Indira Gandhi
1917 - 1984

Indian; Prime Minister 1966 – 77, 1980 – 4 Daughter of
Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi was educated at Visva-Bharati
and Cambridge. In 1929 she founded Vanar Sena, the Congress
children's organization. She joined the Congress in 1938 and
married Feroze Gandhi in 1942. After her mother's death (1936),
she became closer to her father.
Gandhi was elected to the Congress Working Committee in 1955 and
became party president between 1959 and 1960. During this period
she masterminded the collapse of the Kerala Communist state
government. She was elected to parliament in 1964 and became the
Minister for Information and Broadcasting under Nehru's
successor, Lal Bahadur Shastri.
Following the death of Shastri (1966), Gandhi was elected as
Prime Minister by the Congress party. She led the party to a
fourth successive general election victory, though with a
greatly reduced majority. In 1969 her nominee for President of
India was successfully elected but precipitated a split within
the Congress between the parliamentary and organizational wings.
The split was followed by a radical left turn which included the
nationalization of banks and insurance companies.
In 1971 Gandhi went into a national election on a slogan of
"eradicate poverty". Her appeal projected her as a national
leader and undermined organizational opposition to her within
the party. The successful execution of the Indo-Pak War (1971)
under Gandhi's guidance led to the creation of Bangladesh. Her
popularity was at an alltime high and was followed by Congress
victories in the states.
After the 1973 global increase in oil prices, the opposition
parties led a countrywide agitation against inflation and
corruption. On 12 June 1975 Gandhi was found guilty of corrupt
election practices by the Allahabad High Court. On 25 June 1975,
Gandhi, using article 352 of the constitution, imposed a State
of Emergency.
The State of Emergency was followed by the suspension of the
constitution, arrests of opposition leaders, press censorship,
and curtailment of the powers of the judiciary; 110,000
political activists were arrested. A twenty-point programme of
economic and social reforms was promoted by Gandhi during the
Emergency. Gandhi's son, Sanjay Gandhi, established the Youth
Congress, which became notorious for its programme of forcible
sterilization. The State of Emergency was lifted in March 1977
and elections were held to the national parliament.
The 1977 elections led to a crushing defeat for the Congress,
which won only 154 seats, and the election of a Janata
government. Gandhi was tried for the excesses of the Emergency
but prosecution backfired on the Janata government as it became
riven with factional conflict. In 1980 when a national election
was called, Gandhi campaigned on a platform of a government that
works. She made a successful comeback, winning 351 seats.
Gandhi's final term as Prime Minister was marked by the
centralization and personalization of power. Dissent within
Congress was not tolerated. Opposition state governments were
regularly undermined by the imposition of President's Rule.
Following the defeat of Congress in Andhra Pardesh and
Karnataka, Gandhi sought to consolidate her support among the
Hindu community.
Following the return to power in 1980, Gandhi dismissed the
Akali Dal (Sikh Party) led state government in Punjab. This led
to a state-wide agitation by the Akali Dal for regional
autonomy. Factions within Congress supported the more militant
groups among the Sikhs in order to gain party advantage. Between
1981 and 1983 several rounds of negotiations took place between
Sikh leaders and the central government, but Gandhi always
blocked a deal. As violence in Punjab increased, central rule
was imposed. On 4 June 1984 Gandhi ordered the Indian Army to
eradicate militant resistance based in the Golden Temple.
Operation Blue Star resulted in the deaths of 1,000 people and
the permanent alienation of the Sikh community.
Although Operation Blue Star made Gandhi very popular among the
Hindu community, it marked the first major use of the Indian
army against civilians and was followed by a mutiny of soldiers.
Sikh resentment continued to fester and Gandhi was assassinated
by her bodyguard on 31 October 1984. Her death was followed by
massacres of Sikhs in Delhi in which 3,000 lost their lives.
Gandhi is often seen as the practitioner of realpolitik. What
she lacked in intellectual ability she compensated for by a
ruthless streak gained from a long apprenticeship in politics.
Gandhi began the process of deinstitutionalization of Congress
with her plebiscitary politics in the early 1970s and the
destruction of the old Congress Party. She is best contrasted
with her father, Nehru, and is seen as a centralizer who
outmanœuvred more experienced contenders for power.
~~~<"((((((><~~~<"((((((><~~~<"((((((><~~~<"((((((><~~~<"((((((><~~~
Indira Gandhi (1917-1984) was the only child of Kamla and
Jawaharlal Nehru. She spent part of her childhood in Allahabad,
where the Nehrus had their family residence, and part in
Switzerland, where her mother Kamla convalesced from her
periodic illnesses. She received her college education at
Somerville College, Oxford. A famous photograph from her
childhood shows her sitting by the bedside of Mahatma Gandhi, as
he recovered from one of his fasts; and though she was not
actively involved in the freedom struggle, she came to know the
entire Indian political leadership. After India's attainment of
independence, and the ascendancy of Jawaharlal Nehru, now a
widower, to the office of the Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi
managed the official residence of her father, and accompanied
him on his numerous foreign trips. She had been married in 1942
to Feroze Gandhi, who rose to some eminence as a parliamentarian
and politician of integrity but found himself disliked by his
more famous father-in-law, but Feroze died in 1960 before he
could consolidate his own political forces.
In 1964, the year of her father's death, Indira Gandhi was for
the first time elected to Parliament, and she was Minister of
Information and Broadcasting in the government of Lal Bahadur
Shastri, who died unexpectedly of a heart attack less than two
years after assuming office. The numerous contenders for the
position of the Prime Ministership, unable to agree among
themselves, picked Indira Gandhi as a compromise candidate, and
each thought that she would be easily manipulable. But Indira
Gandhi showed extraordinary political skills and tenacity and
elbowed the Congress dons -- Kamaraj, Morarji Desai, and others
-- out of power. She held the office of the Prime Minister from
1966 to 1977. She was riding the crest of popularity after
India's triumph in the war of 1971 against Pakistan, and the
explosion of a nuclear device in 1974 helped to enhance her
reputation among middle-class Indians as a tough and shrewd
political leader. However, by 1973, Delhi and north India were
rocked by demonstrations angry at high inflation, the poor state
of the economy, rampant corruption, and the poor standards of
living. In June 1975, the High Court of Allahabad found her
guilty of using illegal practices during the last election
campaign, and ordered her to vacate her seat. There were demands
for her resignation.
Mrs. Gandhi's response was to declare a state of emergency,
under which her political foes were imprisoned, constitutional
rights abrogated, and the press placed under strict censorship.
Meanwhile, the younger of her two sons, Sanjay Gandhi, started
to run the country as though it were his personal fiefdom, and
earned the fierce hatred of many whom his policies had
victimized. He ordered the removal of slum dwellings, and in an
attempt to curb India's growing population, initiated a highly
resented program of forced sterilization. In early 1977,
confident that she had debilitated her opposition, Mrs. Gandhi
called for fresh elections, and found herself trounced by a
newly formed coalition of several political parties. Her
Congress party lost badly at the polls. Many declared that she
was a spent force; but, three years later, she was to return as
Prime Minister of India. The same year, however, her son Sanjay
was killed in an airplane crash.
In the second, post-Emergency, period of her Prime Ministership,
Indira Gandhi was preoccupied by efforts to resolve the
political problems in the state of Punjab. In her attempt to
crush the secessionist movement of Sikh militants, led by
Jarnail Singh Bindranwale, she ordered an assault upon the
holiest Sikh shrine in Amritsar, called the "Golden Temple". It
is here that Bindranwale and his armed supporters had holed up,
and it is from the Golden Temple that they waged their campaign
of terrorism not merely against the Government, but against
moderate Sikhs and Hindus. "Operation Bluestar", waged in June
1984, led to the death of Bindranwale, and the Golden Temple was
stripped clean of Sikh terrorists; however, the Golden Temple
was damaged, and Mrs. Gandhi earned the undying hatred of Sikhs
who bitterly resented the desacralization of their sacred space.
In November of the same year, Mrs. Gandhi was assassinated, at
her residence, by two of her own Sikh bodyguards, who claimed to
be avenging the insult heaped upon the Sikh nation.
Mrs. Gandhi acquired a formidable international reputation as a
"statesman", and there is no doubt that she was extraordinarily
skilled in politics. She was prone, like many other politicians,
to thrive on slogans, and one -- Garibi Hatao, "Remove Poverty"
-- became the rallying cry for one of her election campaigns.
She had an authoritarian streak, and though a cultured woman,
rarely tolerated dissent; and she did, in many respects,
irreparable harm to Indian democracy. Apart from her infamous
imposition of the internal emergency, the use of the army to
resolve internal disputes greatly increased in her time; and she
encouraged a culture of sycophancy and nepotism. At her death,
her older son, Rajiv Gandhi, was sworn in as head of the
Congress party and Prime Minister.
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