Indira Gandhi

  Indira Gandhi

                     

  Indira Gandhi (Priyadarshini), was born in Allahabad (U.P.),  on November 19, 1917, in a prosperous family. She was the only child of Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Prime Minister of independent India. Both her father and grandmother were involved in the freedom struggle of India, and this made a strong impression on the mind of little Indira. When Indira was just 13 years old, she organised a ‘Monkey Army’ which proved her intention to fight for the independence of her motherland. Indira Gandhi was educated at different places; Pune, Shantiniketan, Switzerland and England. She attended Viswa-Bharati University, West Bengal, and the University of Oxford. In 1942, she was married to Feroze Gandhi, a fellow member of the National Congress Party. Two sons were born to her – Rajiv Gandhi and Sanjay Gandhi.

  Indira Gandhi joined the Congress Party in 1938, and took part in the freedom movement. She was a member of the working committee of the ruling Congress Party from 1955, and in 1959 she was elected to the largely honorary post of party President. Lal Bahadur Shastri, who succeeded Nehru as Prime Minister in 1964, named her minister of information and broadcasting, in his government.

     On Shastri’s sudden death in January 1966, Indira became the leader of the Congress Party in a compromise between the Right and Left Wings of the party. She became the first woman and third Prime Minister of India on January 24, 1966 and remained in this post up to 1977. The prime ministership of Indira, was credited with great achievements and most noteworthy of these are nationalisation of banks, liberalisation of Bangladesh, 20 Point Programme for the upliftment of the poor and the chairmanship of the Non-Aligned Movement.

   The Congress, as an institution surrounded her with a heavy weight cabinet in which, she was less than an equal and even heavier weight chief ministers, who commanded Delhi to listen to them. But they all made a fatal mistake, symbolised by the contemptuous phrase used by the acerbic socialist leader. Ram Monohar Lohia, when they dismissed her as ‘Gungee Guriya’, literally a ‘dumb doll’.

  In the election of 1967, she won a slim majority and had to accept Desai as deputy Prime Minister. In 1971, however, she won a sweeping electoral victory over a coalition of conservative parties. Indira Gandhi strongly supported East Bengal (Bangladesh) in its secessionist conflict with Pakistan in 1971, and India’s armed forces achieved a swift and decisive victory over Pakistan, that led to the creation of Bangladesh. She showed amazing diplomatic and military skills. Atal Bihari Vajpayee described her as ‘Durga’.

  In March 1972, after India’s victory over Pakistan, Indira again led Congress Party to a landslide victory in the national elections. Shortly afterward, her defeated Socialist opponent charged that, she had violated the election laws. In June 1975, the High Court of Allahabad ruled against her, which meant that she would be deprived of her seat in Parliament and would have to stay out of politics for six years. In response, she declared a state of Emergency, imprisoned her opponents, and assumed emergency powers, passing many laws, limiting personal freedoms. During this period she implemented several unpopular policies.

  The extraordinary thing is how quickly it all began to go wrong. As long as she was in the dispensable mould, she was superb, the moment she became indispensable in her own eyes, mistakes tumbled over one another until they forced an unprecedented and unbelievable Emergency upon the nation. There were traces of paranoia in the economic management of the country, political corruption escalated and the non-productive sectors were fattened in the name of Socialism. Propaganda became more important than reality, and Mrs. Gandhi finally became a victim of her own propaganda. When long-postponed national elections were held in 1977, Indira and her party were soundly defeated, whereupon she left office. The people brought the Empress back to the street level. The Janata Party took over the reins of the government.

    Early in1978, Indira’s supporters split from the Congress Party and formed the Congress (I) – I for Indira – Party. Dissension within the ruling Janata Party, led to the fail of its government in August 1979. When fresh elections for the Lok Sabha were held in January 1980, Indira and her Congress (I) Party was swept back into power with an overwhelming majority. Her son Sanjay Gandhi, who had become her chief political adviser, also won a seat in the Lok Sabha. All legal cases against Indira as well as against her son, were withdrawn.

 Mrs. Gandhi started as Joan of Arc, and ended as King Lear. But in those 18 years of politics and power, she not only changed India, but also changed Pakistan. In her bid to reinvent the Congress and keep the reins over a nation, she also showed how power corrupts. She adhered to the quasi-socialist economic policies began by her father. She also established closer relations with Soviet Union, depending on that nation for support in India’s longstanding conflict with Pakistan. Mrs. Gandhi the ‘Iron Lady’, of Asia met her tragic end when she was brutally assassinated by her own guards on October 31, 1984.

   Indira Gandhi is immortalised in history as a forceful and capable ruler. Under her leadership, India became a strong country, making all-round progress. She was a great crusader of world peace also. She added new dynamism to international politics, by strongly advocating the cause of the poor and backward countries of the world.