirls and textures in a pebble and the myriad colours of a beetle s wing, and even a walk in the garden with her was an adventure and an exploration. ( Letters from a Father to His Daughter , Jawaharlal Nehru) Mealtimes in particular were fun times when she would often tell them fascinating stories that she herself had heard from her father. Yes, as far as they were concerned, she was the best grandmother in the world!
But that day she was on an extremely busy schedule. So having satisfied herself that the children were fine she went into her study to look through some urgent files. However, just before they left for school she called them back for another hug and a kiss. A few minutes later, a little after nine, she was ready to set out for her office on Akbar Road next door, just across the garden.
Clad in a cheerful orange sari Mrs Gandhi came out of her house and nimbly strode down the path through her garden towards the wicket gate that led to her office. She was scheduled to meet a British television crew who were apparently all ready and waiting. Her usual retinue, a personal staff that included five security men, followed her. Despite having gone to bed well past midnight and up at six to breakfast with the children, she was in unusually high spirits. She was probably relieved that Rahul and Priyanka were unharmed and that the accident was not as bad as she had feared.
As she approached the wicket gate she spotted Beant Singh, one of her favourite bodyguards. He was a Sikh policeman and had been part of her security for years. He seemed to be attentively standing by to open the gate. She smiled and nodded a greeting to him. But as she drew near, Beant Singh suddenly pulled out his .38mm service revolver. What are you doing? cried Mrs Gandhi in surprise. In reply Beant Singh simply raised his arm and shot her straight in the abdomen. In dazed incredulity she tried to shield herself while he fired at her again and again. Four times did he shoot her at point-blank range. As she crumbled to the ground another young khaki-clad guard, Satwant Singh who had been lurking behind a hedge, came up. He brutally let loose a further thirty rounds from his own Sten gun, peppering her already stricken body with more bullets. The impact almost lifted Mrs Gandhi s frail body off the ground and spun it around violently before bringing it crashing down again. And sadly in a matter of seconds, one of India s most charismatic leaders lay dying in her own garden shot by her own bodyguards. It was the 31st of October and the year 1984. She was a few days short of her sixty-seventh birthday.
Why had she been so cruelly assassinated? Why had bodyguards who were trusted to protect her with their own lives taken hers?
Delhi
Over centuries the city of Delhi has played an important role in every empire that has sprung up around it. From 1206-1526 it was the capital of the Delhi Sultanate and then continued to be an important city during the early Mughal rule. In 1639, Shah Jahan created Shahjahanabad to the north of the earlier settlements of Delhi and made that the capital of the Mughal Empire. In 1857 the British defeated the then emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar and brought an end to the Mughal era. The British continued to rule India from Calcutta till 1911, when they decided to shift their capital to Delhi. King George V and Queen Mary laid the foundation for New Delhi, south-west of Shahjahanabad. Designed and built by Edwin Lutyens and Herbert Baker, the contractor for the project was Sir Sobha Singh (famous journalist Khushwant Singh s father). Construction started in 1918 and took about thirteen years to complete. It was named New Delhi in 1927 and inaugurated in 1931. When India became independent in 1947, New Delhi remained the capital and continues to do so till today.
2. Revenge Served Cold
Indira Gandhi was not only one of India s longest-serving prime ministers, she was also someone who was deeply loved by the masses. So why had she been so violently killed?
The reason was not too difficult to find. When Beant Singh first opened fire, the entourage accompanying her was for a moment shocked into immobility. While the others dived to the ground, only Sub-inspector Rameshwar Dayal was quick to react. He lunged forward but was at once brought down by a bullet in the thigh. As Mrs Gandhi s security guards tried in stunned disbelief to gather their stupefied wits, the killers themselves laid down their weapons and stood quietly by her limp body. Then, when they belatedly pounced on him, Beant Singh-not a whit perturbed by his dastardly crime-told them, We have done what we had to do; now you can do what you have to. It was an apparent reference to Operation Blue Star, the military action Indira Gandhi had ordered a few months ago.
When India became independent in 1947 and was partitioned into India and Pakistan, the Sikhs too had asked for an independent homeland. This was not granted. So even after independence some Sikhs continued to propagate the idea of a separate Khalistan (The Land of the Pure). The movement began to gather steam under a certain Jagjit Singh Chohan. Soon with Sant Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, who became the face of the Sikh separatist movement in India, it turned extremely militant. And to achieve their objective the militants started to heap atrocities on the police, non-Sikhs and moderate Sik