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429 pages

English

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Mother India is the fascinating story of independent India's most complex GUPTE political figure: Indira Gandhi, the enigmatic and solitary daughter of the country's first prime minister, who rose to become prime minister herself.

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Lettres et linguistique

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Publié par	Penguin Books Ltd
Date de parution	20 juin 2011
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9788184755480
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0750€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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PRANAY GUPTE
Mother India
A POLITICAL BIOGRAPHY OF INDIRA GANDHI
PENGUIN BOOKS
Contents
About the Author
Dedication
PROLOGUE: THE FUNERAL OF INDIRA GANDHI
INTRODUCTION: INDIRA S INDIA
PART I: THE END
1. THE ASSASSINATION
2. THE NEWS
3. THE AFTERMATH
4. THE LEGACY OF INDIRA GANDHI
PART II: THE BEGINNING
5. DAUGHTER OF PRIVILEGE
6. THE EDUCATION OF INDIRA PRIYADARSHINI NEHRU
7. THE DEATH OF KAMALA NEHRU
8. LOVERS WEDDING
9. MARRIAGE BY FIRE
PART III: THE MIDDLE YEARS
10. THE APPRENTICESHIP
11. INTO HER OWN
12. TOWARDS THE TOP
13. THE PERILS OF POWER
14. PARTY TIMES
PART IV: TRIUMPH AND TWILIGHT
15. TAKING ON TITANS
16. INDIRA RAJ
17. EMPRESS OF INDIA
18. FRIENDS, NEIGHBOURS AND ENEMIES
19. TRANSFORMING DEMOCRACY
PART V: BEYOND THE DYNASTY
20. DOMESTIC AFFAIRS
21. THE WORLD ACCORDING TO THE NEHRUS AND THE GANDHIS
22. POWER PLAYS
23. INDIA AFTER INDIRA AND RAJIV
EPILOGUE: THE FUNERAL OF RAJIV GANDHI
Illustrations
AUTHOR S NOTE
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Copyright Page
PENGUIN BOOKS
MOTHER INDIA
Pranay Gupte is a veteran journalist, author and columnist. He is currently the editor-in-chief of www.english.alarabiya.net , Al Arabiya s English-language website.
Mr Gupte has been a correspondent for the New York Times in Africa, the Middle East and India, as well as an investigative reporter for Forbes and a columnist for Newsweek International . His articles have appeared in major publications globally, including the New York Times Magazine , the Atlantic, Reader s Digest, Harvard International Review and the Washington Post Book Review . He launched and sustained the Earth Times , 1991-2003. He is frequently a guest commentator on TV and radio programmes on CNN, National Public Radio and the BBC, and is an elected life member of the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.
Mr Gupte, born in Mumbai, is a US national who lives in New York, Dubai and Delhi. He can be reached at pranaygupte@gmail.com
This one s for Jyotsna Varma, and her daughter Trishala Ray, And for Jyotsna s father, Ram S. Varma. With my gratitude for coming into my life.
Prologue
THE FUNERAL OF INDIRA GANDHI (1917-1984)
AFTERWARD, AFTER THE rituals of cremation and grief, after the lighting of the sandalwood pyre doused with clarified butter in the traditional Hindu style, the dead woman s son would be proud that it was a funeral to which the whole world came on that cool November day in New Delhi.
The young man s grief had been overwhelming, and he had never really imagined that he would be called on so suddenly and tragically to mourn his mother. He had never imagined that he would be standing beside her terribly still, bullet-riddled body in order to light the pyre that would consign his mother to the ages.
His mother, after all, was Indira Gandhi, Mother India to all the world, a legend in her own lifetime-and legends are supposed to be everlasting. Yes, there had been threats against his mother, the prime minister. Yes, the security situation in India had alarmingly deteriorated because of ethnic terrorism and separatist movements involving Sikhs and others. But the murder of a national leader was not what generally happened in India-although, as destiny would have it some seven years later, Indira Gandhi s assassination would not be the last tragedy to afflict her family. This was, after all, no Latin American banana republic headed by a caudillo. This was not some African dictatorship. Nor was this a fragile Middle Eastern state always fearing a leadership change by violence.
This was India, the world s largest democracy. Here people elected their leaders, and when they no longer liked them, they voted them out. That, at least, was the way it had been until the assassination of the young man s mother. Her murder ushered in a new era of unprecedented violence in India-violence that was to claim the life of Rajiv Gandhi himself on 21 May 1991, in a bomb blast as he campaigned in southern India. A close family friend, Sunita Kohli-the celebrated interior designer and architectural restorer-happened to be lecturing in London that day, and she could scarcely believe the news. I thought it was some macabre joke, she said. 1 Kohli boarded the next available flight to India. In time, she would lead a committee that created one of the world s most stunning memorials, the one at Sriperumbudur in the southern state of Tamil Nadu, where Rajiv was killed.
To the world that watched Indira Gandhi s funeral on television, the young man s inner turmoil and pain were not apparent. His deportment was extraordinary. He seemed composed, stoical, making the right gestures during the rituals as if the whole thing had been carefully scripted by a movie director from India s flourishing celluloid industry. He comforted his pretty Italian-born wife, Sonia Maino, and their two young children, Priyanka and Rahul. He nodded at friends and acquaintances, and he was properly respectful towards the legions of priests and elders who presided over the funeral. There were moments, as he watched his mother s body crumble into ashes, when tears welled up in his eyes. But always the handsome-if slightly pudgy-aristocratic face regained control.
Much later, Rajiv Gandhi would recall the funeral as though it had been some fantasy. I did not believe that this was happening, he said. Yet, on this day, his presence had been dignified and reassuring to a nation that had just lost a remarkable leader. The sympathy of the subcontinent was with him every moment of the ceremony. The world wished him well in the challenges confronting the new, young prime minister-economic, political and social challenges that seemed so formidable that even these well-wishers were not certain that Rajiv Gandhi could meet them successfully.
If the funeral was theatre, then Rajiv Gandhi, at forty years of age, was its star. It was a funeral that marked the end of one woman s domination of the world s second biggest country, a nation larger in population than the United States, Soviet Union and Europe put together. Only China was a bigger country, and China was no democracy. On this day, Rajiv Gandhi came to his mother s funeral as both her bereaved son and her successor as prime minister of the Third World s most powerful nation, a country with the world s fourth biggest military. He had inherited her office, her problems, some of her friends, and a lot of her enemies. He would later ruefully realize, as he struggled to wield power in post-Indira India, that the dead woman s legacy would certainly last beyond his own lifetime and that of the post-Independence generation he represented. More than a half of Indians were born after 1947-the year the British colonial rulers left after being subjected to a relentless Freedom Struggle that was led, among others, by the dead woman s father, Jawaharlal Nehru.
Wakes and funerals come to an end, the condolence calls cease, and sympathies recede. Rajiv Gandhi would later realize that from the moment he stepped off the platform hosting his mother s funeral pyre, he would be perceived as the inheritor of her mantle, that he would soon be measured against her performance as a politician and leader, and that the harsh judgements would be as numerous as the encomiums. The judgement of voters, in fact, would eventually remove his Congress Party from power and he from the post of India s prime minister.
Rajiv Gandhi would later understand that his mother had changed forever the political landscape of her vast Asian nation through her tough politics and her tougher style of managing men and matters. He would also realize years later, ruefully, that if it was his mother s toughness that invited her demise, then it was his lack of her political sophistication that invited his downfall. Indians are often prepared to excuse incompetence in their leaders, but perceived confusion is something else. Whatever Indira s shortcomings, she always conveyed the impression of being in full control. Rajiv, by contrast, generally seemed to be floundering in the turbulent sea of Indian politics. Well-meaning though he was, he was never entirely able to erase that perception of being an amateur.
The funeral was held in traditional Hindu style on Saturday, 3 November 1984, near Shantivana, within hailing distance of the Jamuna, the ancient but polluted river that flows sluggishly through Delhi. Just four days earlier, Indira had been murdered in her garden by two trusted Sikh bodyguards, Beant Singh and Satwant Singh. One of the assassins was killed by irate colleagues while they held him in custody, and the other would be tried and executed some years later.
Leaders from all over the world were present to pay their last personal tribute to her, and among them were royalty, revolutionaries, Presidents and prime ministers: Margaret Thatcher, Britain s prime minister, was tearful; so was Zambia s President, Kenneth Kaunda. Prince Claus of the Netherlands seemed shaken. Prime Minister Nikolai Tikhonov of the Soviet Union occasionally dabbed his eyes with a handkerchief. Soviet Vice President V.V. Kuznetsov and First Deputy Foreign Minister V.F. Maltsev also came with their prime minister. India and the Soviet Union had been political allies since Nehru s time, even though India formally espoused non-alignment. Indira Gandhi s foreign policy generally echoed that of Moscow s; Soviet leaders were grateful for India s support in international forums such as the United Nations. Many Indians noticed that, in contrast to the Soviets, the American delegation was relatively modest in size and stature. Washington was represented by Secretary of State George P. Shultz. Indians had widely expected President Ronald Reagan to attend, or at least Vice President George Bush. Indira Gandhi, during her years in power, had deeply resented Washington s favouring of Pakistan. Mrs Gandhi understood, of course, that